Since I was out until 2am the night before I slept until 8. We all rounded
up to head to Asahi brewery. Asahi tastes a lot like Bud Light. I am sure
that is not what they wanted to hear. We couldn't figure out what "Super
Dry"is, when we asked the QA manager at the brewery he said "Super Dry"
is "Super Dry". The brewery is spotless. It is about 70 km outside of
Tokyu and it took about 2 hours to get there. We didn't actually see
anyone working other then the tour guides. I think they built the building
specifically for tours as there were long hallways with nothing in them but
"touristy" stuff; barley to sniff, hops to sniff, a little video to watch.
Cool. The actual line was down for cleaning. They showed us a video at the
viewpoint for the line so you could get a sense of it, but I am sure it is
not the same.
Once back in Tokyo we decided to go to dinner in Tjshimana. It really is fun
to figure out what subway line to ride and which stops to get off of. Tokyu
has a very convoluted subway system with multiple lines and multiple layers.
We found the Onomayaki place that Patrick had been to before. Onomayaki is
a type of Japanese food that is cooked on a griddle on the table. It is cut
up meat and vegetables that are chopped up and 'grilled' and then made
into a pancake. The first one the waiter graciously made for us, the second
one we made (poorly but still tasty). The desert was excellent! It was a
think crepe like pancake with either sweetened bean paste or apricots. Very
tasty! There were 9 of us that went that night. They couldn't seat us all
together so we split up. We were the only westerners in the restaurant,
really the only westerners on the street. The four boys (Corey, Jason, Jim
& Mehmet) sat together. They just happened to have 7 girls sitting next to
them. One of the ladies spoke English so she helped them order. Afterwards
she came over and helped us order. At one point the 4 guys broke out the
phrase book and the Japanese girls start looking in the "romance" section.
We heard something about "I'm hot" and just cracked up laughing. After
dinner we ran into Jeff, Kelly, Mo & Siska.
Corey started asking if the Japanese girls knew of UPS and showed them his
UPS ID. They didn't, so he asked about DHL, still didn't know it. When he
asked about Fedex they knew it. They showed the girls Jim's Columbia id,
they new of that and they knew of Intel. He came over and asked if we had
anything with our work logo on it. I handed him my Nike badge. When he
showed that to them they erupted in giggles and applause. I them gave them
my business cards which they then proceeded to enter in to their cell
phones. I am expecting a call from a non-English speaking Japanese on my
office phone any moment. The girl who spoke English very happily said that
she had 4 pairs of Nikes, clothes and a bag. Yachin got up and went over to
ask what they thought of Nike and whether they like to buy it. They
enthusiastically said that they did.
We ended up buying the wrong subway tickets so the Subway conductor sent us
a different direction back to the hotel. We successfully made it around
10pm. Can I just say, Skype is awesome! I called Kevin and afterwards
promptly fell asleep.
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