Hiroshima Flower Festival

When I messaged some friends about joining us for the annual Hiroshima Flower Festival I was clear and vague. I was clear on how the festival wasn't really about flowers and was just a reason to have hundreds of food vendors, children games, musical performances, and a parade. I was vague on the size of the crowd. Spanning multiple city blocks, the Hiroshima Flower Festival boasts having more than 1.6 million visitors during the three day event. It should be noted that I only saw a few flowers.

But we go for the food.

I found it very interesting that the city had not closed the parade route entirely. Instead the cross roads were still open with operating lights. This slowed the parade and allowed a longer time to view each section, but the poor dancers end up doing their routing (a traveling routine at that) in one spot over and over. We watched one performance two times from start to finish and the light still had not turned. So the girls backed up and did it again...all in the space of one city block. Hearing the song a third time... and fourth time...

The side streets were closed and filled with thousands of people and hundreds of food vendors. So many amazing smells!

Yum!

After the parade the main road became additional walking space. So many people!

So I talk about all these amazing smells and the food but then I only have one picture. Someone (ahem, Dustin) is playing with the operating system on our computer and I'm unable to pull the rest of our tasty finds. So here, have some dumplings a friend got.

We had a yummy vegetable and chicken filled falafel, fresh seltzer lemonade, potato croquettes, chocolate covered bananas, a whole roasted prawn, panko-fried chicken nuggets, and dry ice soda. I highly recommend festivals in Japan - even if you just go for the food.