Prost!

This past weekend, some friends and I went over to Yokohama (second largest city in Japan, but closer than Tokyo) to attend Oktoberfest. Erik and I stumbled upon the festival last Fall while I was visiting and it was a great time, so it made perfect sense to get a group of gals to go again this year.

It was such a beautiful sunny day - perfect to kick back with some delicious beers and nosh on some German goodies. I saw some Japanese eating schnitzel and sausage with chopsticks (hashi) which was amusing (yet impressive), but there were forks and knives for the rest of us to dig in. I think our intake of beer surpassed intake of food, but that made things all the merrier! Towards the end of the evening, we were dancing and clinking steins with the locals.

Video from 3:00p (phase 1: Enjoying beer and atmosphere):


And video from 9:00p (phase 2: I love you man! Lets dance!):

(Not sure why all the gaijin stand in the front)

The only drawback of the event is that the lines at the different beer and food vendors are quite long, but perhaps its a good thing since it slows down the rate of consumption! Also distressing is the fact that all the port-a-potties were squat-a-potty style. If you think port-a-potties are already hygienically challenged, visit one of these to feel better (or worse, as it were).

Oktoberfest at Yokohama runs through next weekend. If interested in checking it out, its near Aka Rengo Soko (The Red Brick Warehouse) and we each spent probably about 5000 to 7500 yen for the day on beer, food, train, etc. We took the Sotestu line to Yokohama and then transferred to the Minato Mirai subway line.