Takko Town Beef & Garlic Festival

We drove an hour and a half away from Misawa to the town of Takko to check out their 25th Annual Beef and Garlic Festival.  Takko is the 'sister city' of Gilroy, CA, which is famous for their own garlic festival.  The Takko festival was quite a bit smaller than the annual Gilroy festival, but we were still able to enjoy the sights, sounds and tastes of Japan.

A 'typical' garlic head scarecrow. 

Gorgeous view on the walk to the festival.

The site of the festival

For 500 yen (about $5.00) you could buy some of this lightly roasted beef....

...and cook it yourself on hibachi grills. 

They had the grills outside, as well.

A performance from a dance group.

The bouncy castle the boys had to try out.

Posing with some random Japanese cartoon guy.

At this table, participants tried to put as many garlic cloves into the basket to match the exact weight of the other basket.

Gyoza on a stick! 

Ryan checking out the deep fried fish on a stick.

Grilled garlic clove

Another random cartoon character. 

This guy in the green shirt was part of the Gilroy, CA crew.

We had a visit from the Gilroy, CA garlic queen.

I think the kids enjoyed this part of the festival more than anything!

Looks like it's the rice drying season!

We love the little cartoon characters that are popular here...just a random cat eating a fish cracker with it's pink backpack.

Even the construction barriers are some sort of animals.

Brandon came home with an 800 yen Mickey Mouse mask.