Beer Gardens!!

I've been bad about updating. My excuse - spending the last 2 weeks re-assimilating myself back into Japanese culture. And spending a lot of long nights saying goodbye to great well-missed friends. And then spending a lot of long nights saying hello to the newbies of Sapporo.

Anyway, here are a few crappy photos taken with my cell phone illustrating a bit of what I've been up to in the past week:







Haha, Nancy, I still don't know how to rotate the photos.

Anyways, this whole month is the Beer Garden Festival in Odori Park. Basically it's like 6 blocks of public beer drinking in the large city park where just about every single Sapporo-ite takes part of. Tents, lawn lounging, fireworks, college kids burning cigarettes on their penis =0. It's wild. So fun. This was taken at 4pm. I suppose you can't see much cuz of the poor photo quality. Things just begin at 4, so it's still quiet and "serene"...






This is towards the end of the night. It's just HUNDREDS of people sitting on the lawn drinking their asses off. SOOOO many loud drunk Japanese people - suits, college kids, families, and our lil group of foreigners. :)


It's so crowded, if you try to move, you're stepping on someone's something. And you're surely to leave the night with a spilled beer somewhere among your belongings. But it's soooo much fun.

No patroling. No cops. No security. Kids break beer steins. Kids steal said beer steins. And....the best...






The Kirin Beer Garden (each beer brand has it's own block of mayhem...there's Kirin, Suntory, Sapporo, Asahi, English beers, German beers...am I missing something?)

The Kirin Beer Garden has 5 foot 6-liter Beer towers. Which boys love to make several phalic photo references with by the end of the night. I can't say I'm not guilty in this department either. =P






This was one of the more "quiet/tame" nights we've had at the garden...with (from Left to Right) Jacob -- a bartender who gets us awesome discounts at the popular "foreigner" bar in town...Jesse....moi....Dan "Buk-Choi/Anyeon" Choi...and his visiting JET friend from Hiroshima - who hitchhiked 3 days (40 hours in numerous cars) from Hiroshima to Sapporo - freakin' wild! I'm really pushing Jesse to try this out later in the year.

Olivia and I hitchhiked from Hakkodate to Sapporo in one full easy swing - we only had to hold our thumb up in the air for less than a minute (having a really pale blond white female helps in Japan), and a nice gentleman on a business trip in a company paid car, took us the whole way (about 4-5 hours in the car?). Free ride (that cost Jesse $88 on the train). And the guy was sweet. We got to practice our Japanese.
I love hitchhiking in Japan....but only if I'm with someone else.
As Jesse has established, I'm not allowed to travel alone anymore after that little incident in Taipei that I wish to forget...


Alright well it's lunchtime..., next set of photos to come in the next post...