Furusato Matsuri – Japanese Cultural Event in Tokyo

The other day I received an interesting request to do some narration for Fuji TV. (Yes, if you recognized the voice in the video, that is me.) The event is titled Furusato Matsuri which roughly translates as “home town festival” and showcases the best of regional Japanese culture including festivals and food. It’s held every January in Tokyo Dome and apparently attracts well over 370,000 people.

I obviously need to get out more as I had never heard of this festival before. I’ll definitely check it out next time and it would be great to do a Learn Japanese Pod Get Together there.

This particular video features examples of regional Japanese dishes including 丼 donburi – a popular rice bowl dish with various toppings. Typical toppings include 肉- niku – meat, 魚 – sakana – fish and 天ぷら tempura.

Here is a list of some of the toppings often used in donburi in more detail:

香箱ガニ – Kobako Gani – Kobako Crab or snow crab

白エビ – shiro ebi – White shrimp

うなぎ – unagi – Eel

Some other useful words:

In the video at about 2:50, one guy gives his opinion of the food and says:

“うん、おいしいです” – un, oishii desu – Yes, this is delicious.

Another way to say delicious in Japanese is:

うまい – umai – delicious

And just for fun, here’s how you would say it using Osaka slang:

まじやばいで – maji yabai de – Delicious

I’ll be posting more videos about Furusato Matsuri soon so stay tuned!