Japan has some fantastic locally produced beer. It makes sense that good beer would come from the Japanese – a healthy respect for craftsmanship and a passion for making simple things the best they can be are both strong traits of the cultural identity. There’s a place I read about that has some really unique beers. I mean, way beyond the spirulina algae beer of Myanmar. More on this later. It’s in Abashiri, which is in the northeastern most region of Hokkaido, which itself is a prefecture on the northeastern most island of Japan. It’s a small fishing town with little else going on. Well, that’s not entirely true. I was talking with a Japanese craft beer nerd (he was both Japanese and enjoyed craft beer) at a bar in Osaka and he was like “Why are you going to Abashiri? The only thing there is the prison.” To be fair he hadn’t heard of the brewery. So yeah, it’s only really known for an especially brutal prison and some especially delicious seafood. We had arrived in Sapporo early yesterday morning around 6 AM after the grueling 17-hour ride from Hiroshima, and the journey out to this brewery wasn’t going to be quick. But we need to get our money’s worth out of these rail passes, and when’s the next time we’re going to be in Japan? For that matter, where the hell do we have to even be for the next three months? We set the alarm, hit the sack early (which was understandably easy) and were up at 6 again to catch the 5-hour train to Abashiri. Obviously sitting on your ass for 5 hours straight isn’t the hard part, though this is skill each of us honed independently back when we were long distance. And in spite of the snow there was some fantastic scenery most of the ride up. We were getting excited to try these strange concoctions and experience something else new. When we finally arrived, it became clear: this beer wasn’t going to be bought. It would have to be earned. The brewery was only a ten-minute walk from the train station, but you would think it was an epic trek across an arctic tundra. I know, you guys had a rough winter this year. But this place was just powder on snow on slush on ice – no part of the street or sidewalk was even visible. Snowdrifts as tall as people. And winds whipping it constantly – I could never tell if it was still snowing or just moving fluff around. We arrived at the door and a sign greeted us in Japanese. It said a bunch of things (I assume) but what stood out was that the place was closed till 4PM… maybe. The only train back to Sapporo was a little after 5PM, so this might be cutting it close. But, fresh off another failed pursuit of elusive and hidden effervescent nectar we weren’t going to let anything stop us. We had to stick around to see how this would play out. That is far easier said than done when you’re wandering around in a blizzard and ill-equipped to even communicate basic needs of food and shelter. But yet I know 26 different ways to order a beer. We got along okay though, ducking in for cover whenever we could. We grabbed some lunch (prawn, katsu and totally amaze-balls mystery sauce for me; an impromptu salad made especially for shefali since vegetarian here means “I eat shrimp, fish and pork broth.”) and went to a bakery for some ridiculous creamy eclairs. That’s another thing – most of Japan’s milk comes from this region. I don’t know if it squirts out as soft-serve in this weather or what but the milk and cream based stuff here is so good. Just so damn good. The lady there was sweet, we told her we were going to the brewery and she told us her thoughts on the beer. About two hours later, when the place finally opened, we sat down to down 6 beers in about an hour. This doesn’t sound like much, I know, but let’s talk about the beer:
So this place is kind of gimmicky – they have these bright multi-colored beers. The color’s kind of a gimmick, I guess, but they’re strangely-colored because they’re made with strange ingredients. And they all sucked. Every last one of them was just terrible, even in reference to each other. When have you ever experienced that? Not being able to discern which of something was the least worst? They violated the olfactory system and viscera in very profound ways, I just can’t accurately express how awful they all were from nose to hose. Some smelled good from the bottle, but once in the glass they had a noticeable septic quality. So it didn’t smell like shit, but you know when you poop and there’s the poopy smell but then the poop goes underwater, like completely submerged, but still smells strongly of poop? That’s exactly what they smelled like. Inexplicably, we sampled these with vigor, even experimenting with mixing them and trying to get just the aftertaste by holding our noses first (both terrible ideas). This jives with what the bakery lady told us (I said she told us her thoughts – I never said what these thoughts were. Her thoughts were “I don’t like it.”) and literally everything I read on the internet. Is there a capital I on that yet or what? All told they had beer made from green tea, cherry blossoms, lotus root, sweet potato and even an inexplicably blue one made from glacier water. There’s also one made with milk, and thank Dijkstra that wasn’t available or we’d have splattered the whole damn place with a volcanic release of foaming, curdled technicolor.
So it was a swing and a miss, and a sad, humiliating one at that, like a fat kid striking out in kickball because he split his pants. But was it a total loss? That’s debatable. I came away with a few things:
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Shefali is tough. She pushed through the snow like she was part husky, and that’s probably not the kind of compliment a beautiful young woman wants but here we are. When we were walking back to the station it was actually worse than when we had arrived. The wind blew crystals of snow and ice into your face so hard it hurt. Several inches of fresh powder had piled up in the short time we were inside the brewery, and yet Shefali was characteristically unstoppable in her resolve to move forward to our next goal (especially since this next goal was our only shot of leaving this forsaken subarctic hell hole). I really admire the hell out of her for that. I also really appreciate her coming on this fools errand with me and not once turning to sarcasm or derision, no matter how justified it would have been. Except on the train ride back she said “thanks for finding this place for us.” Which you’d think would just HAVE to be sarcasm, but it didn’t sound that way. So there you go.
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You do things because you just have to. Everyone said these beers sucked, and the ten-hour train ride round trip and inclement weather should have been understood as the deterrents they were and not seen as challenges to overcome. And yet, I don’t know. I still had to try. I just wanted so badly to believe.
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Sometimes it’s about the journey. Sometimes it’s about the destination. Sometimes it’s about you being dicked around and kicked repeatedly in the crotch, figuratively or otherwise, for things you did wrong that you don’t even remember, but your number’s up and there’s interest due. This was one of those times.
All in all, I’m still counting this one as a win. I don’t know how to explain why.