A year occured, followed by some months

Since my previous post, a year and a couple of months went by, apparently without any warning of how busy things were going to get.

Here are a few blog posts crammed into one big one, separated by witty subtitles.

Chat man

When I started working at Beer Bar North Island in 2013, just about everything around me was new. I slowly learned the ropes of pouring beer, cleaning lines, taking orders, moving customers in/out/around, and keeping the bar stocked with various supplies. On top of that I started learning how to keep track of daily sales totals and other such work.

But the hardest thing for me is the talking. I like talking with people, be it in English or Japanese, but doing the keep-the-counter-lively thing does not come naturally to me, especially in Japanese. It's easy to talk with regulars, or when the customer starts up the conversation, but I always find it tough to jump in when I'm just not sure he/she wants to talk. But part of the job is at least making some connection. First time here? Drink craft beer often? Live here in Sapporo?  On your way home from work? The goal, other than simply being a pleasant person and host, is to get customers talking to each other. That way when I'm called away to take an order upstairs or I'm too busy washing glasses, the counter remains "active." I've gotten a little better at all this, I think. Grab a beer and have a chat, man.

Tank Man

Here's one of the new 2k
tanks (we got four of them!)
These ones feature semi-auto
cleaning so you don't have
to go inside.

A couple times last year, I was asked to help out at the brewery in the afternoon while still working the bar at night. It was a another round of new experiences, mostly doing some keg-filling and cleaning. Recently, I've been working at the brewery a few times a week, with a slowly expanding portfolio of things I know how to do. New additions this year include cleaning tanks — some older ones which you have to go inside to properly clean. I had to rediscover some muscle groups, but I can now dip in and climb out of your average 1000-liter fermentation tank.

This year the brewery added four new 2000-liter tanks (shown at right), adding to our capacity (but also adding to the amount of work that needs to be done). With the increased demand and the departure of one staff member, a full time job opened up in the brewery, and I jumped at the chance. The plan is for me to shift to the brewery as a main post, with a couple of shifts at the bar per week. We're working on hiring a new bar staffer — once everything is in place the transition will begin.

Diaper Man

Amid the double shifts of late, my wife Satoko was pretty pregnant. Our son Eugene (in Japanese kanji: 悠仁 ) was born on August 11th. So far, he shows little interest in beer, but he's doing well and he's obviously adorable, baby-wise. His arrival was part of the reason I wanted to move to a day shift, so I'm glad things are settling into place!

Here he is!

Beer Bar takes a week off

The beer bar will be closed this week from Thursday the 18th until the following Thursday, the 25th, as our staff (and a lot of our product) will be dispatched to Saitama for the Keyaki beer festival.

Enter the Beer Forest

Festivals featuring a wide range of Japanese craft beers have been going on in Japan for a number of years now, and from the sounds of things at North Island, they seem to be growing and attracting more and more fans. In Hokkaido, similar events have so far been absent. Caveats include the Bare Bear Beer Festival to be held this August at Sapporo's International School gym (mostly imports) and the Hakodate beer fest which this year takes place on 8/31 and 9/1.

But now the time has come for a Sapporo event featuring Japanese craft (and of course some imports). The event is set for October 14th, a Monday and a national holiday. A group including North Island, Kalahana, Higurashi, Maltheads, and others just settled on a name last night. Here it is: Sapporo Craft Beer Forest 2013 --- or perhaps SCBF2013 for short. The forest part comes from the planned venue, namely the Bankei ski area not far from downtown Sapporo, which in the late summer is not yet snowy and surely not so hot. Details are forthcoming, but I'll definitely keep the internets posted via Twitter and this blog in English.

So mark your calendars, book your LCC flights, and join us in the forest for what I can only imagine will be a great party.

Beer Bar North Island turns 4 years old

July 11th marked 4 years since Beer Bar North Island opened in central Sapporo. I was still living in Mie of course, but the staff and many of our regular customers have been there since the beginning. Many were already North Island fans when they had their small brewery and beer hall in Sapporo's Kita Ward, a spot that closed when the brewery moved to Ebetsu.

On Sunday, July 14th (2pm - 10pm), the bar is hosting a small event to celebrate the milestone. Called the 4周年ぷち感謝祭 (4-shūnen puchi kansha-sai) ((4-year anniversary small party of thanks, roughly)), two special beers and some guest beers join North Island's regular lineup. A limited release made specifically to mark this event is the American Smoke Ale. A second special beer is the RyIN' Devil IPA made at North Island to celebrate the 2-year anniversary of Tokyo's Devil Craft. Two guest beers each will come from Shiga Kogen and Minoh.

For more details (in Japanese), visit North Island's official blog.

No more beer to sell? North Island gets creative at Keyaki

Just to keep all of this logged in memory, here is the progression at North Island Beer's booth at the Keyaki festival:

The beer ran out this afternoon, leaving only jingisukan for sale. That soon ran out too. After a short period of radio Twitter silence, this came up:

【朗報？】北島炒め(野菜炒め)、始めました！#beerkeyaki twitter.com/seckey1969/sta…
— セッキー (@seckey1969) May 19, 2013

大好評〜？#beerkeyaki twitter.com/seckey1969/sta…
— セッキー (@seckey1969) May 19, 2013

The vegetable stir-fry (100 percent vegetables!) later ran out as well, leaving only ...

