For those who don’t know, San Jose has a Japantown neighborhood.  This neighborhood has many delicious restaurants of all types, and this past Saturday it hosted the Spirit of Japantown festival.  This festival won points with us right away by its lack of entry fee.  They closed off the streets of the neighborhood and set up tents full of food, drinks, Japanese products and social groups.  Other points made by the festival were for the ample beverage tents, lack of lines, and the import tuner car show (with the required pin-up girls on location).  But, this being a food blog, we were disappointed by the minimal amount of food tents.  Granted, the restaurants and storefronts were open to offer up shaved ice and other ice cream type treats to all of the melting participants out on a 95 degree day, but i can go to restaurants any day of the week.  There were delicious pot stickers, an interesting spamshimi, and wheat noodle udon that we failed to try because we assumed there would be more food.  In conclusion, we recommend more food to make this festival rise to the level of deliciousness that was the Eat Real fest.

http://www.spiritofjapantownfestival.com/

Zach: I’ll keep this one short.  Not enough food but the food there was good. I would love to try some Japanese items that I wouldn’t normally get a chance to eat.  Short lines which I love. Not over crowded and nice to visit the area.  Still way better than the Gilroy Garlic Festival!