Yesterdays Oktoberfest was not as good as hoped… certainly not as good as last years. Yuko’s dad was pretty disappointed too.

This year, it was more like being a in a big izakaya that just happended to sell German beer and a bit of German food (and the food choice was pretty limited this year, with it pretty much only being Sausage and Saurkraut). The reason why we called it Izakaya ‘atmosphere’ was because everything just seemed to huddle together in their own “in-groups”. I think we only had a good chat with a (slight crazy) old guy on our table at about 12:00-ish, and later on with a Japanese student who was going around selling German pretzels.

There was also a real lack of German music. The did have some, but it’s was mixed in with Jazz and some modern Japanese arts.

Finally, nobody at the event decided to actually teach the Japanese attendees the words to the German drinking songs.

Hence, they was a complete lack of “big German piss-up complete with chatting to complete strangers”, which we experienced last year. A real shame. We were trying to work out why there seemed to less effort this year. Was it the location? There were certainly more Germans (and other Europeans) around at last years event. Most of the Embassy staff were there last year.

Ahhh well, looks like I’ve now promised to take Yuko’s dad to Germany for the next one :)