Beer in Japan

When you see yourself visiting a foreign country sometime in the not so distant future you begin to ask yourself questions. Maybe questions related to small issues such as health insurance or finding your way around especially if the country in question speaks a language you are not too familiar with. After considering the many minor troubles that might arise it suddenly dawns on you that you may have overlooked something very important indeed, something big, huge in fact, something that might make or break your decision to depart from the sunny, hot shores of England.

Perhaps you had been planning your trip for sometime, maybe you even have a date in mind. Let's hope you haven't booked any tickets before remembering to investigate vital question of beer supply! For the sake of clarification if you are reading this and are not British you have never drank beer before but lager or "lager beer" if you wish to pretend you have drank some actual from beer before. We don't make cars or electronics these days but that doesn't matter for we make beer! When your craving a pint a flashy mobile phone wont do and nor will a car unless of course the car can take you to a pub.

The country in question I am intending to travel to is of course Japan. Land of great advances in technology but what about beer technology? For sometime I have been researching the current state of beer in the land of the rising sun.

Japan makes beer. Sounds promising enough so I undertook the vital process of "try before you fly" by ordering three of what I believe to be the more popular beers of Japan. Asahi Super Dry, Asahi Black Beer and Kirin Ichiban. Admittedly it was quite a while ago I ordered and tasted these, probably over a year ago but let me tell you I have never forgotten the taste.

I prepared myself for the experience about to bestow me as I brought the first can to my lips. "Good lord!" I thought. It was not beer but larger and larger with enough gas in to fill a hindenburg. Suddenly my heart sank and a small tear began to well in my eye. "Maybe this was just a one off, a false start?" I thought to myself. I began on the next. I tried desperately hard to like this Japanese beer thinking that one day I might be spending a lot of time in Japan and maybe just maybe this could be my new friend. I have heard of people suffering of culture shock but this was too much. Maybe I can deal with disorientation, alienation and home sickness but drinking this so called beer? I'm not a man of steel, I couldn't fight back the tears and pretend the relationship with the new beer would go smoothly. I reluctantly tried the third. It didn't fail to disappoint. That was the time I turned my back on Japanese "beer" and decided that once my taste buds have forgiven and forgot I might, just might try a different brand when in Japan... maybe.

It was time for a different approach. If you can't get good Japanese beer in Japan, perhaps you can get good British beer in Japan? Using the collective knowledge of Mr Google I began to ask around. It seems that some misguided chaps didn't understand the terminology of beer instead believing the larger they had been drinking to be beer. This produced unreliable sources, clearly I could not trust the poorly founded opinions of these fellows. I needed to find more reliable sources, perhaps an inside source? After being able to educate my Japanese girlfriend as to what real beer is by insisting she try some of the British liquid gold. I got down on one knee and asked the most important question of my life. "Have you tried beer like this in Japan before?" The answer was a clear "no", a heat breaking rejection. I needed to find someway of answering the question myself but without risking travelling to Japan only to be confronted with a unquenchable thirst that no mere liquid could fulfil.

A ha, Flickr! Hopefully someone had been so wonderfully overwhelmed by finding such a treasure in Japan that they wished to share it with the world. So let's have a look at the most promising insights offered:











As you can see there is hope, but beer (the real kind) seems to be a scarcity in Japan. Stumbling upon some must be feel better than a blessing from the pope. I should imagine and have heard that in some you will find beer if you look hard enough (and I know you will). However the glum reality of the situation seems to be that if you are going to Japan you may have to be prepared to trade beer for sake