Japan Habba or Japan Festival is an annual event that takes place in Bangalore. To be honest, I never heard of it before. Thanks to Facebook, I came to know about it this year and was fortunate enough to attend it. My husband and I are quite fond of Japan. We were engaged in binge watching about Japan in 2016 and early 2017 through an amazing TV show called Japanology. The series picked up one aspect of Japanese culture or lifestyle and made documentaries about that aspect in an episode and created several videos on different things about Japan. You can find these on YouTube by simply searching for Japanology. There are some other great series about foreigners living in Japan on Youtube such as Sharla in Japan, Sharmander, Kyde and Eric, Life where I'm from etc. These are just my favourite channels out of the several that I have watched. Apart from this, there are a couple of videos from Rickshawali where she quizzes the Japanese on Rajnikanth and Priyanka Chopra and also makes Japanese people try Indian food, which I like as well. My first touch point with anything Japanese though, dates way back in the 90s when I was a great fan of the TV show Oshin. The series is on and off on YouTube maybe due to copyright issues but is worth watching. I also enjoyed a lot of anime growing up.
Today was a great experience at Japan Habba. The theme was Aomori Prefecture. The event was held in IISc and was mainly a cultural exchange programme between India and Japan. The entry is free and there are a few freebies as well.
There were several stalls put up at the place:
- Japanese Language learning programmes
- Studying in Japan
- Working in Japan
- How to apply for different visas for Japan
- Japanese tourism
- Japanese books and magazines
- Popular video games in Japan
- Japanese toys
- Art work (all kinds not restricted to just paintings) from Japan and India
- Food from both countries
My favourite stalls were Ikebana, where the artists displayed several beautiful flower arrangement creations; FOOD- being the foodie that I am, this was hard to miss and dislike; Origami- the display was beautiful and colourful; Paper cutting art- loved the precision in the art.
Some of the several Ikebana on display:
Some of the Several Origami that were on display:
Some of the Paper Cutting Art:
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| This was made of Paper. There were several different types of faces put up and these were considered the faces of Gods. There was one which resembled Lord Ganesh. Due to the crowd, I am sorry, could not read the name of that God. |
There were also performances such Tea Ceremony, Shamisen and traditional Japanese dances. They also gave people an opportunity to try the traditional Yukata which is a cotton Kimono worn in summers. I could not resist and tried on one myself. There were also several people who engaged in Cosplay and they probably did a great job at that but unfortunately, I was not able to recognise any of the characters.
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| Me in a Yukata |
Unfortunately due to other appointments, I could not attend the Shamisen and the Japanese dances but I was fortunate enough to have witnessed the Japanese Tea Ceremony and also having been served tea as a part of the ceremony. I have filmed the video until the point I was served tea but was not sure if I could post it here, so have left it out. They made a few changes due the venue and the number of times they had to do it (I think they might have repeated the performance about 50 to 75 times easily). One of the changes was, not using the tatami for the seating and of course the related sequences. It was all done meticulously and gracefully. It was a really nice experience. All the performances did not require tickets and were free of charge.
My husband and I got our names written in Hiragana and Kenji- There was a display of Japanese Calligraphy too. This was free as well.
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| Our names in Kanji..I think... |
At several stalls, we picked up different brochures (I must add the quality of the brochures is amazing, both in terms of the content and the quality of paper used). Though they call them brochures, these are actually similar to books like Lonely Planet- just more colourful. Some samples shown below. My favourite is the one on Vegetarian Restaurants in Japan.
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| This was the brochure about the event. |
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| This was about different aspects of Japan. It covered topics from places to see, food, art, Japanese geography etc. |
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| One of the favourite topics in the book- Food! |
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| My favourite.. Not only does it guide us to these restaurants but also make recommendations on the dishes to taste. |
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| A page from the above book on Kyoto Restaurants |
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| I call it the Doraemon sweet as the person selling it mentioned that it is in eaten in the Doraemon cartoon show. I have not watched Doraemon carefully enough to notice it. Please let me know if you know what this is called by leaving a comment below. |
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| This Miso is to be used in the cooking and not consumed directly from the jar |
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| This Miso is to be consumed directly from the pack. It can be used as a dip. Can be used in cooking as well. They also have a spicy version of it. |
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| Matcha green tea. I got it with the intention of using it in baking. |
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| These are 2 types of Mochi (Sweet Rice Cakes)- The one on the left is called Monaka Mochi and smells of Coffee and the one on the right is called Warabi Mochi which is similar to the Konkani sweet. However, it comes with a spice mix and a sauce which I guess have to be eaten together. |
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| Veg Sushi which comes with a deep brown sauce, not visible clearly in the picture |
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| These were Free Snacks at a stall. They were like elongated cheese balls which had a nice seasoning of herbs and spices |
So far, we have had the Warabi Mochi, Sushi and the Doraemon sweet. While I liked the Sushi, it did not receive a positive response from others in the family. The Warabi Mochi reminded everyone of a Konkani sweet called Duddali, which I must admit tastes absolutely same. The Doraemon sweet was like some sweet stuff sandwiched in miniature pancakes. I did not really like the stuffing. My family members thought this to be good but not excellent.
We tried some vegetarian- Japanese curry and rice with Sweet Potato Katsu. The curry reminded me on the Maggi tastemaker of Masala flavour. The rice was traditional Japanese sticky rice. I must admit, we all loved the Japanese curry with Sweet Potato Katsu. It tasted brilliant. The order of my favourites of the Japanese items I have eaten today would be Japanese Curry and Rice with Sweet Potato Kastu, Sushi, the Free Snack (not sure what it is called) and Warabi Mochi. I am sorry I do not have pictures of the curry dish as it was quite crowded and I could not wait anymore to taste.
What surprised me:
- I knew we had a few Japanese restaurants in Bangalore but today I realised just how many! I did not really think we had so many of them in the city. Some of the food stalls put up were by these restauranteurs. They are Japanese people who wanted to bring in their flavours to India.
- Just how many people learn the Japanese language in the city and talk the language quite fluently and just the sheer number of language schools that offer to teach the language. Many visitors today as well as some of the stall owners were from Bangalore but spoke Japanese like it was their mother tongue. I just knew one Indian before today, who spoke the language that fluently.
- Some Japanese folks spoke....wait for it...KANNADA...I was so amazed. At first, I thought they knew a few words here and there but later I came observed two or three who could respond to questions in Kannada too.
The one thing I would like to change, being a stationery lover- Please sell some Japanese stationery. I am sure, you would have good sales.
In case you were not able to make it today, do try going next year- if not for anything else, just for the experience of something different.
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