Obon Festival

TT, Piedmont Hills, D12E

The Obon Festival was one of the actually FUN events that Jackie and I were able to host during the summer and hopefully, it won't be the last of the fun events to come! On the morning of the event, I arrived early so that I could find out where the sign-in area was and where our work was going to be. I ended up having a few minutes spare after talking to the event organizer so I decided to look around for a bit and check out the other places that they had and the event was so much larger than I expected. There were different areas across the street as well as a band playing music in the center and a large Buddhist church for people to pray in as well. However, once everyone arrived I went back to the event organizer with them and we started working. Maria and Lily were sent to go make the sauces for the tempura while Chao-Chi and I helped put the assortments of vegetable tempuras onto the plates to serve to the customers. This worked in a very organized fashion with each plate being passed down a line like at a Chipotle where it began with Chao-Chi's potato tempura, then my zucchini tempura, then farther down the line till the plate was completely stacked with vegetables. Our pace increased as more and more customers began to line up for the tempura and soon I barely had time to stop and drink water as Chao-Chi kept sliding down plate after plate giving me no time to rest. However, I found my chance to take a break when we ran out of deep-fried zucchini which meant that we wouldn't be able to work till we got more. After the first time we ran out, it began happening again and again which gradually slowed down our pace for the rest of our shift and soon the work became kind of relaxing as I watched the people deep frying the vegetables as I waited for my next batch of zucchini to arrive.