So, we (my friend Rihanna and I) started out our eening by driing to Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture. It took about four + hours, because I did take the wrong interchange for a short while. Sanjo is a little bit bigger than Minamisoma, with 98k people, but it seemed a lot bigger.
Either way, we got into town on Friday night 9/16/16, but we were up bright and early on Saturday morning with the intention to go to Echigo-Yuzawa station, and then take a train out to Joetsu. But we ended up on the wrong platform and took a wrong train in the opposite direction which set us back about an hour. But once we figured out our problem, we were back on track. We made it to Echigo-Yuzawa station on a really fancy shinkansen (bullet train.) This shinkansen had nice chairs, the kind you’d find in a livingroom, not like normal train or bus seats and televisions showing peaceful and artistic images, and two trains with art and photography displayed everywhere. There were also two colorful children’s cars with children’s toys and a café car. It was quite awesome. But we were only on that shinkasen for twenty minutes before our stop.
Once we got to Echigo-Yuzawa station we had lunch and then went to the “Sake Museum.” It’s a little area inside the station where you can sample five different types of sake with ￥500 (about $5.)
I tried these five and my favorite one was the one with the red letters and the mountains on it. It was very subtle and light. It didn’t kick me in the face with its power like the brown one did. It was awesome to try all these different sake and be able to compare flavors. I didn’t really have much opportunity to do this back home, it was really neat.
There were also some different salt samples that were around for us to try. I tried all the ones that were odd colors, like green and pink. They were so interesting!
After that, we went to a sake onsen (bath.) It wasn’t as impressive as the internet would have me believe, but it was fine. Really couldn’t tell that there was any sake in the bath, seemed pretty normal, and not really worth the price.
By this time, it was getting late and we realized we didn’t have time to make it to Joetsu for the Rinsen-Ji Temple, but we made plans to visit it on Monday before we headed home. So we just headed back to Sanjo, and Rihanna made dinner (I helped.) We made a pasta with white shrimp sauce (because there is no such thing as alfredo sauce) and tomatoes and garlic. It was pretty good.
This is a beautiful mobile that was inside Echigo-Yuzawa station. All those little ornaments are made from a traditional Japanese cloth.
And a really cool, traditional-looking, life-size doll.
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