A submission to the September 2011 J-Festa with the theme “Events in Japan“.

The Namamugi Incident was a samurai assault on foreign nationals in Japan on September 14, 1862, which resulted in the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863, during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. It started out with a samurai attack on British nationals, ended up with the British engaging war on a province of Japan and has an interesting side piece on how the Japanese national flag was adopted.

Body of Charles Richardson, 1862

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A day trip to Yokohama is not complete without a trip to the Kirin Brewery Yokohama. The brewery is located in Namamugi, which is a short hop from the Yokohama city centre.

The tour of the Kirin Brewery was practically the same as the tour of the Asahi Brewery Osaka, just interchange the word ‘Asahi’ for ‘Kirin’ in the beer tour template and voilà – you have yourself a tour.

All was not bad however. We did get two free beers at the end. Furthermore, as Kirin means giraffe in Japanese, I learnt that the strange animal on the Kirin Ichiban label is a drawing of what Japanese thought a giraffe looked like in earlier times. Mind you, they had never seen a giraffe (apparently/hopefully) and were drawing only what had been described to them.

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