Beer～!

So, 2 weekends ago (late, late, I know...) we had some pretty fun activities going on. First off, it was a really short week--not only a Monday-off 3-day weekend (gotta love all those Japanese national holidays...even if I have no idea what it's celebrating...), but that Friday was also "Yokohama Day." In other words~~FIELD TRIP~~!
There were two options that you could pick from: 1) hiking [please--it was like a million degrees that day!], or 2) going to the Prefectural History Museum and then the Kirin Beer Factory.

Guess which one I picked?

The Kirin factory was pretty interesting--well, it was mostly just taking this tour around, like "this is how beer is made," and "if you'll look down below, you can see the assembly line where we put the beer in bottles." That sort of thing. But, at the end of the tour, everybody got 2 coupons for free glasses of beer! Which of course is the point of going to these things (lol).
Here's a candid photo I snapped of some of the IUC-ers.
(apologies to everyone who's weird mid-swallowing facial expressions I am exposing).

Then, the following day (Saturday) was the start of Yokohama's Oktoberfest! Yes, they have those in Japan, too. Lol. It was held in a big tent out by the 赤レンガ倉庫 Red-Brick Warehouse, which is a collection of Meiji/Taisho era brick buildings, now mostly housing restaurants and shops, &c. At any rate, they had a huge tent set up, under which were lots of long tables, a stage, and all of the beer and food stalls. I went over to check it out with Jason, and two other girls from IUC, Molly and Misa.At the stage up front, there were various groups performing in full-out German leiderhosen (or however you spell it). And a whole lot of gaijin who appeared to be actual Germans had showed up (for a taste of their home beer, perhaps?). There was this one song that kept getting played, every half hour or so--I didn't recognize it, but the Japanese all seemed to get very excited whenever it came on, with lots of standing on tables and swaying of mugs, and such. There were even several conga lines. The Japanese are, on the whole, a rather serious lot--but when they cut loose, they *really* go all out.