wish you were here (Art Sites)

　I’m back home now after chasing the kids around in the wind and cold all day. It being the end of April, I was sort of looking forward a little bit more warmth this weekend but it felt more like it could have been the last days of February instead. Despite the wind and cold and occasional sprinkles, we managed to make the best of things. The kids are bathed and in bed and it’s time to savor the last moments of the weekend before it's back to work on Monday.
So I’ve broken into a bottle of Kenbishi sake that I received from some relatives around New years. I would usually have something more local like a Shikoku or Hiroshima brewed sake but this is all that’s left and it’s one I prefer warmer than cold so that’s just right considering the low temperatures tonight. This is a label that's pretty common on liquor shop shelves every where I’ve been in western Japan. The reason for that I think is that, after a little reading, it seems like this brewery has been around since before they started keeping records on things like good breweries (true, hard to imagine!). This brewery, located in Kobe, belongs to the Nada-Gogo or the “five villages of Nada” which is the biggest sake producing region in Japan brewing over a quarter of all the sake sold in Japan. Since less taxed, cheap (tasting) happo-shu and other beer-like drinks that have been created for no other reason than to avoid the out of date liquor tax system have become available for next to nothing a can, I assume that "a quarter of all the sake sold in Japan" is, unfortunately, not what it used to be.
At any rate, the things that define the sake made in the Nada five are: the type of rice called Yamada Nishiki, the hard water that flows down from the Rokko Mountains referred to as Miyamizu, the tradition of the Tamba master brewers or Tamba Toji and the climate that accounts for the cold winds that blow down from the Rokko mountains used to slow down the fermentation process or "Rokko Oroshi". The first records of sake made with the Kenbishi name are from 1505! From the Muromachi through Taisho periods it was located on the eastern border of Hyogo prefecture in Itami City but since 1929 up to the present has been brewing out of Kobe’s Higashinada-ku. The region is noted as one of the first to be associated with the Kanzukuri (cold weather production) method of brewing which became the standard for brewing. Interestingly, there also seems to be historical mention of this sake as the one that the Akoroshi, Forty-seven Ronin, used for their last toast of revenge before their famous attack on the Daimyo that left them leaderless. Google the Genroku Ako incident for the whole story.
Well, that’s what’s in my tokkuri tonight. I’m looking forward to writing more about one of my more local preferences, Yorokobi Gaijin which, contrary to its phonetic implications, has nothing to do with happy foreigners.