Sake Tasting in Saijo

Back in September, we were invited to go to Saijo to tour the sake breweries. Saijo was about an hour and half train ride and took us right past Hiroshima. It was a beautiful day and we were able to hang out with our good friends Kim and Keith and a new friend, Neil. Thankfully Neil had been there before so he was able to guide us around. It was a beautiful city and pretty quiet actually. In October they have an annual sake festival there but I'm glad we were able to experience it on a more personal level.

Sitting tight for our long train ride

That's Neil

The city map of the breweries

Hokie colors! :)

The street to one of the breweries

This is the restaurant where we had lunch

A wall of sake glasses

This was the lunch set we all ordered - it actually had some new flavors and foods we hadn't tried before! Can't for sure tell you what everything was... the servers spoke very limited English and we just took a guess and picked something off a menu that didn't have pictures. Thankfully, the food was AMAZING

My husband is a dork, LOL

A close up of the little mini fish that we ate on our rice

Too cute!

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a significance to the spherical plant hanging... I wish I could remember what it was, ha ha

I went up to this display thinking it was a sake sample... it was water, "mizu" LOL. There WERE actual samples out for us to try, though but I'm just not a huge fan of sake. Sake is a rice wine, but we learned it is brewed in a similar way to beer. It's a flavor that has to grow on you, that's for sure.

Allowing our inner "Vanna's" to come out

Silly boys

These hanging plant things may have meant there sake was served at this location and identified some of the breweries... that may be what it was

Maybe we should have hone to Big Mouth for lunch instead, LOL

A painting in one of the breweries. I think it's beautiful... and kinda funny with the obvious sake ad

Check out the size of that bottle of sake! Whoa!

We found a neat little cafe where we all ordered a small glass of unrefined sake. It was actually my favorite - truly delicious.

Outside the cafe

Funny signage

We stayed the night in Hiroshima and Neil called some other folks to join us for dinner. A couple of the guys are Osprey pilots so at the time they were pretty bored as they were not permitted to fly yet (for those of you keeping up with the military news in Japan, you know what's going on with the Ospreys)

This has significant meaning and is hanging on the wall in the restaurant hopefully forever... we will leave it at that ;-)

New friend, Chris, with our dollar graffiti in the background (totally permitted by the owner, btw)

The next day we went to a Hiroshima Carp game - third one we've been to, yay! It was a scorcher of a day though. I took a picture of Joel's sweaty back but decided against grossing y'all out by posting it

Our friend Daigo and his wife, Risa (remember the Jazz night post?) met us there

Risa was AWESOME and got us fans. There was no moving air so they were a lifesaver! It was a really fun weekend, that's for sure!