Walking into a sake brewery is like walking into someone's home. In the old days, it was customary that the kurabito (brewery workers) all stayed in shared housing at the brewery during the brewing season – people traveled from far and wide from their hometowns...
Overlooking Lake Biwa from Mt. Shizugatake Sake Gumi is our monthly sake subscription service with 150 members throughout California. Join today! Kayoko and I tend to travel to places in Japan that produce foods and drinks we really like. One of those is sake from Kita Brewery. What...
Tomita Brewery is a sake brewery on the northern tip of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. They make Shichi Hon Yari sakes, which this month, is featured as part of Sake Gumi. We also always have their junmai on our...
The first time we met Mayuko Kita, of Kita Sake Brewery, was in Fremont at a sake trade show. An uninspiring setting (sorry Fremont trade shows) for such an inspiring person we would meet. This sake trade show was like...
When I started to do some research on Shiga Prefecture, I quickly found out that the birthplace of tanuki statues is Shigaraki (a town on the southern tip of Shiga). I was intrigued because Shigaraki was also where our donabes come from – it turns out that it is the...
I have lived in Tokyo in the past for about 10 years of my life, but I admit my knowledge of Japanese geography is really limited. Limited not only to Tokyo proper, but more specifically to Western Tokyo, where pretty much everyone...
