Tip 181: Festivities at Japan's night markets

There is actually no night market in Japan and according to Wikipedia, the most well known of it all is at Taiwan (yet to try it). In Malaysia's Petaling Street, Singapore's new Bugis Street or Hong Kong's Temple Street, they are a lively community of vendors or the public looking for an opportunity at flea markets or 'pasar malam' (as called in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia) to sell cheap merchandise and food items. These vendors do it as a part time job, some after their day jobs to earn an extra income.












In Japan, this happens only during the Japanese festivities as the Japanese vendors do it as a celebration and as an opportunity to share their food culture. Most of them are restaurant/food business owners who take a day off from their business to participate in the festivities. Some of the festivities include the local masturi, tanabata, summer fireworks viewing, different dance or season festivities. Most of them happen in summer or autumn. This weblink list a complete calendar of festivities all over Japan. They can be major crowd pullers and you need to head out early to book a nice space to enjoy the food.












I was looking forward to the Sumida river fireworks which is the greatest of all fireworks, having a display of 20,000 fireworks over 1.5 hour duration. This tradition dates back to the Edo period, though which much more grandeur currently. It attracts 1 million people annually and we realized that too late. Police and volunteers were already blocking the roads to the prime spots 1 hour in advanced and we could only settle for 2nd or 3rd class viewing spots.












Another lesson learnt was never bring a stroller to these places as the crowd moves on and on, with little patience for a daddy with a stroller needing to negotiate the different pavements. Interestingly, being a daddy changes how an outing will turn out. I used to be able to get all the good spots, by squeezing or talking my way through. I think this will be a challenge especially if I have more kids in the future. I guess having just 1 kid does not provide a good definition of what parenting is.












(Photos show the food vendors at the Bettara ichi (Japanese pickle fair selling bettarazuke) at Kodenmacho, and Haruka in her Okinawan jinbei posing with dancers at the Awa-odori dance festival at Kagurazaka street, Tokyo. Food shown are grilled fish/ajinoshioyaki, yakitori, takoyaki, candy apple/ringo ame, okonomiyaki, bettarazuke, oden and obanyaki).