When is a swivell stick not a swivell stick?

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We headed off from our lovely hotel to see more beautiful scenery and glimpses of cherry blossoms. However, the main aim of our journey was to explore the magic of Asahi beer and how it is made. The journey to have beer by 11 am was made all the more enjoyable by the lovely cherry blossoms that were earlier than usual. We arrived at Asahi to start our 40 min tour which was very informative. Dad you would have loved it and it reminded me of the days when you used to brew your own beer, although theirs was on a much larger scale and included robots to do all the work. The stats were amazing! The challenge was set for us to drink 3 jugs of different beer in 20 mins and I was determined not to let the team down. Unfortunately I didn't realise that one of those 3 jugs was a stout.... game over. However the game was not totally lost as we decided to have the fore thought to buy plenty of beer for when we are in our little Airbnb. There were also several other items of interest in the souvenior shop. I spotted some great swivell sticks which I pointed out to Mal and suggested that they would be a great little gift for our kids. I wasn't quite sure why he was rolling around on the floor laughing until he asked me to put my glasses on and actually read what they were..... so kids you are actually going to get some authentic wooden ear picks! Wish I hadn’t read the sign and bought in ignorance. The looks on my kid’s faces would have been priceless. The next stop was .... yep you guessed it... another temple! Only this time we got to climb inside Buddha! It was a lovely stop over with great shops in a little coastal town which we might come back to as it is only 2 hours from Tokyo. We finally arrived at our swanky hotel around 6.30 and had to check and return to the lobby by 7:15 to make our way to dinner. The meal was traditional Japanese and that meant shoes off and into a locker before making our way to the low table. Our meals are always great fun to learn about the differences in our culture from the way we use our eating utensils to putting out the garbage. After dinner we walked back to the hotel which included a lesson on how to use the train system as we had a free day to see Tokyo. Mal and I were busy thinking about a sleep in, but listened anyway and wondered how many of our tour friends would get lost. Can't wait to hear their stories.

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