The Yebisu Museum

I just arrived in Nagoya and I'm now writing on Alex's computer, the same one he uses to write his blog. If I told you I was sober right now, I would be an うそつき, or liar. That's thanks to a successful day at the Yebisu Museum in Ebisu, Tokyo. If you're looking for something to do in Tokyo, I highly recommend this museum. Yui, Chris, and I left Yui's house around 1:00 and wisely decided to buy my ticket to Nagoya first, while we were still sober enough to do so. Then it was off to the Yebisu museum. The museum consists of a large central room with a tour going from the left-hand side and a tasting room on the right. First-timers are encouraged to take the tour, while repeat visitors can head straight to the prize on the right. The museum itself is free, and tasting costs about 200 yen for a 350ml draft beer. But we'll discuss that in more depth later. The tour was kind of fun, but all in Japanese, so somewhat difficult to understand. They had some neat old-fashioned brewing machines as well as some attractive glasswear and computer quizzes on beer knowledge. Here are some pictures I took from the tour:





But really, the tour pales in comparison to the tasting room. It's 200 yean for Yebisu Black (the best ever) and regular Yebisu (also awesome) and 250 yen for Weiss, which is actually really good and I think only sold in the museum. You can get some other Sapporo products and Guinness too for more money, but don't. The Black is where it's at. I had nine beers total, 5 Yebisu Black, 3 Regular, and 1 Weiss. It was delicious. With each beer you also get some complimentary beer snacks, which are pretty tasty. We spent a couple hours drinking, talking, and playing Nagano Snatch, and it was great fun. I don't have any pictures of this, but I'll show you some great shots I took while enjoying the black for the first time yesterday. Just imagine these pictures times 5.





Finally it was time to leave, and we headed to Tokyo station to catch my shinkansen. We got to the station in time to drunkenly devour some tasty curry, then it was time to say goodbye. I had a great time with Yui and Chris, and I can't wait to hang out with them back in the Minnie-Min. I rode the Shinkansen drunk, and it was sort of difficult because I was paranoid about missing my stop. So I read some Dostoevsky and The Cat Who Lived a Million Times again. I arrived in Nagoya safely, and now I'm ready ready for bed.

Children's Books and Beautiful Black Beer

Let me start things off with this video.



This is one of the funniest South Park clips ever. For those of you unable to translate the Japanese, it goes something like this:

A wonderful penis thing
The testicles have hair
Is that sound a baby monkey?
No, it's Ninjas!

Hey, Hey, Let's go, there's a fight
The important thing is to protect my balls
I'm a badass, So let's fighting
Let's fighting love

That being said, I have discovered my favorite beer and my favorite children's book. Both today. First was the children's book,
hyaku-man kai ikita neko, or The Cat Who Lived a Million Times. It's about a cat that has a million different lives with all kinds of people who love it very much, but it always hates the people. Then it becomes a stray cat for one of its lives and loves it because it gets to focus on itself all the time. This cat then becomes really popular with all the other cats because of all the stuff he's learned in his million lives, so he starts to get really full of himself. Except there's this one beautiful white cat that never even notices him. He keeps going up to her saying things like "i've lived a million times i can do all sorts of tricks" and she just says "that's true." Finally, the cat realizes he's not gonna impress this other cat with his previous lives, so he just humbles himself and asks if he can sit with her, and she says yeah. So then they get married and have a bunch of kids and eventually all the kids leave home and the two cats get old. Then the white cat dies, and the cat who lived a million times cries a million times for days on end, and dies and doesn't come back to life. It's an awesome story, and I could actually read and understand it in Japanese with just a little help from Yui. I highly recommend children's books, especially this one, for practicing reading Japanese. I bought it at Village Vanguard, which is basically a spencer's gifts of Japan, with tons of really weird stuff. It was such an awesome purchase, i think I'll read it again tonight.



From Village Vanguard we headed to a small bar named Harmonica, Chris knew which served Yebisu (king of Japanese beers) on tap. We were expecting just regular Yebisu, but we discovered they had Yebisu Black (like Guiness) on tap. We each ordered a glass at what we thought was an overpriced 530 yen. Oh how wrong we were. It was the most delicious beer I've ever had and we took some great pictures of ourselves enjoying it, which I will hopefully put up tomorrow. We happily ordered a second glass of the dark ambrosia then took the train home. While walking home from the station we stopped at the konbini and bought yet another Yebisu Kuro (black), and discovered it was almost as delicious from a can as it was from the tap. I'm going through some anxiety over this because I know it will be nearly impossible to get this beer in the states. If anyone knows where you can get Yebisu in the states or online, please please please let me know. It's just too delicious.

We ended the day drinking beers and eating snacks (I recommend Cratz) in the park. Tomorrow we're going to go to the Yebisu museum, which happens to have a tasting room. Hell Yes. I'll see you tomorrow if I'm sober enough to remember.