Niigata Sake no Jin: Day 2

3/12/17
The next morning we woke up and had a nice breakfast from the ryokan. I felt great! I got enough sleep and I was no worse for wear. It was amazing!

This was the koi pond in the little garden at the ryokan.

And here are some lovely decorations from the front of the ryokan.

We still had the rest of the day, and no plans so I suggested going to Niigata city and checking out the Minato-Inari shrine with the spinning komainu statues (see my Niigata Road Trip posts for more info.) My friends had never seen it, so I thought it would be nice to go show them.

We drove the hour back into the city and I told them about the site. It was a weird feeling being the person who knew things. This time I was the tour guide! While we were there I saw a few things that I hadn’t noticed before. This lovely rock was at one end of the shrine, and I thought it was really pretty, so I took a picture. It looks like marbled meat.

I also saw this old statue that had been badly weathered over time. There was a little metal woman statue on top, but I couldn’t get a good picture. Luckily my friends helped me out:

Here is Felipe doing his best impersonation of the derpy kitsune statues:

From there we still had plenty of time so I suggested going to the Northern History Museum outside Niigata City (once again, see my Niigata vacation posts for more info.)

A Bromance to be envious of...

Once again we saw the beautiful gardens and the many tea houses scattered around the grounds. We walked through the big house and the barns where they kept the various farming equipment.

Old-timey card game!

It was really fun explaining all I had learned the last time I was there. And seeing everything a second time helped me remember things I probably would have forgotten.

Here’s my gang!

This time we received an English language pamphlet that told us a little bit about things to look out for around the site. On the pamphlet it mentioned the “Power stones.” They are a few stones around the gardens from which people “feel power.” This is how Cormac felt as he found one:

After that we walked around the small neighborhood on our way back to the car, we found a small park,

and a shrine on a corner which had some Jizo-sama statues inside. It also had some incense and candles inside that you could use to pray for the souls of children (that is the purpose of that particular shrine, I think)

We also went to see this Buddhist temple. It was just as pretty as I remembered it. Then we piled back into the car and drove back to Fukushima City where we played Frisbee in a parking lot. After we were done with that tom-foolery went our separate ways. I then drove the long road back to Minamisoma.

Niigata Sake no Jin; Day 1

3/11/17
This was the weekend that I went on another trip to Niigata for a Sake convention. I stayed with a friend in Fukushima City the night before, and the next day three friends (Katie, Cormac and Felipe) and I piled into a car and drove to a small town outside Niigata City. The place we arrived was a nice ryokan in the countryside. It had a nice Shinto shrine about thirty feet from the building entrance and a row of Jizo-sama statues across the street in a park.

Up close you could see that this shrine had suffered some fire damage, but it was still standing.

 The snow was pretty deep and we were short on time, so I didn’t get closer to check them out.

We met up with the rest of the people we were meeting that day and we all climbed into a shuttle bus and drove into downtown Niigata City for this sake convention.

Here is a manhole cover for Niigata City:

We walked a ways from the station until we got to the convention center. Beautiful views along the way.

There was also a green van in the city that was surrounded by men dressed in military greens. They were members of the Nationalist party and were shouting pro-Nationalist messages over their loudspeakers. Our guide in Niigata City told us to not draw any attention to ourselves. We (foreigners) are part of the reason they are not happy with Japan’s current political state. We all kept our heads down and just hurried down the street.

We arrived to the venue and we were set loose. I have never been to a convention before, and to be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting into. There were thousands of people there!

They gave us a little sake glass when we gave them our ticket and we walked around to the different stalls and sampled sake. About an hour later we went to a class in a side room for English speakers.

Didn't want to miss the Swminar!

It was a presentation given to us by some people who work for the tourism industry in Niigata, and these people in particular are in charge of sake tourism in Niigata. They hold tours where you can go plant and harvest rice and start the sake brewing process yourself. They told us about some websites they host and events that they hold every year.

They then got to the meat of their presentation which was teaching us about the different types of sake. They told us what each type of sake pairs well with food-wise and what flavors to be aware of when drinking sake. It also separated different types of sake on a quadrant that compared flavor strength to odor strength.

It was quite educational, and I enjoyed it.

After the presentation, armed with our new knowledge, my friends and I went forth through the throng again to sample sake!

We now had some idea about what to look for and what we were talking about. So we sampled sake and discussed them with each other. “This sake is totally a blue (weak flavor, weak odor) sake.” – “No way, man, It is totally a green (weak flavor, strong odor) sake!” We are all amateurs and had no idea what we were talking about for the most part, but it didn’t matter. It was such a great time!
There were women on the main stage dressed as geisha and in traditional kimono. They danced and it was nice to watch.

We got hungry later and I tried a soup that had whale meat in it. I use the word “meat” loosely; because it was just thin strips of … I guess whale blubber with some whale skin attached to it.  It was still pretty good, but chewy.

A few hours later the sake convention ended and we loaded back onto our shuttle bus and went back to the ryokan. We were able to settle into our rooms for a short time before dinner started. The owner of the ryokan chose our dinner with care and gave the room a few bottles of sake to drink with our meal. That room was a party. We talked and socialized until around 9 pm when we all wanted to go check out the onsen in the ryokan. The onsen in this ryokan was sex separated, so the men and ladies split ways for a while. We sat in the onsen for over an hour and had our girl talk. It was great fun!
Afterwards we met back up with the men and moved the party to one of the rooms where we continued to relax and socialize. A few people kept drinking, but I had had enough of that for the day.

Eventually the day caught up with us and we all started to feel exhausted. We each retired to our respective rooms and got some sleep, as there were more plans the following day.