Big Japan Trip Take Two: "How can they make beer out of grape juice? That's just wine."

Sapporo: It has beer.

We spent our day half-soggy, as it started raining at about 12pm and lasted until about 7pm. There may have been a lull while we were inside the beer museum, but it's debateable.

We had a clear plan: Go to the Botanic Garden, Visit the Old Government building, See the Clocktower, Go to the Beer Museum, Eat Ramen.

Well, as with most of our plans, it was sketchy and we reordered as required or found that our plan was unattainable.

We went to the Botanic Garden! 

That was easy enough and thoroughly pleasant, though with its faults.  First, there was the inane ticketing system. There was a man in the booth, who directed us to the ticket purchase machine (a vending machine, basically). We bought the tickets, which were little card slips. Then we went back to the man in the booth, who indicated we place the ticket into the box in front of him. That was it. No hole-punching, no turnstyle... If he wasn't there, people could just walked in. I mean, the thing is not as well funded as Cambridge's, the greenhouse made that obvious - lovely though the whole garden is! - but what is the point in that man's job?!?!   He is living proof that we are only being semi-replaced by robots in our jobs. He doesn't have to interact with customers and he is still being paid. The cynical, capitalist-raised side of me thinks, "god, what a waste of a wage. They could easily stick a barrier that requires the ticket to get through, same as the train station."  

Gorgeous waterlily

The garden had multiple sections, all clearly demarked and sign posted (though we later found the sign posts are less than accurate). There was the marsh area, the ethnobotanical area, the Alpine Rock garden (Granddad had most of those), the Canadian Rock Garden, the Rose Garden, The Lilac Garden - hey, we missed that one :( - the Shrub Garden, the Herbacious garden, the Greenhouse, The Aboretum (tree garden if you don't know that word, it was all elms) and I'm sure I missed one just now. You get the idea. Big, windy, well spaced, pretty, loads of insects. We saw honeybees, which are bigger than our honeybees, lots of dragonflies, some brimstone-style butterflies and some whites and what I think was of the fritilliery group (google says yes). Also a lot of mosquitos.  👎

There were some truly beautiful waterlilies - one set reminded me of Tove Jansson's illustrations of waterlilies in the Moomin books. They were stunning colours. I took great pleasure photographing them. UNFORTUNATELY some numpty forgot to label them with what they were. I swear, they were the only plant without a name.

It was nice walking around and we saw a lot of amusing typos and spelling errors, as well as being able to enjoy the quiet together. We also saw a small family - parents and their daughter, who was about 5. She had a massive DSLR camera, the size of her head with a decent lens attached and she was taking photos of her mother. At one point, mum is posing on a bridge and the daughter is standing there, camera to face, shouting directions and instructions for where mum is meant to look (wistfully over the water, apparently) Dad and I found this hysterical. So cute.

There were also two mini museums in the gardens - one a memorial hall to the creator of the garden and the other a sort of anthropological folk musuem, with artifacts of the indigenous people of the island. "The Asians of the North."  It's amazing how even though their paths are unlikely to have crossed, the things we saw there were almost interchangeable with the sorts of things you'd see in a museum about indigenous peoples of Canada or Alaska. The main difference was in clothing style. There was an impressive coat made out of tree bark, barely destinguishable from the cotton version. Simply amazing. 

Photos from the Botanic Garden:

We went to the Old Government Building

I think I mentioned in the previous entries that Sapporo is a fairly new town, with the surrounding culture heavily influenced by its trading partners - that is, Western influences.

Well, I got to go into an American governmental building without even visiting the States. It was uncanny. There were some parts where I thought I was on set for a film I've seen. It was really interesting, just for that! The way that they dressed from the 1800s and the photos of past Kaitakushi leaders indicated that they mimicked the way the leaders of the West would dress. One from looked a lot like one of the King Edwards and another looked like Stalin (as did many people at the time), despite their having their own distinct way of dressing, still. 

There is a section of the building that dedicates itself to explaining the Hokkaido way of life, before it was changed so dramatically by Western influences, though it does so poorly. It seems to me that a lot of the changes (particularly winter dress) came about through necessity.

Where the photos suddenly shrink in size and quality, it's cause it was raining so hard I chose to use my phone instead of getting expensive camera wet.