【朗報２】キャベツの販売始めました！(千葉県産) twitter.com/seckey1969/sta…
— セッキー (@seckey1969) May 19, 2013

キャベツ100円だよ～ twitter.com/NORTHISLAND22/…
— ノースアイランドビール22 (@NORTHISLAND22) May 19, 2013

キャベツ100円だよ～～～ってば！ twitter.com/NORTHISLAND22/…
— ノースアイランドビール22 (@NORTHISLAND22) May 19, 2013

Urgent update (4:50 pm)

【朗報３】今ならうちのコースター付き！ twitter.com/seckey1969/sta…
— セッキー (@seckey1969) May 19, 2013

Sapporo goes dark, but there's still enough booze to go around

5月19日20日21日けやきビアフェスのためお休みでーす！
— Daisuke&Kana (@kalahana7) May 18, 2013

Today is the last day of the Keyaki Hiroba spring beer festival in Saitama, where North Island Beer's brewmaster and our bar's chef have been dispatched all week, resulting in a temporary closure of said bar until Tuesday.

What's more, today the two main craft beer bars in town serving a mix of Japanese and imported options are also closed. Kalahana's Kana and Daisuke headed for the festival's last day today, and I can only presume Higurashi's 2-day closure is related. Higurashi is closed today and tomorrow while Kalahana is closed through Tuesday.

That means beer hunters in Sapporo can head for an early pint at Adanonki, stop in for German style enjoyment at Leibspeise, or peruse Pred's lineup at Mugishutei. Further, you can go Belgian at Paul's Cafe. Elsewhere, across from Kalahana is Kopitiam, the Singaporean style restaurant that now stocks bottles of Brew Dog's Punk and Hardcore IPAs.

I guess there's still more than enough booze in town. It would just be a bad day for a craft beer super fan to come to town hoping to check out all the spots.

But come Tuesday/Wednesday, Beer Bar North Island, Kalahana, and Higurashi should be back to normal operations.

Meanwhile, at Keyaki, North Island ran out of beer and jingisukan today.

【朗報？】北島炒め(野菜炒め)、始めました！#beerkeyaki twitter.com/seckey1969/sta…
— セッキー (@seckey1969) May 19, 2013

Moving Behind the Bar

On a recent Monday, Beer Bar North Island was closed, but the staff held a barbecue with regular customers and an after party at the bar.

Not long ago I was scanning Twitter and I stopped on a post by the brewmaster of North Island Beer. The company was hiring for position in their bar. Interesting, I thought. That could be fun. I looked further into it, had a couple of interviews, and now I'm about two weeks into a training period. If all goes well, I'll end up a full time employee of North Island Beer, working mostly in the bar but occasionally in other areas. I've already had a hand in helping name an upcoming seasonal beer.

I never thought I wanted to work in a bar, but the idea of working for a craft beer company (and one that makes good beer) was appealing. Down the road, I hope to be involved in helping the company find new fans, expand to new markets, and keep making great beer. For more on North Island Beer, see the new section of links in the sidebar.

Here on the blog, there may be a surge in North Island related content, but I'll try to keep up to date with other breweries in Hokkaido and the general goings on in Japan as well. On Twitter, I changed my account name to @NorthIslandDan to reflect my new job. That feed will be a source of information in English (and sometimes Japanese too) on North Island Beer, including what's on tap at the bar, upcoming seasonals, and other news.

Having never worked in a bar of any kind, I'm picking up the skills little by little. Pouring beers and delivering them to happy customers is a lot of fun, but memorizing the menu, performing customer service in Japanese, and certain other tasks are still ... under development, if you will.

Until August, I'll be at the bar nearly every day, but in many cases I won't start until mid-way through the night as I wind down my schedule at my current job. After August, I should be there just about every day (the bar is closed on Mondays). If you're in town, come by and try some good beer.

As a side note, I'll continue as editor of Hokkaido Explorer, the online magazine I helped start with my current company. I'll focus on that in the afternoons, head to the bar at night, and sleep in the morning (roughly). 

An update from Sapporo, where we've still got snow

Fuzzy memories of this late night at Kalahana

Oh, April, is it? Well then. All is well in Sapporo, where spring has come in earnest. What that means here is that the piles of snow on the side of the road are getting smaller, the women all wear tall rubber boots, and the men all have wet pant-bottoms, a condition that isn't as vulgar as it sounds.

Over at Hokkaido Explorer, a new online magazine for Hokkaido which I helped launch and act as editor for, I posted an article not long ago about Adanonki, the low key used book/magazine store which also serves craft beer. The news hook for the article was the shop's expansion into the space next door, opening up more room for a couple of tables near the bar counter.

Besides that, I've made some visits to Mugishutei, Higurashi, Kalahana, and Beer Bar North Island, mostly when old friends from Ise are in town and I can play booze-guide to the city. I'm sketching out plans for a nice big feature about craft beer in Sapporo and/or Hokkaido to go up on Hokkaido Explorer, but don't expect anything official for a while. I'd love to get that kind of special content, along with other guide articles and features, in a printed special edition some day down the road.

