Beer, Pachinko and Nuts

On the weekend Shawn and I had a "tourist" day. We finally made it to the famed Sapporo Beer museum (click here to link to the website). It was small but interesting. The history of the company would have probably been more interesting had there been english on any of the signs. The factory itself dates back to the late 1800's and Sapporo beer has definately been a big part of modern Japan and Hokkaido in particular. Here are a couple of shots from the museum. The second one is the museum display that describes the steps in beer making - it looks more like a cute Christmas display - very Japanese.



After that we walked past Odori park and checked out the military's progress in preparing for the snow festival that will take place in a couple of weeks. Click here to see a link to that website. It looks like it will be quite a show and we are looking forward to seeing it - stay tuned for a future blog that with more once we check it out.

Our next stop on the tourist day trip was to see what pachinko is all about. Neither of us are really interested in gambling or slot machines, but Japan treats this game like a cultural icon. My language textbook even has it listed on the Japanese cultural passtimes alongside sumo and flower arranging, weird. And these places are always busy so we felt inclined to finally go in and check them out.

Pachinko parlors are noisy, really, really noisy. And pretty smoky, although there are non-smoking areas the whole place is open so you can't escape the smoke. We watched over a few people's shoulders to try to figure it out, then sat down at a machine and tried to start. One of the attendants finally came over and helped us get going. The game is basically pinball on speed. You pay money into the machine and get a pile of tiny metal balls then you use a dial to adjust the pressure that the balls are shot into the machine at. The balls are shot into the machine rapid-fire and you go through money pretty quickly. There is one "goal" or place that the ball goes into for you to "win". It is all pretty random and we certainly didn't do very well, but it was interesting to try.

Here are a couple of photos from the parlor that I managed to snap before being told that photography isn't allowed inside these places (probably related to the fact that gambling is illegal in Japan - they get around the definition of gambling with Pachinko by somehow paying out with "prizes" instead of money...).






We finished off the day at a downtown pub owned by an Australian guy. The pub was small and packed with foreigners (click here for a link to the pub's website). There was a big sumo match on the tv so we had a pint ate an amazingly good burger and fries and watched the match. The area of town that this pub is in (tanuki koji) is a popular tourist destination where bus tours release their clients to purchase cheap trinkets and souveniers. One theme in this area is statues and images of small mammals with oversized genitalia - it has something to do with luck. So here is one last image that I will share to extend some good fortune to you all!