Adventures in Japan

Day As Old As I Am: Holy Cow! The Last City! Our Journey Nears Its End! Sapporo! They Make Beer!

We got up nice and early this morning so that we could catch the first train to Sapporo. We didn't reserve seats, so we wanted to make sure we got some. We did. With plenty of time to spare. I used that spare time to go and get some pictures of the fish market, seeing as it's right next to the station.


It wasn't as photogenic as in previous days. Not as many giant crabs twitching on scales.


If only I had managed to drag my butt out of bed a couple hours earlier, I would have at least got some shots by the light of dawn. That is some nice light, that.

We nodded right off, once the train started moving. We nodded off in a sparsely populated train carriage and awoke near Sapporo in a quite crowded one. Popular place Sapporo, I guess. Fifth largest city in Japan, so they say.

Our hotel is just across the street from the station, so that is handy as all get out. My foot likes handy. Heck, everything from the knee down. The pain is spreading. That can't be good.

But foot pain or no, there's a city to explore.


A couple of our guide books mentioned that the botanical gardens in town are worth a visit. We disagree. It was boring, poorly laid out and not informative.

The Sapporo beer museum was the exact opposite. And I'm not saying that just because of the cheap beer. One of the cute girls at the front desk could not wait to help us out in English. None of the informative signs were in English, but there were so many pictures, and it all flowed so well...

And they had the cutest set of dioramas dramatizing the beer creating process.


It all starts, as most everything does, with a wise old man in the clouds.

He provides the people below with the malt and the hops and, most importantly, the scientific know how to combine it all together.


The people harvest their crops and grind them down and combine it with fresh pure water.


And an angel sprinkles in some magic powder.

The beer is ready to be shipped.

Sexy beer party!
People with Elephantiasis not allowed!


After the cute beer creation models, there awaits a circular pathway down to the next floor. It is circular because it encircles a great big... device of some sort used in the process of the making of the beer.


Then you walk through the hall of stuff.

The hall of stuff includes such things as: beer action figures, posters, coasters, bric a brac.


And a collection of different sized beer cans.


There is some stuff after all that, but the next things of note are the gift shop and the tasting area. All kinds of crazy beer related snacks in the gift shop.

The tasting section is not just for the tasting of beer. They also have gelato.


This is the gelato I ordered. The light colored gelato is dark beer flavoured. The orange stuff is soup curry flavoured gelato. They were both tasty, but the curry gelato was tastier. Loved the cinamon-y aftertaste.

After the tasting we just wandered from one converted red brick warehouse to another. Lots of souvenirs were looked at. Lots of walking was done.

This is our hotel. We watched some TV in our hotel room. We watched people watch a video about a sad little monkey. I am really going to miss the television in this country.


After that we stepped out to catch the new Indy Jones movie. My quick review: an enthusiastic meh.