The Beers! The Trains!

Hello all,

It's been a while already, so I'm dumping all interesting, uninteresting, related and unrelated photos in this entry.

On a more related note, it's almost been a full week already since I posted something, but that's because not much has happened lately. Anyway, I've been eating rice and noodles for quite a while now, which is fine, but I've also eaten some self made badly prepared chicken. It was still pretty raw and now I feel the consequences of it in my belly for a few days already.

Luckily, today I found some relief, but it has really been a few rough days, consuming a lot of energy and it's still not over yet. I guess I have to endure the soup factory in my body a little longer. A can of Coca Cola can do miracles. I think I'll down a bottle of it later -> goes to visit the vending machine on the corner right away.

Anyway, last weekend I visited a good friend of mine who has an astonishing collection of model trains. We met each other a few years ago in Germany and quickly became good friends.

He lives in a big house, but despite his overabundance of model trains, does not sport a layout in any form. Well, rails on the floor don't really count as far as I'm concerned. He approached me in a careful and very Japanese way concerning this problem and I replied with much enthusiasm.

I have quite some experience with building small layouts, but not with projects that he came up with. On his large layout, he wants to see the following train lines:
- Shinkansen line (17 cars);
- Long Distance line (16 cars);
- Commuter line (11 cars);
- Ikegami-style line (3 cars);

All of these lines should meet at a big station within a dense urban landscape and have a reasonable amount of travel distance in several landscapes.

The commuter line should have a smaller station that connects with a local line (my personal wish) in a suburban area and possible have a full A to B operation possible.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it all a bit easier to build, but it will still be a hugely massive undertaking.

Anyway, the day after playing with trains, my girlfriend and I went to the Suntory brewery in Musashino for a tour and free beers. I recommend this tour to any beer lover, since it's very interesting to see a clean Japanese beer brewery in operation and have three (!) beers at their expense.

Afterwards we went to Shimokitazawa to have dinner at a great Yakitori pub. I drank too much expensive, but oh so good, Potato Shochu (Japanese wodka) from the brand Nigori-imo. Probably too hardcore for you kids. Also, we ate too much skewers of delicious delicious chicken intestines and whatnot. It was pretty much a perfect day.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better now, after finishing a bottle of Cola, and the weather looks very good! It's sunny and a boosting 12˚C outside. As always, hover over the images for a short description.

Cheers!