Sake "Sugi-no-mori" of Ｎａｒａｉ Inn Town

Narai is an old inn town located in Shiojiri City, Nagano Prefecture. The town is on the Nakasendo that connected Edo (Tokyo in the present day) and Kusatsu-juku (Kusatsu City, Shiga Prefecture in the present day). The roughly 1-km-long main street of the town is lined with inns and various shops including local food shops selling oyaki, goheimochi, buckwheat noodles, or sweets, lacquer ware shops, Japanese pickle shops, liquor shops selling local sake, and craft shops.

The sake brewery Sugi-no-mori Shuzo is also located on the main street of this inn town. I searched for a Web site of this brewery but could not find such a site. Maybe it does not have one. This company seems to have gained in popularity through word of mouth.

Recently, my sake-drinking friends and I attended a bus tour that traveled to Narai and other sightseeing spots. In this tour, we stopped at this old town for about 50 minutes, so we dropped in this brewery.

There was a big cedar ball under the eaves of the brewery building. I think this type with a straw festoon is very rare.

I bought a bottle of Junmai Ginjo Suginomori at this shop. At this time, the shopkeeper gave me some plastic cups so that we could enjoy the sake in the bus on the way home.

After leaving the last sightseeing destination of Takato Joshi Koen, an old castle ruin park, which is famous for its cherry blossoms, the bus traveled from Takato Town to Chino City.

In the bus, when I opened the cap of the sake bottle I bought at Narai, the bus was running along the winding road that climbed up to Tsuetuki Pass. My sake cup in which I poured some sake, sometimes slid on the tiny table attached on the backrest of the seat in front of me. I had to be very careful and needed to hold my sake bottle and cup to prevent them from toppling or falling down. I gradually began to feel dizzy from the bus movement on the road with frequent curves and it became difficult to continue drinking the sake. What is worse, after passing Tsuetsuki Pass, the descending road was much steeper than the ascending one and it had many hairpin bends. I was sure that this was the most unsuitable condition for drinking sake.

Therefore, I shot the video I provided below while the bus was in rest in the parking lot of souvenir shop Oginoya that was located just close to the Suwako interchange on Chuo Jidoshado Express Highway (in a shaky bus, I need another hand to shoot video while holding a sake cup in my left hand and sake bottle in my right hand). I used my cell phone camera to shoot this, so picture and audio quality is not very good.

Although this is a junmai ginjo sake, its aroma is quite subdued, and flavor is unaffected. So, I recommend this sake for someone who wants to enjoy carefully a substantial flavor or acidity of junmai sake. Many people describe such sake as being flinty and dry, but this sake exhibits a bold and impressive taste deriving from koji rice, and just "flinty" or "dry" is not a right word for describing this sake.

Anyway, after the bus finally entered the express highway from the Suwako interchange, the seat is no longer shaky. So, we resumed enjoying the sake in peace. I like a bus tour because, unlike a drive trip, I don't need to drive a car and can drink sake freely.

Please watch other video works at Ichibay Channel.

Fireworks Display in Nagaoka

August 3, My friend and I visited Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture, to see fireworks. The city's fireworks are quite famous in Japan and some people say this fireworks display is the best in Japan. Anyway, we left home early in the morning, traveled to Nagaoka City by Shinkansen bullet train, got to the city shortly after 11 o'clock, visited a sake brewery, saw fireworks, got on a night train, and then came back in the morning of the next day. Somehow a forced march.

In front of the Nakagoka Station, I found this structure. What do you think this is? (See the end of this article for the answer.)


One of my friends living in this city drove to the station to pick up us. He took us to a sake brewery in the city. Actually, this brewery is operated by him and his family. There, we were treated to a good sake, daiginjo that this brewery entered in the new sake contest. This sake smelled brilliant and tasted mellow. Quite a nice sake although it was aged and, according to my friend, changed in its taste.

By the way, we used kikijoko, or sake-tasting cup, to enjoy this sake. I found that this cup is really big! It can even sufficiently contain a beer can.


Late in the afternoon, we moved to the dry riverbed of the Shinano River, where people could sit down to see fireworks. True to its reputation of the Japan's best firework display, there are so many people at the fireworks-viewing site. However, the riverbed of the Shinano River was too broad to completely be occupied by this many people, and I didn't feel so much that the site was "crowded."


Unlike fireworks display held in many other places in Japan, they can prepare many firework launching spots because they, I guess, can use a broad shore of the Shinano River. And, the sky of the Nagaoka City serves as a big screen for displaying large-scaled art of firework. In the end of the show, they blasted off big shots of fireworks into the sky in the entire field of vision from as many as five launching spots at the same time, and, moreover, this continued for a minute or several minutes (I didn't measure the exact time). I am sure this was the greatest fireworks I have ever seen!


When I watched these fireworks lying on my back, the blast sounds strongly hit my chest and penetrated it to reach the ground, and shocked the ground. Then the ground, I felt, shocked my body again from my back. Ineffable majestic power and excitement ran through my body.
This was really great fireworks. Although the photos below cannot convey the power of these fireworks as much as I felt, here I place them.


Well, we had some extra time after the fireworks display until our train left. So, quite naturally, we dropped in at an izakaya restaurant close to the station. It was quite a hot day, and chilled beer was nice!


Of course, when visiting Niigata, sake lovers must not fail to enjoy jizake (local sake). Actually, we ordered sake tasting sets.


Today's Sake
Daiginjo Hakkaisan (Hakkaijozo )
Sweet and mild taste
Junmai-daiginjo Rokuno-esshu (Asahishuzo)
Discree aroma and meaningful taste with complexity unlike other ordinary daiginjo sakes. They use a rice variety called Senshuraku for this sake. Does this complex taste originate in this rice?
Kubota Suiju (Asahi shuso)
Good aroma, clean-cut, and mellow taste


Answer: If you see this from the opposite side, you will find two fireworks launchers.