Heiwajima Antiques Fair

Weather Explorer has been smitten with Ebisu, the happy fishing god and Yebisu Beer mascot, ever since our Seven Gods of Fortune pilgrimage last month.  She's also fond of Daikoku, the hammering merchant god, who seems to be Ebisu's special godfriend.

One of my favorite things to do is helping other people spend their money.  When Weather decided that Ebisu and Daikoku statues would be happy reminders of her time in Japan, our idle strolls through flea markets developed an intense new flavor.  The packers are due to show up at her door in June, a prospect I choose to ignore for the most part but that's not always easy since her face has taken on a certain familiar flush I call Short-Timer Fever.  Woman with only two months remaining in Japan are often spotted gazing into that abyss known as "the middle distance" while mentally calculating how many more lanterns, rolls of washi paper, and tote bags they can buy without exceeding their household goods weight limit.

Today we braved the Golden Week crowds to search for affordable statues at the Heiwajima Antiques Fair at Tokyo Ryutsu Center near Haneda Airport.  Finding the Ryutsu Center was easy because there's a Tokyo Monorail train station by that name just outside the building's door.  Otsuka-san gets credit for telling us about this indoor quarterly upscale flea market.  Artistic Explorer will not get back to Japan in time for the July 8-10 fair, but maybe I can drag her and other inquisitive types to the September or December versions.

Weather and I spotted dozens of Ebisu and Daikoku statues but replaced them on the shelves quickly yet ever so carefully when we spied price tags in the $100 range.  After searching for about three hours and pausing briefly for lunch, Weather decided to invest in a traditional stone ship carved with all seven gods. 

  

The price tag said 6,800 yen but she got it for 4,000 yen.  It weighs about fifty pounds. I offered to help carry it home on the train, but Weather would have none of that. Sometimes she reminds me a bit of my mother.



The back of the statue



About five minutes after investing in the ship, of course, she found a nice pair of godfriends that the vendor let her have for 2,000 yen (about $25).

I sure hope she comes up with a new mission before we head to the Yamato Shrine sale the week after next. Otherwise, I just might have to track down a pair of those statues for myself and call them a Father's Day gift.

Speaking of the Ancient Mariner, he sailed off on the USS Blue Ridge again this morning. But only for a few days this time as we have a baseball game on our calendar for Friday evening. He sure does love his baseball and I sure do love my Yebisu Beer.

P.S. If you'd like more information about the Heiwajima Antiques Fair, clicking on the post title will take you to the English page of the official website.

Yebisu Beer Museum: An Excruciatingly Detailed Account

"Where to next, Mother Dearest?"

"The Yebisu Beer Museum, Eldest Son.  We'll ride the subway to the Ebisu station, stow our bags and backpacks in one of the convenient lockers, find a place to eat lunch, then ride a series of moving sidewalks through the station to get to the museum."

Those moving sidewalks took us to an exit south of the station, across the street from an enormous plaza flanked by new buildings that framed a view of what looked to be a French palace.  We saw a Sapporo beer hall off to our right but forced ourselves to turn left toward a bakery which we also managed to ignore.  The museum was hidden behind the Mikoshi department store, down a brick ramp.

The beer museum opened quite recently -- within the past couple of years -- and is remarkably posh.  I had the distinct impression those Yebisu people feel downright reverential about their product, and rightly so.  It's my favorite Japanese beer.

Presenting myself at the sleek information desk, I requested four tickets for the next guided tour.  The nice lady explained that the tour is conducted in Japanese only.  I told her we didn't mind.  Our motivation, as you have already surmised, was the two glasses each of Yebisu beer the guide would pour for us at the end of the tour.  The tour fee was 500 Yen, roughly $5.40, while two Japanese beers at our hotel would set us back about $15.  My mother, as she was fond of reminding us at regular intervals, did not raise any dummies (the grammatical error was her idea of a joke).

Clutching their tickets, the four Americans joined three Japanese tourists in the spacious waiting area.  Our guide, clad in a crisp uniform of course, met us there and escorted us around the corner into a small gallery.  She dimmed the lights.  We plastered appropriately reverential expressions on our faces (really, I cannot say enough good things about Emily - her instincts could not have been better if she'd been raised by my mother). 

The guide went through her spiel, inching us ve-e-e-ry slowly from one artifact to the next.  My heart skipped a beat when I spotted English subtitles on some of the exhibits.  I was trying to edge over close enough to read them without disrupting the tour when the guide, screwing up her courage I'm sure, elected to play to the majority of her audience by practicing her English.  She pointed to a portrait of Yebisu's distinguished founder and posed a question.  Oh, no!  Not the dreaded audience participation moment, the bane of a shy and/or half-deaf person's existence! 

"Is she talking to me?"  "Yes, yeah, yup," whispered the cowardly liars in their version of unison.  Drat.  "She wants to know which American president that man resembles."  Double drat.  So much for reading the English subtitles but I suppose that gives me a good excuse to make another trip to the museum for a self-guided tour.  (The correct answer was George Bush.  I thought the man looked like George Washington.)

Despair not.  I picked up a few kernels of information by enlarging some of the photographs I snapped in the exhibit gallery.  The cost of a beer in 1904, for example was 20 sen, ten times the cost of a bowl of soba noodles (note how eloquently this information is underscored visually).  Beer was something the common people could merely "gaze at longingly in shop windows" until the economic boom of the 1960s.  And here's something of potential minor interest to my brother Dave but no one else:  in 1994 the theme music from "The Third Man" was used in a successful ad campaign and henceforce became famous in Japan as the "Yebisu Song."

On to our reward:  the tasting room.  The beer that flowed out of that red tap over Emily's right shoulder was especially noteworthy but, alas, is only available on tap.  I know this because I asked which in and of itself ought to tell most of you how good that beer tasted.

We learned how to pour a proper beer with a creamy foam head extending at least an inch above the glass, exactly the opposite of how I was taught to pour a beer during my brief barmaid career at Lizard's Bar and Grill in East Lansing, Michigan.

We learned that the lacy patterns a Yebisu beer leaves inside a glass are cause for reflection and admiration.

One of us paced himself by photographing his beer between every sip/gulp.

One of us, pictured here with the Yebisu mascot, did not pace herself and learned that she should never again wear a sleeveless top or that particular shade of pink.

Next:  Adios to the Texans!