Hot Japan Festival in Forrest Chase

Posted February 23rd, 2014 in Perth WA No Comments »

Were you there?? There was a Japan Festival held in Forrest Chase in Perth from 2pm until 7pm yesterday. It was a HOT day, especially that I’m 24weeks pregnant and also had a huge headache from the cold I’d caught few days ago I honestly didn’t want to get out of air-conditioned room in my house. But I pushed myself to head to the city just because I wanted to eat okonomiyaki (saucy savoury pancake) and kaki-gori (snow cone).

As I expected, there were so many people at the event. When we arrived there was a cosplay competition going on on the stage.

There’re huge queues around the stalls. Because the water fountain was on, people had to queue around the water area and I couldn’t see where the okonomiyaki stall was at first. We walked around, and first my son played super-ball tsuri ($2). You scoop floating super balls from water using a catcher made with thin paper. Once the paper is broken you are out. You could get maximum 5 balls and when my son caught 5 balls he broke the paper using his fingers :p Anyway he got 5 balls!

We decided to queue to get some food. It was so hot so we wanted to get kaki-gori first. Huge queue… The stall was also selling snack bags for kids and cold drinks. We got kids snack pack, ramune (Japanese carbonated drink for kids typically seen in summer festival in Japan) and kaki-gori. My husband didn’t want to queue so he went to grab hot dog which had no queue in front of the stall. Okonomiyaki and takoyaki stalls had the longest queues :p

We noticed that Japanese consulate was giving away plates of yakisoba for free, so I queued there. In the end I didn’t get to eat okonomiyaki 🙁

Around 5pm it started to cool down a little. Kids were crazy playing in the water area. I wanted to listen to live music but decided to head home around 5:30pm.

It was a fun event and I was amazed to see how many Japanese people (and people who like Japanese culture) are in Perth. I thank all the volunteers who helped this event, and the people who contributed towards the Fukushima charity.