Pissup in a brewery

It's been a very boozy few days which I hope excuses my tardiness and the even-more-laboured-than-usual tone today. Work finished up on Friday and as I keep reminding people with relish, that kicked off a 16 day break that we've now eaten, drank and spent our way through the first 3 days of. We started at the cinema on Friday and ended up at a karaoke bar on Monday night so now it's just a matter of working out what happened in between. A typhoon is rattling the window panes at the moment so it seems as good a moment as any to sit down with a cup of coffee and untangle everything.

I was expecting the last of the term to put up more than a fight than it did; generally week 10 slows to glacial speeds before eventually giving up its treasures. In this case however it was suddenly 3 o'clock on Friday and I had finished everything I set out to do that week. I met Lisa for the first of many celebratory beers and we sat out on the street in Sannomiya watching the (seemingly beer envy-riddled) world go by. We grabbed some dinner at a table for 2 and by the time we left the restaurant, 5 of us were squished into a table for 4. We grabbed more booze to smuggle in, hastily made up a Harry Potter drinking game and enjoyed that more than the movie itself.

On Saturday we were due for a dinner party and had to bring dessert, which we decided should be even more ambitious than last time. Pavlova it was, the old fashioned way; I separated the eggs, grabbed my whisk and one rotator cuff later, a surprisingly fluffy meringue was slid into the oven. For some reason it came out slightly coffee coloured, but it was perfectly cooked and we headed to Akashi feeling awfully proud of ourselves. On the way, we sourced the only packet of strawberries in the country and to my dismay, found that only whipping cream was available - I felt like the winner of a marathon who had just been told to turn around and run back. Lisa relieved me of whipping duties after a few brave but completely ineffectual attempts and we ended up with a perfect pavlova. It was a nice way to end the meal but probably not the best bit - every time we go there we can expect to be spoiled rotten with cheese fondue, endless wine and French bread. I even got given birthday presents this time despite my protests.

She took some convincing

Sunday was an unusually sober affair and we ended up being very productive, which I'm sure is just a coincidence. We made up for it yesterday heading out on a tour of the Asahi Brewery, which I remember being advertised as "something something free beer". It was bleak and drizzly when we got to Nishinomiya but fortunately the brewery isn't far from the station - we arrived in a few minutes to a bright foyer full of smiling Asahi people and a conspicuous gift shop. Once the tour started we were herded into a theatre room and shown an introductory video featuring lots of rushing mountain water, trees and people in Asahi helmets nodding sagely at beakers of beer. The tour portion was far more interesting, showing how the beer is made and the astonishing quantities it's made in - the cans on the production line are filled, sealed and packed so quickly that it's just a blur. A big sign on the wall disinterestedly counts the number of cartons produced so far that day and it goes up by 1 a second at least.

We love you Asahi Beer (tm)!

The last bit is a 20 minute "tasting" where you plop yourself at a table in a breezy cafeteria area and have up to 3 surprisingly large glasses of free beer. At first I couldn't understand why they were doing this until I realised the cafeteria opened out on to the gift shop, where everything seemed much more reasonably priced than when I walked in. On beer number 2 the lady wheeled around an Asahi beer cooler that basically turns a case of beer into a refrigerated keg - buy two cartons and it's yours for free. This seemed like an even better idea after beer number 3, but I shook off the temptation and settled on a brewery glass instead. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking our way around Nishinomiya and eating huge amounts of beer snacks, some of which weren't as nice as the others. I lost a game of rock paper scissors to Eric so I had to join Adam in eating the "snail things" - a big snotty finger pulled out of a conch shell with dangly bits at the bottom that looked like kidneys. It tasted as bad as it looked and after a few chews I had to give up and spit it back in the bowl - I was washing the sand and yuck out of my mouth for hours. We stopped for "the best wings in Japan" at a little bar near Koshien Stadium and then half of us ended up in a karaoke bar singing our hearts out. And so what was supposed to be a short afternoon trip ballooned into an all-evening extravaganza - we didn't get home until past 10.

I imagine it's going to be a virtuous few days now to make up for all this, then there'll be more silliness as of Saturday for our trip to Taipei - if that's as fun as the weekend then I think we can consider this an amazing break. We'll be overseas until the Thursday so there'll be no post next week, but rest assured that early August will be a veritable buffet of woolly prose and stupid photo captions. At least 1 person is going to enjoy that.