A Tale of Two Museums

Due to a peculiar twist of fate, yesterday took me on a fun tour of Tokyo contrasts. I was meeting Yu-Ching, a former AMZN Co-worker, for dinner in Roppongi hills but decided to join some of my classmates for a visit to the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Photography before that. Unfortunately when we arrived at its Ebisu location it was closed due to changing of exhibits. Not wanting to have made the trip there in vain we took at quick look around and realized that we were close to the Yebisu Beer Museum, which is sponsored by/part of the Sapporo Breweries and hence charges no admission making it a perfect impromptu touring substitute. The Beer Museum Tour is kept short and sweet in favor of a swift tasting room arrival. Having been to the Carlsberg Breweries in Copenhagen about 25 times as a child (they make tasty sodas as well in case you were wondering why...), this tour really isn't all that impressive, but it does contain a few gems that justify a visit: A collection of Sapporo Beer advertisement posters through the years (from 1950-Now) featuring wonderful images from the the early Japanese Audrey Hepburns of the sixties to the permed & bikini clad Japanese beach beauties of the nineties. A high tech 3-D digitally animated fairy tale featuring a beer fairy (looking quite a bit like a cross over of Disney's Cinderella & Tinkerbell characters), and an evil guy turning beer in to water (gulp!). I didn't get much of the story to be honest, but the whole set up was very cool. Lastly there is the tasting room of course, which I with Dorothy in mind had to pay a diligent visit to and finally the gift shop with featured highlights such as a Beer Jello Desert (surprisingly tasty) and Beer Chocolate (not so much). All in all a whale of a time.

From there Roppongi Hills with its Mori Art Center was next on the list. The Mori had made my short list due to its highly acclaimed current exhibit Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo and features the added bonus of being located on the 52nd floor, and hence providing a breathtaking view of the city (yesterday was a bright, sunny and clear day :)
I loved the Tokyo-Berlin show - which hit very close to home having lived in Berlin for almost 5 years and being very familiar with the art scene there. -- The exhibit showcases the development in art & design in these two capitals over the last 150 years and draws up contrasts and parallels. I love this kind of stuff, end of story.

Dinner with Yu-Ching was great. It was my first visit to a Chinese restaurant (sorry, forgot the name) in Tokyo and it did not disappoint -- featuring superb dim sum and tofu-skin-rolls (I'm sure there is a better sounding English name for those). We followed it up with a stop at a Toraya a cafe/confectionery shop specializing in contemporary interpretations of traditional Japanese sweets, where I was treated to a delicate slice of cocoa-red-bean gateau, dusted with macha powder and served with ginger-cream - pure Japanese heaven.