Matt Does Japan

What better way to start a morning in Sapporo, Japan, than with a visit to the Sapporo Beer Museum and a glass of beer?

Vitamin Beer.

The evolution of Sapporo cans, 1960s and 1970s. Yes, that is a 1-liter can of beer.

The 1972 Winter Olympics were in Sapporo. They had special beer for that.

“No, Your Honor, we do not market our beer to minors.” This is a marketing poster for Sapporo Beer from 1920. There is no way those girls are 18-years-old, but maybe the legal drinking age was lower then.

Ten years later (1930).

1967.

… and pull back for a montage.

The upstairs bar at the end of the tour, which was closed because there was almost no one else there. I arrived at the museum 4 minutes before they opened. Thankfully, the downstairs bar was open.

A poster seen on the way downstairs. Guiness; Good For You (1965). I’m not arguing.

Like a lot of public places in Japan, you have to buy a ticket to purchase food or drink. This isn’t done to invoke any kind of cool factor. Rather, this allows the servers to avoid direct cash and coin transactions, which are unsanitary. 200 JPY for a pint of Sapporo Black Label. Beer Crackers are complimentary.

The seating area.

More pictures outside the museum.

There is an indoor shopping mall within walking distance from the museum. The professional baseball team in Sapporo is the Hokkaido Nippon-ham Fighters.

A few of the stores in that mall had some interesting names. Sapporo is a relatively young city as far as Japan goes, and I believe that the demographics are heavier among children and 20-somethings than in cities like Kyoto.

Maruzen is a good book store. I got two of my Murakami novels (English translations) there.

They had a cooking school there, too. Lots of new housewives, I guess. Yes, I’m a sexist pig.

I took the bus back from the beer museum and mall and went to yet another mall called “Sapporo Factory.” The name comes from the fact that the site used to be the location of the original Sapporo Beer factory, which was sold and relocated to someplace where the real estate wasn’t so expensive. So now it’s a mall.

When I walked into the mall for lunch, it was snowing large flakes very slowly. By the time I walked out, it was coming down like… down. The snow doesn’t stay frozen on the pavement because it is heated from below. Heated sidewalks were common throughout Sapporo wherever the property was under private jurisdiction, such as the JR station’s outdoor plaza, the outdoor areas around the Sapporo Factory mall, and certain office building plazas. Public sidewalks were not usually heated, and they had between 1 and 2 feet of hard-packed snow in most places.

The Japanese-style toilet, reprise.

An un-heated sidewalk. This is what an average Sapporo city street looked like in winter.

A Mini. I would have loved to see just one Mini with a red rising sun on the roof instead of the traditional Union Jack.

The Sapporo TV Tower during the day. Digital cameras, calibrate your datestamps! Check!

One of the things I was looking forward to on my visit to Sapporo was the annual Snow Festival, or Yuki Matsuri. On January 30, they were still working on the various sculptures in Odori Koen, the main site for the festival. The Japan Self Defense Force assists with moving the massive blocks of ice and snow.

It was cold, but not extremely so.

The Japanese love golf. This maxim should never be qualified, mitigated, or questioned.

The bedroom at the hostel.

Pictures from my dinner excursion.

“Be Black Tanning Studio.” Guys, I do not write this stuff; send your hate mail to someone else.

A dinner with a view.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 7:34 am and is filed under Sapporo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.