Photos from the Government Building:

We finally found the Clock Tower!

It had become a bit of a joke, because whenever I saw a clock (there happen to be a lot in Sapporo, all varying heights and tower-like) I'd say, "there's the clock tower". To the point where Hubbo got confused later on about whether or not we'd actually seen it.

We did not see it. We found it, yes! However it's under renovation, so it's completely covered by building stuff and unviewable from the street. Failure~  It seemed somewhat typical that we would find something we'd somehow missed every time we walked in that area and it wasn't available when we finally got there.

We got Ramen!

I mentioned there were rumours of a Ramen street. We spent ages walking through the rain, following google maps and unable to find it... then boom! A teeny tiny passageway between two buildings was lined with the tell-tale lanterns and cloth doorways.  We ordered our ramen and it was all made completely fresh on site - a lot of places just make the broths up that day and are super salty, to keep it going all day... this was not as salty and tasted gorgeous. I had roast pork with noodles in a miso soup - the chef had sprinked ground ginger or something over mine and the ginger was honestly perfectly harmonising with the miso. Hubbo enjoyed his, he went for a fish broth-based one. It was super yummy.

We went to the Sapporo Beer Museum!

It took us a while - there were many routes to take: on foot, by train then on foot, by train then on foot (less distance) or by loop bus. We tried to get the bus, but couldn't work out where it collected from. So we got the train and then walked the rest of the way, about 15 minutes.

The building was pretty easy to spot from a distance - its 15.5m red-brick chimney with the star icon on the top was a bit of a give away. It really is a gorgeous building, a fine piece of 19th Century brickwork. According to the video in the "mini theatre", it was built using the English Bond, (where they have a row of stretchers above a row of headers) which is "seen as a rational, sound way to lay bricks".  I love how passive the sentence came out in translation, as though they've not seen the rationality and structurally soundness for themselves, just heard it on the grapevine.

There were several men involved in the beer brewing history of Sapporo beer, with the Kaitakushi being instrumental in building up the industry. One of the main figures was educated in England and learned about breweries and what have you there, and the other was taught how to brew beer in Germany (which explains the flavours, if you ask me).   The city of Sapporo was pretty much built around the beer industry. The brewery building itself started life as a sugar factory, and was converted in the 1800s. Then after only 60 years it was reconverted into the museum. Before the sugar factory was recommissioned, the beer company began its life in Tokyo, but there wasn't enough access to ice and snow, which Hokkaido has plenty of!

They had plenty of displays, showing how the brand has evolved over time - bottle label designs and advertisement posters. To start with, pretty much only pretty women holding a beer. It isn't till later that men started to be included, displaying a bit more diversity in appearance and dress, too.

We also got a bag of "nuts"!

Entry to the museum is free, and there is a free self-tour with notes available in English, Chinese and Korean. There is a premium tour, complete with a beer tasting at the end, however it cost a fair bit and it was all in Japanese. As it happened, we got more beer this way, because it was only 600yen for three taster glasses, compared to the price of the tour where you only got two. Though apparently one of the tasters was a dark ale that Hubbo really wanted to try. BUT WE GOT CHEESE, so let me ask you this: Who are the real winners here?  [Answer: we are, we got cheese]

Personally, I liked the Kaitakuchi beer best, followed by the classic and I liked the Dark Label least. For Hubbo, it was the other way around. He has always liked stronger flavours, though my friends and I suspect it's cause I have more tastebuds per square cm on my tongue, so I can taste more full stop. #sophisticatedpalate

I didn't much care for the aftertaste of the last one and the classic had an edge to its aftertaste that was reminiscent. I'm not a beer-y person, anyway. I'd much rather bright, fruity drinks that may or may not come with a mini umbrella.

Photos:

How today's blog got its title

We decided to retreat to the hostel, as our phones were out of juice and we're beginning to run low on cash for the last few days and want to be able to buy some things.  We ordered a pizza between us (it was ok - the dough was gooey and soft) and Hubbo ordered one of This Month's beers, which was a grape flavoured ale. It tasted like a flavoured up Shloer. Which prompted Hubbo to explain why he'd chosen this one over the brown ale - because he wanted to see "how they can make beer out of grape juice, that's just wine."