We took a day trip to the small town of Saijo, which is home to 10 Sake breweries. Sake is actually the Japanese word for "alcohol," but Westerners use it to refer to Japanese rice wine. We walked around for about half a day, checking out the breweries and sampling some delicious sake.
A carving in Saijo showing the process of making rice wine.
In the courtyard of one of the breweries. Sake is made during the winter and then aged over the summer, so there wasn't much activity. Sean is standing in front of an antique tub in which the rice would be steamed. You can see a similar tub in the carving above.
Different types of rice and showing how the rice is "polished" to reveal just the white interior, which is then steamed, mixed with water and allowed to ferment, and then filtered.
Antique tools used when making rice wine. Though there are large-scale producers who have mechanized the process, some breweries still use essentially the same manual, hands-on techniques that have been used for centuries.
Antique sake vessels.
Sake tasting at Kamotsuru Sake Brewing Co.
One of their highest quality sakes (which we got to try!!) was enjoyed by President Obama and Japan's Prime Minister during a state visit.
After enjoying Saijo, we took a local train back into Hiroshima and caught the bullet train to start making our way back towards Tokyo. However, we stopped about halfway in a city call Nagoya for one of the big Sumo tournaments!
The tournament was held in an indoor arena on the grounds of the old Nagoya castle. Here is part of where the moat was.
One of the highly ranked wrestlers arriving at the arena. People were lined up outside just to catch glimpses of the wrestlers.
Inside the arena. By mid afternoon it was completely sold out!
Fights are grouped together into sessions, and the competing wrestlers all line up at the start of each session.
Each fight typically lasts less than a minute. Some conclude in just a second or two. Most of the time between fights is spent in pre-fight ceremony, ring maintenance, attempts by the wrestlers to intimidate their opponents, etc.
And...fight! From our basic understanding of the sport (which almost certainly lacks any nuance), once the fight begins, the first person who allows any part of his body to touch the ground other than the soles of his feet, or who steps outside the ring, loses. Despite watching a ton of fights, it never got boring and was really quite thrilling at times despite not knowing any of the wrestlers (some of whom had obvious fan sections).
And how can you not love a sport for which the ticket stubs expressly prohibit "gangsters"?
Not every wrestler is famous enough for a chauffeured car. These guys were waiting for the bus.
After the day's fights ended (the actual tournament lasts about 2 weeks), we caught another train into Tokyo for the remainder of the trip.
That night we did dinner at another Izakaya that specialized in grilled pork.
They were quite proud of the fact that no part of the pig went to waste, as evidenced by some of the menu options.
But at least we knew what we were getting. Here is what the Japanese menu looked like.
We spent most of our remaining time in Tokyo relaxing, shopping for souvenirs, etc. We then boarded our plane back to the U.S. on Saturday.
See everyone soon!
