Japanese Festival Food: Hot Sando

It is festival time of year again. At this time of year, the main festivals you can find are cherry blossom festivals and spring festivals. In recent years, as much as there are festival stalls at these types of celebration, there are also food trucks.

Food Trucks have brought a whole new range of Japanese festival food to the table, if you'll pardon the pun! Among them, the "Hot Sando". A "Hot Sando", or "Hot Sand" when written in English, is the Japanese for a toasted sandwich. I only started seeing hot sandwiches available at festivals about seven years ago (they may be around longer), almost always at a food truck rather than a festival food stall. They typically have a handful of choices of fillings and cost around 500 or 600 yen.

The toasted sandwich at this particular food truck reminded me greatly of toasted sandwiches made in a sandwich maker! There is a novelty in that for a lot of Japanese people, because sandwich makers are not a common household item the way they are in Europe. In fact, I've never seen a sandwich maker in any home in Japan or even in an electric shop. 

Have you ever tried a toasted sandwich at a festival in Japan? What did you think of it?