Ichonoseki was the next stop on my quest for Japanese craft breweries. It was about 80km from my current position, Morioka, and I had figured I could reach it by early afternoon if I tried. Today there was a deadline I had to beat. It was Saturday and if I didn’t arrive in time the brewery would be closed Sunday and my chance to try it’s tasty beer and talk to it’s brew master would be gone.
Mr. Terui left early in the morning for Tokyo which left me and Mrs. Terui to enjoy a semi-lazy breakfast of eggs, toast, homemade jam and Godiva coffee. Mrs. Terui had spent 6 years in Germany and done a bit of traveling when she was younger so we had plenty to talk about. I really wish I would have met Mrs. Terui earlier so I could have introduced her to my parents who are German. I’m sure they would have liked each and have whiled away an afternoon enjoying coffee and kauchen (German for cake).
I made it to Ichinoseki with plenty of time to spare and two new friends, Shunji and Rie, in tow. Mr. Niwa, the beer brew master of Sekinoichi brewery, greeted us warmly despite the steady drizzle around us. This time through a new Tokyo acquaintance and beer aficionado I had been introduced rather then just showing up on the doorstep which led to a completely different reception. It was a welcome change to some of the other experiences I had had along the way.
Mr. Niwa began to give us a tour of the sake museum which was interesting to my two companions but old hat to me. My focus was beer and Mr. Niwa caught on to that pretty quickly. I’m thinking it was because all of the questions I was peppering him with were about beer and not about Japanese rice wine. The stuff he was showing us was interesting but I was on a quest and not about to be side tracked.
It was about the time that we exited the sake museum and were about to get into the meat of my mission when Shunji and Rie figured it was time for them to get going. We bid farewell and they headed off into the bleak weather. I turned back to Mr. Niwa and with a smile said, ‘now, about your craft beer…’
Mr. Niwa smiled back and led me to a small building behind the main complex. It was compact and not a bit of space was wasted. Shiny tanks were lined up one after the other with little breathing room in between.
As I went through my list of questions more bits of the puzzle that surrounds Japanese craft beer began to fall into place. I was on my third Japanese craft beer brewery, or rather fourth if you include Onuma, and the preconceptions I had were being refined into a more accurate image. At one point I’m going to have to figure out how to put all the knowledge I’ve gained into an interesting and page turning article…
The rest of the evening was pretty plain except for a few tense moments at the hotel I was staying at.
When I walked in I knew about what the price would be but when the lady behind the counter stated the rate I thought I would try something new. The price was just above what I wanted to pay so I asked casually if there was a cheaper place around. She looked at me with a gleam in her eye and asked ‘What’s your budget?’ I returned her gleaming eye with a bashful, ‘4200yen,’ 600yen less then the stated price. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Okay.’ Negotiating in Japan, or rather successfully negotiating in Japan, a rare event.
The next bit of fun was when I tried to hook my computer up to the internet. Usually in business hotels there’s a jack or a cable but not at this place. Apparently you needed an adapted box in order to get on to the internet. The way it worked was that you took the phone line, plugged it in to the adapter, then plugged your LAN cable into the adapted and, voila!, internet. It didn’t work that way. After about 15 minutes of fiddling I went back down to the front, a bit miffed that I couldn’t get on the internet. After all, the main reason I stay in hotels is to use the internet and keep my business stuff up to date and if there’s no internet there’s no reason to stay there…
I asked for another adapter hoping that it would work. Back in my room a few minutes later all the little lights blinked green and all was good, crisis averted.
My plans for the next day was the 120km distant Sendai but all of that changed when I sat down the next morning on the river bank to enjoy my breakfast of coffee and a donut. The weather, to put it simply, was glorious; blue skies, light breeze, the relaxed atmosphere of a sunny summer Sunday. A blog and a phone call from my parents later I decided that my butt wasn’t moving from this seat (other then for food, bathroom, and a little bit of walking). Sure I could have caught a quick ride with a Sunday driver in this weather and been to Sendai by noon but I said ‘screw it, I need a break.’
A bit of exploring later I had found a perfect campsite not 100 feet from where I sat and was set for a day of nothing. From morning until early evening I lay in the sun, read, wrote, and listened to music.
It was the perfect day to finish off the week I had just had. …And on the 7th day he rested.
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