Sapporo Beer Garden

Every year, the city of Sapporo allows the big beer manufacturers from around Japan to take over an entire square city block of downtown, 1 square block for each major label, and lets them run a beer garden there for 3 straight weeks. The scale of it is massive and the number of completely obliterated people is shocking. Despite the frequency of stumbling blind drunks in the crowd, the atmosphere is relatively tame.

Each beer label has hundreds of tables, all packed with people, and they all serve beer by the glass, jug or 10 L mini-keg. Here are a couple of examples.




As if serving beer in amounts like that isn't enough, these beer gardens also have beer chugging contests organized by the beer companies (hey Japan, the 1980's frat party called - they want their party games back). All of this was very entertaining and leads to masses of really drunk people pouring themselves into taxis at the end of the night (and probably lots of unhappy cab drivers washing out the taxis the next morning).


And the men's toilets are "interesting". Our friend pointed out that the foreigner on the left seems to need far less attention on what he is doing in there.


We visited our favorite brand last night with some friends to enjoy one of the only sunny summer afternoons we have had so far this summer. Otaru Beer is our first choice, it is a local micro-brew that follows the German purity law. They make great beer and always have a couple of strong dark beers on tap. Because they offer stronger beers, the Japanese people tend to prefer the lighter Japanese-style pilsner on offer elsewhere so the Otaru garden fills up with lots of foreigners.

We made friends with a family at the table next to us and the father of the family thought Shawn was so funny that he bought him a couple of rounds (of 1 litre glasses!!). Pops didn't speak any english, and from the Japanese we can understand, all we know that he said to us was "we are friends, you are funny".


It was a good time and a nice send off for us. We are on our way to Malaysia today to meet up with the Gorging Dragons. The team is competing in the world championships of dragon boating this coming weekend. We are going to show our support and visit with old friends. Shawn will even get a chance to race since he was irreplacable (me.... not so much). I have put a link on this site to the Gorging Dragons blog where they will update their progress. Check in to see how things are going.