Nomihodai Onegai!

On a much lighter note today, I went through a couple of my old photos albums, and came upon a set taken in Sapporo (capital of Hokkaido) which brought back some fond memories (again). So bear with me again while I take another trip down memory lane.

As a avid drinker of beer, my friends and I decided to go visit the Sapporo Beer Garden, using the visit as a flimsy excuse to load up on the frothy beverage. We visited the museum, tried the Sampler Set (4 small cups of different beer), then decided to have dinner at the restaurant which served Mongolian Barbeque. It turned out to be a great evening, as we ordered the Nomi/Tabe Hodai course which lets you eat and drink as much as you want for 100 minutes, all for just approximately US$40 (on then's exchange rate). To get our moneys worth, a friend (a gaijin - Mr. Hime) and I concluded we each needed to drink 10 servings of beer to get even with the restaurant (we weren't even thinking about food), and should one of us be unable to reach that amount, we would pay the other Y1,000. (stupid bet by stupid gaijin, yes I know!) Also, to document our progression from poised gentlemen to drunken (but civilized) hooligans, we would take a picture before starting every beer.

This story actually has two points. The first is that my friend and I didn't actually finish 10 beers. When we saw that they served LARGER than PINT-sized glasses of beer, we decided to decrease our quota to 8 glasses. This quota we reached (I actually managed 9, and we ended up eating three plates of grilled lamb as well!), and the pictures we snapped turned out to be a great idea, as they let me recall each glass of beer with vivid detail.

The second, and more interesting point, is that some of my friends who were at the restaurant chose NOT to do it, citing cost as a reason. They sat at a table right next to us and ordered a la carte (and no, we didn't sneak them any meat). The thing that I noticed was that while we were guzzling down meat and beer with reckless abandon, we had a much funner time than they did. While they were eating and drinking slowly, doing their best to savour their measly portions of lamb, and trying to make their buck go further, it was obvious that they envied our intense orgy of food and drink. (Two of them actually confessed midway that they wished they joined us in our hodai decadence) Hime and I ended up paying twice what they did, but the fun we had that night had was exponentially greater.

Since then we have done nomihodai a couple more times, though not to the extent of drinking 10 beers per trip or doing it often (I have a strong affinity towards my liver), but each and every time was memorable as always. I think that drinking or eating without being required to keep track of your expenses is much more relaxing. In normal circumstances, whenever I'm eating out I always calculate what the final bill is going to be, especially when its at an expensive restaurant! Also, in my limited travelling experiences, I've found that nomihodai in Japan is more common to Hokkaido than Honshuu, as most izakayas in Tokyo and the Kansai Area didn't have that option. Finally, while variations of tabe/nomi hodai can be found globally, few of these places overseas ever offer draft beer like Japan!