Brewery: Various
Style: Various
Purchased at: Ticket purchased online, there is help for English speakers.
Price: ¥4500 per ticket
Taste: 10/10
Alcohol Level: Various, one of the beers with 10% but didnt taste like it.
Music: Toe and Jizue
Snack: I ate super spicy fried chicken, quesadillas and a sausage that made my breath reek but tasted unreal.
Website: http://snowmonkey.jp/
On the 18th and 19th
of March there was a music festival in Shiga Kogen, Nagano. Shiga Kogen is a
big mountain range that would be well known to anyone that comes to Japan to
ski. Also a beautiful place to explore and wander in summer.
The festival was called Snow Monkey Beer Live. A bunch of really
cool Japanese bands were playing. As well as that, a heap of craft breweries
come and set up small bars in the concert hall. You get a special beer glass
and a bunch of beer tickets, and then you can try a whole lot of beers from all
over Japan. There was awesome food too.
Of the bands playing, I was particularly excited to see Jizue and
Toe. I couldn’t believe these bands were playing so close to my house.
There was still a lot of snow once we started getting into the
mountains. I was surprised because down in town theres not a flake left.
I tried a lot of different beers but decided I wasn’t going to
review them all. Instead I bought a bunch from the bottle shop they have set
up. It was unreal walking into the room and seeing all the different cool beers
from all over Japan. I only bought 6, but I wanted them all.
This is the glass you get, it's my main glass now.
On the day my
favourite beer was one that was infused with a smokey flavour somehow. I can’t
remember which company made it, but the point is there was a lot of cool beers
to try.
Even if you aren’t a
fan of the bands playing, it’s still definitely worth going. The range of beer
was terrific, it’s cool to see so many people making cool beers in Japan.
If bands like Toe and
Jizue are playing, I can’t wait to see who is on next years bill. There were
three shows all up. One on Saturday night then two on Sunday, a midday one and
an evening one. For each ticket you buy you’ll get 5 beer tickets.
About the shuttle bus. Apparently there is a shuttlebus that runs from Yudanaka station up to the event. Its kinda hard to find information about it on the website, but when we got to the festival a guy gave us the schedule. Maybe if you click around enough on the website you can find it. There are also other local busses running but they stop before the festival finishes.
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