On Saturday, we went to the Kirin Beer Village. It’s the Yokohama brewery for the Kirin brand of beer. The tour was kind of interesting considering the fact that I couldn’t understand a word the tour guide said, but knowing enough about the process I could figure out the rest from the pictures and sites. We got to taste the mash water before the yeast is applied to turn it into beer and it tastes like Wheatabix, it was kind of appetizing. At the end of the tour we got 2 free glasses of beer, Kim gave me her second so I got to try all three types of beer at the brewery and had a good buzz going for a bit. We met up with the rest of the family for dinner in the giant mall at Yokohama station and I ended up having Katsu-nabe. Its breaded pork served with all the breading stuff, so the eggs and onions and stuff are all still in the cooking pot thingy, it was great. After we got back, we went to Misty, its this hole in the wall bar that doesn’t card. It was Kim, Dexter (her brother), myself, and Chrissy (Dexter’s girlfriend). We sat around talking, I taught them euchre, and enjoyed different cocktails. It was a very pleasant bar, no crowd, very chill, nice atmosphere…
Yesterday, we traveled to the Meiji shrine and Harajuku. Harajuku is known for the street performers and such. Outside the shrine on a bridge there are often lines of people in weird outfits just hanging out, but because it’s so hot these days, there were only a few. We went and had lunch at the shrine, I had beef curry rice, it was fantastic. Then we saw the shrine. It’s a large monument constructed in memory of the Meiji emperor and his wife. Its a largely pagan shrine meant to honor nature. It was quite beautiful. We got to see a Japanese wedding take place, the groom was a Caucasian so I could identify with him a bit. I wouldn’t want to have a wedding in such a public place =. Afterward, we walked along the side street of Harajuku and saw the street performers. There were a lot of Japanese bands playing, there one was in particular that I found funny which seemed to emulate the Ramones almost too much. There are pictures in the gallery of these bands. We walked around Harajuku some and then went and saw the Shibuya intersection, its a major shopping area where the street overflows with people when the signal goes on, there are a few shots of this intersection too.
We were supposed to climb Fuji today, but the weather report says that it is almost guaranteed to rain, and I would rather climb the mountain on a nice day, so we are delaying until Thursday night. Hopefully mother nature smiles down upon me.