Soba Festival

This Saturday was the Matsumoto City Soba Festival held at Matsumoto Castle. It was a neat festival packed full of food vendors selling everything from candied fruits to ice cream and grilled meats, to of course the soba which is famous in Shinshu.

The weather was beautiful and the temperature was perfect for exploring the castle grounds and everything that the festival had to offer. I did buy some cold soba for lunch, and I have to say that it was delicious. One of the things that you have to get used to in Japan is feeling like an exotic animal on exhibit. Of course you may be thinking "Whoa Sam! That's a weird thing to say", but let me assure you, that is the truth. There isn't a day that goes by that Jesse and I aren't looked at with curiosity. The reactions can be quite funny at times. A group of us foreigners (3 Shinshu students)actually found a news-sized camera focused on us while we ate our lunch. It as almost as they were thinking, "Wow, they are really using chopsticks...".


My soba lunch もりそば (Mori Soba). It was delicious.

Man making soba noodles.

Matsumoto Castle. It is also known by the name of "からすじょ”（Karasu-jo）The Crow Castle because of its black color.