Each four seasons, Japan has various foods in season. One of the major foods for fall is saury. At Meguro Saury Festival, you can eat that saury for free. This year was the 15th Meguro Saury Festival held in November 5th at a shopping district in front of JR Meguro station.

The relation between Meguro and saury originate from classic rakugo (traditional comic storytellying) “Saury of Meguro”. Here is a brief summary of the story of “Saury of Meguro).
In Edo era, a follower forgot a lunchbox for his lord when he went hawking. When they were starving, they smelled a delicious smell that the lord has never smelled. The lord asked his follower what this smell was, one of them answered, “It is the smell of cooking saury that ordinary people eat. It will not fit your taste.” The lord answered, “let me have it since we have no other choice” and made the follower go get the saury. They cooked it with charcoal fire and ate it. It was so delicious that saury has become the lord’s favorite.

And since then, the lord wanted to eat saury so when he was asked for his favorite food at an invited dinner from his relative, he ordered saury.

The relative ordered the best saury from Nihonbashi Uogashi. This saury had lot of fat on it and had many bones so they carefully removed the fat and the bones and served it for the lord. Because of all the work, the saury no longer had its shape and had become dry.
The lord asked, “where did you order this saury from?” and when he heard that it was from Nihonbashi Uogashi, he said, “that will not do. The best saury is at Meguro.”
The lord believing that the saury from Meguro, which is far away from the sea, is the best and asserting so is the joke.

Every year at Meguro Saury Festival, they serve fresh saury directly from Miyako port in Iwate prefecture, cooked with charcoal fire. This year, they had a poor catch in saury all over Japan, people doubted they could secure six thousands sauries to serve for free. However, in the end they gathered seven thousands.

Also, to go with the saury, citrus sudachi from Kmiyama-cho, Tokushima prefecture and daikon radish from Takabayashi Nasushiobara-shi, Tochigi prefecture were provided.

Sudachi advertiser came from Tokushima prefecture and distributed sudachi.

There were many people wanting to eat the free saury. The lines were so long that the media said that there were people who waited for five hours. This event will continue fro next year and on as a symbol of the fall season.