Then you can come up to Sapporo, have a seat at Adanonki, page through the Hokkaido Explorer printed edition, and plan the craft beer crawl you'll set out on that night.

Hope all is well in your city or town, and look out for a report from Mie after Golden Week, a possible report from Oregon this summer, and who knows what else in between.

West of the tower, south of the park

After hearing two weeks ago about a liquor store in Susukino (the nightlife area of Sapporo) that stocks some imported craft beer, I remembered the name of the place but not the address the next morning. Tonight, I stumbled across Momoya and left with some cans of Caldera beer (from Ashland, Oregon).

From Caldera, I went for the IPA and the Amber Ale. To mix things up, I grabbed a Modus Hoperandi IPA from Ska Brewing, which I had never tried (until moments go / it is good). 

The S is missing

It's nice to find a liquor store in town that stocks some variety. They don't carry in Japanese craft beer, but I'll be glad to stop in once in while to pick up something from the states (even if it's more of what I grabbed tonight). 

Momoya is at the corner of Minami 5 and West 5. Wait! Fortunately you don't need any map software to find places in Sapporo. You just need these two numbers (I'm talking only in the downtown area of course). Minami means south, so Minami 5 means 5 blocks south of Odori Park, the several-blocks-long park that spans a huge east-west chunk of the city center. Nishi means west, and the count starts from the brightly lit TV tower at the west end of the park. So Minami 5 Nishi 5 means five blocks west of the TV tower and five blocks south of Odori Park. Trust me, it's easy once you get to know the place a bit.

What makes this night even better was that I was on the way home from Higurashi, the only other craft beer bar in town that I'd yet to visit. More on that in another post.

See you at 5-5!

Survey, nap, then shovel

I spent Saturday afternoon at work, occupied enough that I didn't notice the progression from light flurries to powder snow falling on Sapporo. In those few hours, the landscape had gone from patches of icy remains to a soft white blanket. On the (extremely) short walk to the subway station, I almost took a dive into the pavement and could have had a look at just how powdery this stuff was. The snow kept on falling after I got home and resumed my hourly trips to the window to observe the snowfall situation (see previous post).

Sunday morning brought the first official snow-shoveling session of the season. That is, for most of the neighbors. I put on my coat, stepped outside, and saw just about every neighbor in full shoveling mode.  Recalling my mantra that nine's a crowd, I did a U-Turn and went back to bed. At about 2 in the afternoon I did my duty. I started by sweeping the accumulated snow off the top of the car. Then it's shovel-load by shove-load to the sidewalk across the street, the designated spot for residents of our apartment building. 

Later, on a trip to the grocery store (where my cart of beer and mayonnaise drew a few glances), I saw the mounds of snow in parking lots, which tractors cleared as I slept (photo above [of the snow, not of me sleeping]). So that's phase one of my adjustment to life in the Snow Country (not to be dramatic). As for the beer, it was a combination of Yona Yona ale and the big bottles of Sapporo, the latter thanks to some gift certificates from my wife's grandmother back in Mie. She also sent mikan. 

The snow isn't falling

Just about every night since the first snowfall this month, I walk over to the front window once or twice an hour to see if it's snowing. Often I can only make it out in the glow of the streetlight, so my eyes shoot there involuntarily. After establishing this habit, even in the daylight hours I look first at the streetlight. Nope, still not snowing.

I'm adjusting to life in Hokkaido, and thanks to a late-start to the snowy season we're still easing into it here. We've had a few bouts of snowfall but nothing substantial. And now the rain. Tomorrow the temperatures are set to drop and snow is forecast most days this week. The shared apartment shovel is on standby, my knit cap collection has been boosted, my light summer shoes have been traded in for a pair with traction. 

You may have picked up on my snow obsession. I can't seem to shake it. A colleague who has been here for five years says he too used to like the snow, but now he's over it. Will that happen to me as well? It's possible. But this being my first real winter (Oregon's occasional winter blasts notwithstanding), I reserve the right to be excited. I don't know what exactly excites me about it, but I'll try to figure that out in another post. 

As for beer, I've been enjoying the occasional visit to Adanonki, the used-book-store-craft-beer-bar in the city center. Two taps bring in a rotating selection, usually with two offerings from the same brewery. If the taps don't suit your fancy, a selection of bottles is available as well. 

I've also made a few solo trips to Kalahana, the cider and craft beer bar in the Tanuki Koji shopping arcade. There's always something interesting on the menu, and occasionally I find something from Mie's Ise Kadoya, somewhat easing my waxing sense of nostalgia for Biyagura and their nomihoudai. 

Closer to home, the Seiyu grocery store not far down the road has recently been stocking Yona Yona for about 250 yen per can. Great price for a nice every day beer. I'd like to branch out and find some more bottle/can options for home. I recently heard of a liquor shop in Susukino that might have what I desire. 

So that's my update. And in case you're wondering, despite all my efforts, it's still not snowing.