Niku Matsuri

Niku Matsuri = Meat Festival, and it is every bit as awesome as the name sounds

Unless of course you are these guys who are watching their families get carried off one neatly packaged cut at a time.

The site of the festival is Shinagawa Intercity, where there is a large meat processing facility. The large facility is actually composed of many small individual meat processing and packaging companies. One day each year they have a festival where you can sample their products, and purchase meat directly from them at wholesale prices.

The ministry of Meat's mobile headquarters

My Japanese is not very good, but I am pretty sure this says "Double Good BBQ - World Famous & 90% likely to not kill you." I have my lawyers looking into possible copyright infringement.

One of the dock areas. Every 2 bays is one of the individual meat companies

The loading/"sales" area of one company

Japanese beef is known for its high fat content and even marble. This piece was about 4 inches thick and cost 6000 yen ($73.50). There were some pieces of sirloin (I think) that were almost white there was so much fat. It was more like the meat marbled the fat. However, I was not allowed to take photos in that store.

Aya paying for the 2 pieces of beef we decided to get for dinner

(definitely not 2 pieces like the one above)

We bought meat here because this guy was so nice and let me take photos inside of his shop. He liked showing me the most expensive pieces of beef he had, probably thinking that I looked like someone that could eat 2 pounds of beef in a single meal.

Snack time when we got home. Just a little something to hold us over until it is time for our steaks. Some summer sausage from the festival with some cheeses, and grilled tofu topped with siracha and green onion.

Oishi!!! (Tastes good)

Whenever you bought something at the meat festival you got some tickets for prize drawings. 6 tickets give you one chance at the video slot machine to win a prize. Aya was a big winner and won a bag of rice. When she won they were ringing bells and making a big deal. I think it was the 4th best prize you could win.

I won this, which was the prize they gave to everyone simply for qualifying for the drawing. Aya tells me this was the #5 prize. Either she wanted to make me feel better, or there is a huge dip from level 4 to level 5.

So this is the tenderloin we purchased for 1200 yen ($14.70)
This year they were featuring Hitachi Wagyu (Japanese Beef) from Ibaraki. According to the information at the festival, Hitachi beef was recently honored as one of the prime beefs available in Japan.

This piece of sirloin was 2600 yen ($31.85) Expensive yes, but much cheaper than it would ever be in the store, so of course I had to try some. When in Rome...

Dinner is served

Close up of the Sirloin which was the fattiest piece. Probably missed my grill more tonight than ever, but they still turned out really good in a pan. I have to say that the sirloin tasted great, almost like it was injected with butter. But it was almost too fatty. Very rich, and a great treat, but not something I would recommend eating on a weekly basis. The tenderloin was much better balanced, enough fat to have great flavor, but veined enough to that you are not getting big accumulations of fat in one area. Both were good, and I think Aya and I have both gotten our beef fix for the indefinite future.

There was a stage for performances, and we were lucky enough to catch a Gongendaiko (Japanese traditional drummers) performance.

The style they play is unique to Ooi (port district in Shinagawa) and this group focuses on preserving the traditional music, dress, and performance.

Really entertaining. Not only was the music good, but the costumes were awesome, and the drummers were very synchronized, almost dancing while they performed.

Here is a video so you can better appreciate their performance