Rain, beer and baseball

The old brewery

So another rainy day.  I wouldn't mind, but it has rained every day since we got here.  The weather forecast keeps saying one more day of rain and then sunshine, but it says that everyday which is demoralising.  Nearly everything we want to do it outdoors, we are fast running out of indoor options...

So, today we woke up after a much better sleep.  I managed to sleep from about midnight to 3.30 and then dozed until 7.  Tom slept through and Matt did much better too.  Phew - the worst of the jet lag is over.  We decided to have an easy morning, Tom caught up with his scrapbook diary and I began to read a book - yes READ A BOOK - something I never seem to have time for at home.

We then set off down to town for a short spot of shopping in the 100 Yen shop - everyday we seem to have a need to pop into one.  Then we got the bus to the Sapporo Beer Hall.  This is a beautiful old red brick building which was initially built as a sugar warehouse but was then turned into a brewery.  The brewery has now moved, but the building has been turned into a museum and beer halls.  The beer halls are famous for all you can eat buffets (both food and drink).  It's a place Matt has been to before - he has fond memories of the place.

Our "Genghis Khan" lunch

We were going to look round the museum first, but a lady told Matt that if we wanted to eat here we would need to go immediately as there might not be any room between 1 and 2.  So, we headed to the Poplar-Hall (the famous Kessler Hall was full) for our table.  There was only really one option and that was the buffet, it is called the Gengis Khan Buffet.  You have a cast iron domed skillet in the middle of the table heated by gas, then the server brings you 2 types of thinly sliced lamb (fresh and frozen) and a plate of cabbage, onions, beansprouts and pumpkin, along with a lump of lard.

Having been on the website the night before I knew the correct cooking etiquette: melt some of the lard on the skillet, put the cabbage around the bottom, beansprouts on top of the cabbage, onions on top of the beansprouts, pumpkin on top of the onion and the lamb on the very top of the dome and cook as required.  All good fun and the food (of course) was fresh and delicious (oh, if you were wondering the lamb comes from Australia and New Zealand).  Once the food is ready, there is a special dip for it (sort of fruity, spicy, tangy and very yummy).  We all very much enjoyed it and considering we don't normally eat much for lunch we all did really well.

Tom in a pint

It was also drink all you can.  Matt managed 5 big glasses of beer, I managed 2 and a couple of sips of Matt's but I did drink some soft drinks too, Tom managed 3 drinks: apple juice, orange juice and ribbon napolin (looked like iron bru, tasted of nothing).  We got through our initial trays of lamb and veggies and requested more and were give two much smaller trays.  We got through those and requested another smaller tray of lamb and then we were done.  The buffet is timed - you are allowed 100 minutes (this is probably to stop Westerners going crazy).

Anyway, it was a very very pleasant way to spend two hours and we didn't over stuff ourselves (no carbs in the meal helped).  Tom did extremely well noshing up everything we gave him.

Rain!

When we returned outside, it wasn't just raining, it was hammering it down, so we had to dash from building to building in an attempt not to get too wet.  Problem is that it is quite warm meaning it gets really humid.  If you wear a rain coat it is 'boil in the bag' but if you get completely wet you will get cold so its about trying to find a sensible in-between.  We found the shop, had a good look round and then went to the free museum (there was a free one and one which you had to pay for).  It was ok - not the most interesting - mainly because there wasn't much English, don't think Tom got much from it, but it was small, so it didn't really matter.

We did a spot of shopping - Matt got a new T-shirt, which he was pleased with.  We then dashed into the local shopping mall.  It was a mall aimed at families and had a shop in it which sold jimbeis for older children - yay!  We got a new one for Tom and we were all very pleased (we can get rid of his smallest one now)

Sapporo Dome

Then we walked to a subway station and got the train right across the city to Fukuzumi which was the nearest stop to the Sapporo Dome as today we were going to the baseball.  It was the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters against the Chiba Lotte Marines (who bizarrely enough were the opponents of the Soft Bank Hawks when we saw them in Fukuoka)  We changed loyalty from the Soft Bank Hawks to the Fighters so we sat in the home crowd and enjoyed the game. (Oh this time we brought in snacks from a supermarket and were glad we did, the food and drink didn't look great and was pretty expensive)

Cheering the team on

Matt spent most of his time explaining the game to us and poor Tom kept using the wrong terms: bowler instead of pitcher, wicket keeper instead of catcher and 'wicket' instead of number of outs.  Can't blame him though and although you could see he was tired, he kept going for the whole game in good humour, joining in with the chants on the 'megaphones' - which are plastic shaped hollow baseball bats that you bang together in time with the chants.  All good fun.  The game was quite interesting, we saw 2 home runs (both by our team) and 13 hits altogether, the crowd got quite excited towards the end.

The match ended at 9pm, The Fighters won 4-1 so everyone was happy.  We went back out to the rain and got the subway home.  It had been a long day, Tom was exhausted so we chucked him in the shower and he went straight to bed.  We weren't long behind him.