NOMIHO culture in HOKKAIDO
Do you know the amazing drinking culture called?No Mi Ho Dai??
NOMIHO is the abbreviation of?“No Mi Ho Dai”.?In Japanese 飲み放題.
NOMIHO?stands for 1–2 hours of happy hours that customers can drink alcohol and soft drinks as much as they want. Depending on the quality of the alcohol and the level of each restaurant, bar or?Izakaya?(Japanese style bars), the price varies — but some shops allow customer to enjoy?NOMIHO?for?2 hours with less than 10 Euro!
Some people from Nordic countries were freaked out and said “10 Euro is the price that we have to pay for a glass of alcohol…”
Some people told us “Sapporo is only known for Sapporo beer!” and now we feel that we are obliged to explain what the drinking culture in Sapporo looks like.
Maybe we have been too modest to promote our culture up until now, but everyone likes to drink and talk about drinking culture, so we decided to concentrate on this topic today because drinking culture is important not only for building friendships, but also successfully scale your startups by getting to know your counterparts.
It’s true that Hokkaido people drink a lot!
The well-known fact in the world is that “colder climates and fewer sunlight hours means people tend to consume more alcohol.”?CBC wrote an article about it.
What about Japan?
The dark blue means “strong alcohol tolerance”, and the white (or light blue) means “weak alcohol tolerance”.
The more northern it is, the colder it gets in Japan as well— so the research data about the correlation between the climate and alcohol tolerance is proven to be true, and it is scientifically proven.
This data created by?Euglena?is based on genetics. According to another research paper “Association between ALDH2 rs671 G>A polymorphism and gastric cancer susceptibility in Eastern Asia” written by?You Jiang,?Jun Zhang,?Yuee Wu,?Jian Wang, and?Liang Li,
A SNP in the aldehyde dehydrogenase-2 (ALDH2) gene, rs671, is highly prevalent among the East Asian population and causes decreased ALDH2 enzyme activity which may result in an inability to eliminate acetaldehyde. (Acetaldehyde is a metabolite of alcohol.)
Euglena collected the data of ALDH2 specifically “rs671 SNP” that affects our “hangover” symptoms, and analyzed the alcohol tolerance based on the ratio of local residents in each prefecture having the genotype GG with the high alcohol tolerance to prevent hangover.
Although there are some exceptions (like Okinawa, the island in the bottom) and some prefectures in Kyushu, Hokkaido is ranked as the top 12th prefecture (after several regions in Tohoku area) having genotypes that are strong against alcohol.
(Aomori prefecture took the first place — congrats ??)
The very first Japanese person trained in Germany to learn how to brew beers
Aside from the genetically proven high alcohol tolerance amongst (majority of) Hokkaido residents, the culture of producing alcohol is historically rooted.
In 1865, a 17-year-old young boy,?Seibei Nakagawa?decided to learn how to brew beers in Europe. First he landed in the United Kingdom, but soon he moved to Germany to train himself at Berlin Beer Brewing Company. (reference)
In 1875, the pioneers who were designated to explore the Northern frontier, Hokkaido decided to start the brewery in Hokkaido after listening to?Seibei Nakagawa?about the importance of brewing beers fermented and aged at low temperature because Hokkaido has enough ice (snow) to keep the temperature low.
This is how Sapporo Beer started.
When these pioneers were diligently working hard to brew beer,?Thomas Antisell, a physician, scientist, professor and Irelander, who served as an advisor to the Japanese Meiji government, found a wild hop. He suggested the other pioneers to cultivate hop within Hokkaido — because he foresaw the climate in Hokkaido can grow enough hop not only for brewing beer in Hokkaido but also exporting the hop to the world. (reference)
In 1877, they started to cultivate hop in Sapporo — and from 1881, they successfully cultivated 100% of the hops used in Hokkaido to brew beers.
If you want to know all the stories and history about Sapporo Beer, visit?Sapporo Beer Museum?(there is a beer garden within the museum) ??
Oktoberfest? — nope, it’s Sapporofest!
领英推荐
During the summer, the main park within Sapporo that “all” local residents and tourists love,?“Odori Park”?turn into a huge beer garden.
Odori Park?is the beloved recreation area that runs through the whole city center of Sapporo City. The length is 1.5 km, and it’s approximately 7.8 ha.
During the summer season, small kids and adults all enjoy wearing?Yukata, the summer version of Japanese traditional cloths,?Kimono.
Whenever it’s sunny, we just go?Odori Park?to rest, relax, chat with friends and family. The park is for everyone — residents, tourists and outsiders of all ages.
We see a lot of “München” signboard — why is that?
In 1972, the City of Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympics, and the city of München hosted the Olympics in summer. Sapporo & München signed a Sister City Agreement, and these two cities have been collaborating since then. The 2022 was the year that we celebrated the 50th anniversary together ??
Will our Hokkaido team visit Germany soon after several trips in Nordic countries? Keep your eyes on our latest news!
Nommunication
Before you finish reading this article, you must know the most powerful and simple word “Nommunication”. This is the shortened word for “No Mi” + “Communication”. As you have read carefully the first part, you remember “No Mi” means “Drink”.?Nommunication?means “Drink & Communication”, and this is always used for our business settings.
As many of you living in Japan for a long time already know and get used to, Japanese people use?Honne（本音）&?Tatamae（建前）. Honne?is “honest opinion” and?Tatemae?is just a public stance. Since Japanese business culture (not only in Hokkaido) is build on trust-based relationships, it’s often hard to see what kind of honest opinion your counter party has at the first meeting.
Japanese business people all expect that everyone is talking on public stance basis for the first few meetings, and when we go to drinks together, we really get to know what the other think.
*Now this article is about how to successfully grow startups in Hokkaido & Japan.
Startup founders always start with listening to “problems” that their counter parties have — it’s often corporate partners. Unlike a small startup team, corporate partners have lots of politics within the big organization, and it’s even hard for them to honestly tell the true problems within the organization without considering the relationships with the other stakeholders.
That’s why drinking culture is super important here!
We use the tactics “Nommunication” to carefully listen and reveal what the real problems are. Since many Japanese people have weak alcohol tolerance, it’s easy to start discovering the honest opinions once they get drunk — this is when we get the true answers.
Do you know who wins the game? — people with high alcohol tolerance.
This is the scene that we often see in the metropolitan area. We rarely see it in Hokkaido because
1. many people have high alcohol tolerance, and
2. it’s super cold outside during the winter (about -15 Celsius degree in Sapporo City during winter) and we all get sober regardless of how much alcohol we take at the first store — and we go onto the second and third bars. Some people start jumping on a clump of snow to cool down.
Do you want to experience our amazing drinking culture? We are organizing a big startup conference again next winter, and we can all experience the NOMIHO culture in HOKKAIDO. Please don’t forget to implement?“Nommunication”?especially if you are a startup trying to have a corporate PoC partners, or an investor trying to get LP for your fund.
Anyways — Cheers!