Food of Gion Matsuri Festival

If you are unfamiliar with Gion Matsuri festival, it is a month long celebration that hits its peak in the middle of July. Three days before the big parade there are a series of evening festivals, where you can view the floats made for the parade. The photos below are from Sunday night, the first night of the festival. You can see in the photos the streets are packed. We spent more two hours stuck at a standstill in a street where foot traffic was not being regulated (Monday and Tuesday night had cops out on the streets directing traffic).

The best part of the festival was all the "new to us" foods. Things like takoyaki and cucumbers abound all over the streets of downtown Kyoto.

Gion Matsuri festival float on display. You can see it's covered in plastic to protect it from the threatening rain. 

Awesome goldfish Kimono and HUGE meat kabob

Goldfish for sale at the festival. There were several booths that had goldfish throughout the streets.

We are not sure what this is called, but it is made up of a pile and a half of shredded cabbage, egg, flour, onion, baby shrimp, some had lunch meat, and we think what was carrot (the reddish substance in the right pan). 

Signage for one of the floats

Many of the floats had these large sake barrels out on display in front of them. 

This is where we got stuck. We HIGHLY recommend avoiding the un-directed smaller streets. It was extremely unsafe as we passed by a fried food vendor and people began pushing their way through the crowd, causing others to get pushed toward the fryers. 

Amazingly enough children in Japan seem to have no problem sleeping...anywhere 

Another popular street food...the angry chicken king

Here is where things started to get dicey, by the food fryer. 

Yummy Takoyaki

Threats of rain didn't seem to bother the thousands of people out for the festival.

Another version of the cabbage/egg/meat thing. These ones included egg and sauce. Each costing 500yen ($5.00USD)

Great name for a parking lot...Boo Boo Park

Potatoes, peeled and fried

Crisco (fake butter), mayonaise, and salt all available 

Rolled okonomiyaki being prepared. While smoking a cigarette this woman was blending the flour/egg/veggie pancake-like batter for this yummy dish. 

Completed okonomiyaki -very tasty! 

A Gion bayashi music jam circle

Classy convini/conbini highballs (surprisingly good! Thanks Suntory)