Melbourne Japanese Festival

(Special note: I can't spell Japanese food to save my life... I've put the correct spelling but I've also left the initial mistakes so that we can all laugh at my mistakes, peace~! Thanks foxy~! [kisses])

Being a good girl on thursday and friday (where I dragged myself to school to do work from morning until night) was tiring. I can already imagine hating working life... Hahahah~!

Anyway I used Saturday as my unwind day and Sunday I went to Box Hill (It's like travelling from PJ to Bangsar, I think). Ermm.... maybe further since by train, I sat for 40 minutes? I wasn't timing my journey so sorry, hehe. We left the house and boarded the 10.42am train.
So yea. I came to Box Hill with a friend / classmate / flatmate (she's all that, lol) Evelyn. The first thing we did was go to eat lunch because apparently at lunchtime, you'll have a hard time with the queues and stuff... I would understand this. Imagine being in Midvalley on a public holiday and you want to find a place to eat.... Yea, that bad...

Anyway, we bought plenty to eat. [grin] I admit I did spent quite a lot today... [guilty] But I normally quite thrifty and I don't go out too often... Anyway, this is
okonomiyaki {edit: ermmm... okonomaki or was it onokoyaki?} Hahaha~! It's Japanese Veggie Pancake with bbq sauce = Aus 5. Yum~!
All the food I got I shared with Evelyn so... it's fun. She's holding the ermmm
yakiniku {yakinuki...} It's grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce. I bought 1 stick which was Aus 3.

Ermm.. I had a pork bun as well... That was also Aus 3. End of round 1. Then round 2 began. Hahah~! Yea, we ate somemore.
We had ermmm... curry korotte. It's something like Japanese hash brown but made with sweet potato and had dashes of curry powder, served with sweet sauce. This one was Aus 1.
Takoyaki~! Does this need explanation? Ermm... it's freshly made ball... consisting of hmmm... flour, egg and octopus in the middle? Hahah~! 6 for Aus 6.
And gyoza~! It's something like fried dumpling served with fish sauce I believe... 7 for Aus 5. End of round 2.
So taking a short break from the food (Heheh... ), we walked around the ermm... Box Hill Town Hall where they have various exhibits of Japanese Art and other stuff. Here's the flower arranging exhibit. There was even a bonsai exhibition.... oh wait, they were selling the bonsai, would that still be an exhibition or sales gallery? [shrugs] There was a bonsai going at Aus 1400... not for poor folks like me...

Two flowers in a photo. Heheheh~! There was quite a bit going on there really... Most of the time I was too excited about things I forgot to photograph it. XD There was a tea ceremony session which we didn't go (ticket was Aus 2) and I don't think it's worth it since the environment was more like a detached demonstration... I prefer kneeling on tatami mats, not sitting on metal folding chairs...

There were performances.. Singing, Taiko demonstration... In the event list, there were Kendo, Kimono contests, etc... Oh, I forgot to mention that there were quite a handful of people who wore yukatas because they get to go in for free whereas those who don't, we have to pay Aus 3. [shrugs]

Round 3 of food. *Ding~!* Hahahah~! Here's something that I found awkward. Tokyo sweets. Latest craze... If you ask me, it's nothing new to me.. The concept is the same as our kaya balls we have at home, except here, they subsitute kaya with custard, chocolate and caramel. [shrugs] What the people don't know won't hurt them I guess...

I bought strawberry daifuku as well (which I'm saving as a night snack tonight, it's sitting beside me now)
There was a train set display too... ^___^ I'd like to see all the details if we had the time... but yea...
Origami~! ^___^ There was even a place where you could play go and
shogi {shogu?} (not sure of the word... but what I meant was japanese chess). Then there's your normally anime and manga stuff... Visit Japan trips... Learn Japanese... Those kind of stuff...
I bought some stuff too. The cute brown one is a felt cake. Cute~! Then there were the cute little cards (One has an origami bird the other a cute little mouse). I'll figure out who gets what when I get back. I'm slowly buying random things as souvenirs as time goes by so that I won't be stuck having to buy them at the end... Don't have a lot but yea...

All in all, I had a fun time. Oh~! I almost forgot. On the way back as I was taking the escalator down, I saw a friend whom I had lost contact since SAM (Melissa Quah). Hahaha~! It's such a small world. Hope I'll get to meet up with her one of these days. Alright. Good long post. Need to get back to work now. [sigh] Until next time, Cheers~!