04. Yebisu Beer Museum

After enduring over a month of Tokyo's unforgiving humidity, I think the fall weather is definitely here. The cooler weather was perfect for exploring this weekend, so on Saturday I went to check out the Yebisu Beer Museum with some friends. The museum is located in Yebisu Garden Place, which is a really charming collection of restaurants and stores.

Yebisu Garden Place has the feel of a small town despite being in a busy area of Tokyo, which I was pleasantly surprised by. On top of that, it's practically impossible to get lost on your way because it has its own exit straight from the station! It's definitely a tourist-y area, but the Yebisu Beer Museum is well worth the trip.

There's a sign specifically cautioning guests not to stand on the image of the Yebisu
god lest he stop extending good fortune to the museum and its visitors.

Another great thing about visiting the museum is that it's free. If you've brushed up on your Japanese before visiting then you have the option of taking a guided tour, which costs only 500 yen and ends with a beer tasting. We opted to skip the 40 minute tour in favor of wandering around by ourselves. The main exhibit in the museum consists of a single hallway, so we didn't end up wandering for long.

Here are just a few of the pictures I took in the exhibit:

Bottle of beer c. 1850

Mark your calendars.

The museum was surprisingly informative and I learned a lot of random trivia that I didn't know. Like the fact that Yebisu is actually a subsidiary of the famous Sapporo Beer company. Or that it ceased to exist as a brand name from pre-WWII until the 1970's, but now can be purchased world wide. That's a lot of progress to be made in just a few decades.

It didn't take us long to make it through the exhibit and we made our way into the tasting salon. They had a little menu sign with prices for drinks and food, varying from one to two tokens. The tokens had to be purchased before entering the salon and cost 400 yen each. We opted to purchase them on an as-needed basis because they are non-refundable, but they would have made a great souvenir!

We ended up trying 4 of the 5 drinks they offered, but I only snapped pictures of 3 of them! The one I didn't get was a seasonal beer cocktail that had currant and some other fruit infused into their Kohaku beer. You can see it in the background of the first picture.

Yebisu Creamy Top Stout

Yebisu Kohaku, an American Amber Ale

Half-and-Half with Yebisu the Black and original Yebisu

Mmmm.

If I had the chance, I would definitely return to the Yebisu Beer Museum just to hang out in the tasting salon. The ambiance is really great (albeit busy, lots of people) and you can't beat the prices for their beer. If you're a choose-your-own-adventure kind of person, it's a perfect place to go because you're able to experience the museum at your own pace. We ended up wandering outside of the Garden Place and there are a lot of cute places to shop and even more places to eat that can accommodate for anyone's budget (cough college students cough).

Anyways, I'm buckling down for midterms this week and starting research for the numerous papers I'll be writing at the end of this trimester. Study time!

じゃ、また。