Sampling Sake - The Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum
According to Wikipedia the Fushimi area of Kyoto gets its name from the words fusu(hidden) and mizu(water), meaning ‘underground water’, and to anyone who’s familiar with the area(1) it’s obvious why: Fushimi has an abundance of natural springs and the purity of the water has led to the area becoming one of Japan’s most famous centres of sake production.
Despite living in Fushimi for over two years I had never visited a sake brewery until last month, when I decided it was about time I checked one out. For convenience I selected the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum, which - in addition to being a sake brewery - explains the brewing process and history of sake through its informative displays and collection of historical artefacts. Founded in 1637 in Fushimi, Gekkeikan has grown to become one of the leading producers of sake; this museum is located on the site of the company’s original brewery and attracts visitors from all over Japan(2).
Arriving with an empty stomach I got a buzz off the three small glasses of sake I was given to sample (a sweet one, a dry one and a plum one, all of which were quite palatable in case you’re wondering) and I contemplated cracking open the complimentary souvenir bottle I received with my admission ticket. I decided against this however - cold sake’s nice and hot sake’s potent, but drinking room-temperature sake would just be wrong, even for a non-connoisseur like myself.
The museum itself was small but interesting, and highlights included giant promotional bottles, old advertising material and assorted tools no longer used in sake production these days. I was able to gain a little more knowledge about how sake is made, although I was still left in the dark a bit as the part of the museum that dealt with the brewing process was in Japanese only.
In the same room I noticed a barrel which had had a lot of 1 Yen coins thrown into it, illustrating a phenomenon I often see at tourist spots: someone leaves a coin somewhere and this is copied by scores of other tourists resulting in a large impromptu coin collection(3). Exploiting this phenomenon myself, I have on occasion left coins at tourist spots in the hope that others would follow suit. Recalling these pranks, and pondering the absurdities of human nature, I left the main museum building chuckling.
Outside I paused briefly to watch people climbing inside the several giant sake barrels (each with a diameter of maybe two metres) placed on their sides for photo opportunities, before drinking some of the natural spring water (nice but no taste) flowing out of a drinking fountain. My last stop was the museum gift shop, where I made two final discoveries of note - a monthly trade magazine devoted solely to sake brewing, and a new product presumably launched to capture a younger market of drinkers, Zipang fizzy sake. Feeling the buzz of the earlier sake samples wearing off I decided to top up my alcohol level with a nice cold bottle of the stuff, and was surprised to discover it actually tasted pretty good (much better than the room-temperature souvenir sake I had contemplated drinking earlier at any rate).
Notes
(1)Evidence of this is provided at Chushojima Keihan station in Fushimi, where a map shows the location of all the area’s sake breweries.
(2)Another recent visitor to the museum was Soccerphile from the excellent Japan Visitor Blog.
(3)This phenomenon is of course often seen in other countries too, with coins thrown into wishing wells and fountains. In Japan though, other common places where these coin collections occur include old tree trunks, unusual shaped rocks and wooden torii such as the ones at Miyajima and Mt Fuji.