By Yuki HD

When we were little we used to watch my oba-chan (grandmother) make this seasonal treat from Kagoshima prefecture in southern Japan. We were too little to enjoy it at first, but as we grew older the dish became more and more delicious.

Oba-chan’s preparation differed from the original recipe in that she substituted shochu for water. She did this to preserve the kinkan (kumquats), and the flavor was an unexpected gift.

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Throughout the years, we’ve been asked to present more events highlighting shochu. Well, here’s the event that you’ve all been waiting for! Generously sponsored by Takara, we’ll be tasting four different kinds of shochu: imo (sweet potato), mugi (barley), kome (rice) and soba (buckwheat).

WHEN: Thursday 9/20 from 6-8pm

WHERE: Umami Mart
815 Broadway
Oakland, Pop-Up Hood
BART: 12th Street
Google Map

RSVP to hello@umamimart.com 

And guess what?

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I want Washio’s Awamori Wasabi-wari to be world famous, so I’ve gone ahead and named it “The World Famous Awamori Wasabi-wari.” It’s been out there on the WORLD wide web for over three years now, so I think it has earned its title.

I caught the making of the world famous Awamori Wasabi-wari on tape last year during my visit to this tiny little bar in western Tokyo.

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By Shizuka Wakashita

What do you drink when you go to a soba place? Beer? Sake? Shochu?

I thought sake but I was wrong.

I was converted into a sake lover about three years ago. Ever since then I almost always order sake when I go out for Japanese food, except for the occasions when I am with new faces and everyone yells freely, “Toriaezu beer de,” (let’s kick it off with some beer)  and I don’t feel like explaining why I like sake and all that.

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Happy new year! How did you spend your new year’s day?

The start of my new year was the worst. On new year’s eve, I was at my a party in SF and drank many whisky cocktails that my friend made. I enjoyed the cocktail and the party, and then went to the BART (the Bay Area train system) station around 3 am.

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Hi everyone, I’m back!

Let me tell you what I was doing all this time, while neglecting this shochu column.

Two months ago, I went back to Japan to take the Shochu Advisor’s test, so I needed to concentrate on studying shochu. I did pass the test, and got the certificate. What is a Shochu Advisor? Yeah, I know, it sounds fake.

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When customers visit Ippuku (where I work) and see the shochu collection, they invariably say, “Oh wow, look at the beautiful sake collection!” I’m tired of correcting them, but I have to, and I tell them that those bottles are not sake, they are shochu! And then, they think for a minute and say, “Oh, soju!”.

It’s so annoying. Ippuku is a Japanese restaurant, why would we have Korean soju?

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Since I have moved to the U.S. from Japan, I have felt sad about how Americans drink, because American people don’t drink so much. “飲みが足んねえ” (nomi ga tan ne e, or “They don’t drink enough”). They are too discreet. Maybe people can’t be a dead drunk in U.S., because of safety issues. Maybe they have to drive after drinking.

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This time I would like to talk about mugi (barley) shochu in more general terms.

Mugi shochu might be easier to understand than any other shochu, because mugi shochu is distilled from barley–like whisky, vodka, and gin. There are two types of mugi shochus. One is clear, and the other is amber. The amber one is aged in oak barrels, and the taste is like light whisky.

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I’m ashamed to say that I had not tried kome (short rice) shochu so often in Japan because I didn’t have many occasions to try it. Truthfully, I did not care for it much anyway, since I was most into imo (sweet potato) shochu. So I’m still a kome shochu novice. I want to introduce Toyonaga to you in this post for kome shochu beginners like me.

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