Kirin Brewery Tour and Sandaya-Honten Teppankaki

Ilena and Mike had a really cool little adventure this week, getting to take a tour of the Kirin Brewery in Sanda. Kirin is our favorite beer in Japan, and touring and tasting tours are always fun. This was no exception.

Here we are in front of the Kirin Beer Can Bus. Pretty neat, huh?

During the tour, we got our own personal guide, who showed us everything from the hops and barley to the bottling - the fully automated plant pumps out 2000 cans a minute! They had a short movie, a display of labels over the years - most interesting was the label during WWII, which is the only label in its history to not contain any English - , and we ended the tour in the bar.

Here is our favorite quote from the Kirin Brewery pamphlet "Notes on How Best To Enjoy Your Beer:"

• Number 5 on 10 Tips on Enjoying Drinking in Moderation - "Take two days off a week from drinking." (Only in Japan!)

We also loved the Kirin Beer mascot, named Ecojiro. The slogan on the Ecojiro t-shirt: "I was born from the foam of beer." You can't make this stuff up!

After the tour, we each got to sample 2 full glasses of beer. We were also "taught" the proper way to our a beer (in three easy steps!) to achieve the (apparently) desired 70/30 ratio of beer to head.

One of the other nice parts of the beer tour was that we were among the first to taste Kirin's newest beer, which was being released today. (Nice timing!) It is called Strong Seven (as in with 7% alcohol content), and it was excellent and is now our favorite of Kirin's beers.

After the Kirin tour and tasting, we continued on to Sandaya-Honten Yasuragi no Sato ("House of Tranquility"). Sandaya-Hoten is a beautiful steak-house set in a traditional Japanese setting, with large picture windows looking out on a peaceful garden. The food and atmosphere were both amazing.