Week 5

This past week turned out to be a bit less frantic than the previous week. The big social event this week was a tour of the Asahi Beer brewery in Suita, Osaka with the Wednesday tour crew.

The brewery itself was easy enough to find. It's plainly visible from both JR and Hankyu Suita train stations. Unfortunately, if you're coming from Hankyu station you end up at the rear gate and need to walk another kilometer, all the way around the outside of the complex, to get to the visitor's entrance (which would have been okay if we hadn't been running late at that point.) The tour itself was well presented and, although it was in Japanese, everyone who came this time spoke enough Japanese that I didn't need to translate. Fortunately the tour started with a movie (which we missed all but the last 30 seconds of) which was followed by several walkthrough exhibits of the brewing process. After that we got to see the factory floor where they brew and bottle the beer. At the end of the tour portion we had 30 minutes to sample up to three free nama (tap) beers. As brewery tours go, I think Asahi does a great job of explaining the process as simply as possible and seeing the exhibits before seeing the actual factory floor allows for a better understanding of what you're seeing.

Saturday I corrected a small issue I previously overlooked by asking the girl I've been dating to actually date me (and anyone who has my facebook info knows, she accepted.)

Last night (Sunday) I met up with some of my Canadian friends and we played board games (10 days in the americas, fluxx, and freeloader) all evening which was really fun and reminded me how much I used to like playing board games. I'm now thinking of setting up a monthly (or more often) board game night (ever the "Gamer's Guild President" am I.)