What kind of restaurant do eight sake breweries and a shoyu (soy sauce) maker, all with more than 300 years of history, create together? A unique shabu-shabu establishment with great sake, as recently reported by Nikkei Style, the digital version of Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun (Japan Economic Newspaper). Called Yûkyunokura, the restaurant launched in Ginza, Tokyo…
There’s an app for everything these days. Too bad most of them aren’t very useful and many of us just delete them from our phones. Luckily for sake fans, there’s a new app that shows a lot of promise. If this one keeps improving, we’re certain it will have a permanent place on your phone.…
by Matsuzaki Haruo | photography by Brian Kowalczyk Shukoku Tosa– “Tosa, the land of sake.” This is the marketing soundbite used by the sake industry in Kochi Prefecture, which utilizes the old name for the region, Tosa. There are many people who associate the Kochi way of life with lots of drinking, and not incorrectly.…
The drive from central Iwate Prefecture to the coast is quite pleasant. Most of the roads snake through idyllic towns and beautiful snow covered mountains, imparting a peaceful serenity that is quintessential Tohoku. As the coastline approaches, a darker reality sets in. In Kesennuma, the first major town when you reach the Pacific, there is…
Osaka-based market research firm Cross Marketing recently conducted a survey of 1000 residents aged twenty to sixty-nine in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama), to determine their drinking habits. The results revealed that beer was the beverage of choice for both men and women. Sake was third for men, after beer…
What’s a night with Enter.Sake like? Enter music, dance, great sake and ample fun. World-renowned techno musician Richie Hawtin wrote about his love for music and sake in a recent edition of Sake Today, touching briefly on his Enter.Sake project. It is basically Hawtin’s curated collection of sake brands, a private-label portfolio which includes such…
Which was the more important year for Fujioka Shuzo, 1902, the year of its founding, or 2002, the year of its rebirth? Maybe it was several years before that latter date, when Fujioka Masaaki decided that he wanted to give the brewery his great-grandfather founded another chance. Those that love great sake should give thanks…
My connection to Japan started in the late 1980s, before I ever dreamed of travelling there. One of my first encounters involved three electronic music instruments that started regurgitating all the synthetic sounds I had come to love on my favourite electronic “Detroit Techno” records of that time: the Roland TR909 drum machine, the TB303…
The traditional ways of doing things always seem to circle back around. Be it sake brewing or any traditional craft, people have spent great lengths of time figuring out the best way to do it. Even if the process was full of hassles, they continued to do it that way for good reason: it led…
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