Unagi Pie Factory

Yesterday, my vice principal and school nurse decided that I needed to have a "Japanese experience" and decided to take me to the local Unagi Pie Factory during lunch period. As a refresher for you, unagi is eel in Japanese. Broiled unagi as well unagi sushi are really popular in Japan and Hamamatsu has the ideal climate to raise them. Anyway, unagi pies are the popular food souvenir from Hamamatsu. They are a tasty flaky cookie and supposedly have eel in them. I was excited to go to the factory to see if the claim was actually true. Unfortunately, no unagis were in sight at the factory (and no cameras were allowed either!) However, the robots were quite spectacular! The supposed unagi powder was a white substance that looked mysteriously like flour (not that I'm being suspicious or anything :-) I did find out that Unagi Pies have garlic in them, which leads to the slogan "A snack for nights." (How garlic and nights are connected, I am not sure!) After the factory tour, we got our picture taken with giant Unagi Pies (the left is the honey and nuts version, middle is the original, and the right is brandy flavored)... ...and ate unagi "parfaits" in the connecting cafe.