A Brush with Royalty

So every year, there’s a Garlic Festival in Takko-machi. What is the Garlic Festival? I’m glad you asked. Every year, there’s a festival in Takko Town, the self proclaimed garlic capital of japan. Who’s gonna dispute it? Takko has a sister city in Gilroy, CA. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I could be joking, but I’m not. I saw Gilroy’s Garlic Festival on the Food Network. It looked like a lot of fun, yet somewhat odd; just my style. They’ve got a Garlic Queen and everything! What’s that? A Garlic Queen? Yes, you heard right. And I’ve met her; she gave me a bag of noodles, but more on that later.



You can go to the Takko Garlic Festival for free, but you won’t get a bag full of beef, vegetables, and a big hunk of garlic without a paid ticket.

Once you get your bag of goodies, you head to a grill table, and cook it up. The Yakiniku sauce they had was freakin awesome.



There were food booths that had an assortment of different treats.


One of the vendors.



Here’s the American and Japanese Garlic Queens; the Garlic Royal Court.

Your paid ticket doubles as a raffle ticket for drawings they had throughout the two day fest. We tried to duck out before the festival was over to avoid traffic but heard our ticket number called over the PA. I slammed the Slim-Mobile into a parking space and high-tailed it to Garlic HQ. Once there, I drew a number out of a bucket to win a bag of fresh Garlic Ramen Noodles (not the dried instant crap, but soft, ready to boil noodles, keep refrigerated). The Gilroy Garlic Queen presented them to me. I don’t know who felt more embarrassed. I ran into her again, later on, about 20 minutes from the festival area, where I bought the ice cream featured in the 32nd Flavor, Volume 3, hmmm, what could it be…
Photos By Tokyo Slim