Not Enough Cheese: Fun Times In The Snow

Sapporo is perhaps most famous for its beer. In Japan, “beer” basically means lager. It can be quite difficult to get hold of any other types of beers such as ales and stouts. Personally, I don’t really like lager all that much as I find it a bit fizzy and tasteless but Japanese lagers tend to be better than the norm. There are 4 major beer companies here that compete ruthlessly for the huge Japanese beer market. Sapporo Beer is one of these companies and has its farms and factories spread across Hokkaido. We decided to give the Sapporo Beer Museum a try.

I’d never visited a “Beer Factory” or “Beer Museum” before. I always thought it was one of those crap touristy things that you only do on a stag weekend. But it turned out to be surprisingly interesting. The display was pleasingly short and kept things simple. We learnt how beer is made and read about the history of the Sapporo company. There were lots of old bottle designs on display. I really liked the styles of packaging from 1900-1930, which reminded me of the Museum of Things in Berlin. They also had a section where you could view their adverts in chronological order from 1890 up to the present day. It was interesting to see how the style had evolved over time from an elegant woman just sitting on a chair, to women downing pints and later on to male celebrities gurning for the camera. I was slightly surprised that they used so many images of female drinkers when the campaigns must have been targeted primarily at men. I think I need Don Draper to sit me down and talk me through it.

Toy models showing how beer is made!

A history of Sapporo advertising.

They proudly displayed the chair that the Emperor once sat in. We like to think they secretly take it out of the case at night.

In the final room, you could taste the various lagers which was fun but hey, they're all pretty similar tasting. Nonetheless, it was a relaxing rest-spot and they had people who came round and offered to take your photos, as well as giving away complimentary snacks. Bearing in mind that the only thing you paid for at the museum was the beer, this all felt like great value.

In the evening, we followed the advice of just about everyone, and headed for the nearby city of Otaru. What we found there was perhaps the most special evening of our time in Japan so far. Otaru has its own snow festival which is run by volunteers from the local community. It is mostly based around small snow sculptures lit with candles and lanterns. Much of it takes place alongside a pretty canal, where the lanterns float on the water at night and everyone acts couple-y. We made some good friends on the train and ploughed through the snow together. Minus eight degrees? Pah.

Pretty warehouses by the canal.

At this point, the snow started to come down at an alarming rate and the great north wind began blowing it sideways into our faces. It became difficult to walk and we threw ourselves desperately into the nearest bar, plonked ourselves down and ordered lots of hot wine and camembert. Now basically, as long as you have hot wine and camembert, you can survive absolutely any weather phenomenon. Restored, we walked up a massive snow hill, went on a tyre slide, took photos in a heart-shaped tunnel of love, ate bits of grilled potato given out free by locals, climbed up more hills and threw snowballs. Meanwhile, the blizzard continued and whilst it was fun, we decided to head for the station and home.

Icicles!

We didn’t realize it when we booked the trip, but Otaru was what we had come to the snow festival for. It had been fun to look around the Sapporo site the previous day, but there was an overarching tackiness about it all, not to mention that everything took place next to the main roads with huge crowds (this isn’t to say that those sights weren’t amazing, just that they didn’t really meet my expectations). Otaru felt much more intimate and romantic. It also felt like a lot more love and care had gone into the snow designs dotted around the place.

The evening was capped with a bowl of corn butter ramen. We found the restaurant on “Ramen Alley”, a passageway containing tens of stand up ramen counters, all of which were appetizing. Corn butter basically means sweetcorn and butter are added to the broth on top of the normal ingredients. The butter added a richness to the flavour which helped to make up for the dripping ceiling from which drops of moisture fell relentlessly into our food.

I was really happy to have a day that exceeded my (extremely high) expectations of Hokkaido. I know that this kind of evening is why we threw our lives up in the air to come here and why it was so worth it.

I said there’d be three parts to this. In fact there will be four. I hope this series isn’t boring-I sometimes hate blogs that just describe one event after another (“And then this happened. And I was sad. And then this happened. And I was happy…”). But I hope there is stuff of interest here inbetween the waffle. Also, sorry the photos are a bit blurry-turns out the iphone camera isn't that good after all.