Previously I had said that I had experienced the best day of school ever. I most amend that to say that day was, in fact, the second best day of school ever. Yesterday was so much better.

It started off way too early at 5:30 when my alarm rang. After getting reading I headed out the door for the train. I arrived early to the meeting place in front of the main NichiDai building. The bus and the professor that organized the trip were already waiting.

One everyone assembled we boarded the bus for the two and a half hour from Ichigaya in the heart of Tokyo to Kanagawa in the Hakone mountains. About a half an hour into the ride we passed the freeway exit not a kilometer from my apartment (if the bus had picked us up there it would have saved a half an hour’s drive and we could have slept in another hour and a half. Oh well.)

An hour or so later, I had dosed off listening to music when I was awakened by people moving about the bus. Looking about to see what was up I glanced out the window and saw…

Finally a good enough view of Fuji-san as that I could photograph it. I took about 16 pictures from various angles as we drove in a semi-circle around the base.

An hour later we arrived at Fuji film. The Kanagawa Fuji film factory is about 70sq. kilometers in area, home to over 4000 employees, and makes over 10,000 varieties of products.

We were greeted by a very nice tour guide who escorted us into a lecture hall. On the way in I was unable to get a picture (because of the nature of the thing) of the NO PICTURE sign. Irony thy name is Fuji film. Once we were all settled we were told to stand up and walk outside for a group photo. As expected, the photographer was top notch. After the picture was taken we all went back to the lecture hall for a brief introduction to the facilities.

After the introduction we walked to another building in which the Fuji “Quick Snap” instant cameras are made. It’s quite amazing in that each camera can be almost wholly remade from the parts of a used camera. On top of the resource efficiency, all of the work is done by robots. The only humans present are there to service the machines.

Next we got on the bus and took a short drive to another part of the facility. There we were shown the final step in the factory’s water purification facility, a koi pond. Being ISO14001 certified Fuji film abides by strict environmental standards. Before releasing the used water (evidently film production uses a lot of water) into the natural surroundings it is passed through the koi pond. Scientists can measure the health of the koi to gauge how clean the water is. As a bonus we got to feed the koi (who went into a feeding frenzy like little sharks.)

Back on the bus we rode back to the entrance where we each received a copy of the picture we had taken as well as a free “Quick Snap” camera. We said goodbye to our tour guide and headed for Asahi Beer.

Several minutes and some steep S-curves later (ala “Initial D” for those in the know) we pulled up in front of the Asahi plant. Due to an error in planning we were scheduled to go on the tour before going to lunch.

Inside the factory we watched a short intro movie (in Japanese) before beginning the tour. Unlike at Fuji film where we were the only tour group and the tour guide spoke English, at Asahi we were with other people and the tour was given in Japanese. Luckily my knowledge from previous brewery tours served me well and I was able to understand most of what was said.

The general difference between Asahi and the local breweries I visited back home was a matter of scale. At Asahi everything was approximately ten times bigger. The brew kettles were bigger, the fermentation tanks were bigger and the caning machines were bigger. In fact the fermentation tanks are so big (and plentiful, 45 - 3 story tanks) that if you were to drink one beer a day, it would take you 3900 years to empty all of the tanks. Also of note is the bottle labeling machine which can label 600 bottles per minute.

After the walking part of the tour was over the taste test part began. This is where “lunch first” would have been nice. As mentioned in the weekend’s post, here again was “nomi-hodai” or all you can drink (this time, in 20 minutes). After sampling both the light and dark (I actually really like the dark (and I hate dark beers)) the tour ended and we went to the Asahi community restaurant for lunch.

Once everyone finished eating we got back on the bus and rode for home. Two hours later we arrived in Shinjuku and parted ways with our teacher. After that we all rode the train home together.

So that was the awesomeness of yesterday. There’s less than a week before I go home now and I’m a little stressed (finals plus having to move all my accumulated junk home.) I have the feeling I definitely want to return some day. Enough writing for tonight.

Ja Mata Ne.