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Chapter 1

Japanese Sake and Sake Bars

The Art of Japanese Sake

In September 1699, the low-ranked samurai Bunzaemon Asahi confided to his personal journal: “I got back at night. I had drunk so much I puked a lot.” Bunzaemon’s diary, the Ōmu Rōchūki (“Diary of a Caged Parrot”), has left us a wonderfully vivid and vomit-stained picture of the Genroku era, a time of relative peace and prosperity when it seems the life of a warrior was largely about downing vast quantities of sake and suffering the inevitable consequences.

Bunzaemon and his friends were allowed to drink on their night shifts and liked to get properly drunk on their days off. Since only one out of every nine days was spent on guard duty at the castle (the euphemism for the other days was “training at home”), they had plenty of time to carouse. “Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, Shinzō came around,” Bunzaemon writes. “We drank together and then went out. Then to ‘Jinsa’. Had sake and warm tōfu. Got back home at dawn.” Another entry: “I got so badly drunk and puked so much, I was almost beside myself. Choked and took a big breath. How stupid!”

Sake casks.

Keisuke Terada, head of the Terada Honke brewery in Kozaki, Chiba, where they have been brewing sake since 1673.

I introduce Bunzaemon at the start of this chapter because foreigners like myself, given to overly romantic visions of Japan as a land of light-dappled shōji screens and Zen stripped interiors, can sometimes get the wrong idea about sake. I have often caught myself adopting an oddly one-eyed view of Japan’s national drink: as a particularly refined alcohol, connected umbilically to Japanese religion and national identity, a liquid of such delicacy that some people devote good parts of their lives to its appreciation. Of course, sake is all of that, but it is something else too and, in a way, something more: Japan’s bog-standard brew. It is the drink of the common people, Japan’s beer, if you like, and the drinking culture has often had more in common with the 14-pint-a-night lager swillers of my hometown in Yorkshire than the sniff-and-sip connoisseurship you will find in some of the better sake bars today.

Take, by way of illustration, the sake kassen or drinking contests of old Japan. In 911, eight hard-drinking courtiers at the retired Emperor’s palace played a game in which they passed around 20 cups of sake. Everyone drank in turn and the cups just kept going around the circle. One drinker ended up face down outside the palace, another threw up all over the floor, but Korehira Fujiwara drank eight rounds without getting unseemly. He was awarded a swift horse for his prowess.

The participants were less aristocratic in 1648, when 16 “Eastern Army” drinkers fought 14 “Western Army” drunkards at the famous Daishigawara drinking battle in Kawasaki. They drank until they dropped and there is still dispute about which “army” won. In October 1815, four months after Waterloo, the Senju district of Tōkyō hosted its own battle: between 100 local soaks. The contestants could choose to quaff from a range of cups: from a relatively small 5-gō vessel (900 ml, more than a bottle of wine) to the monstrous “Green Haired Turtle Cup” (4,500 ml) and “Red Crowned Crane Cup” (5,400 ml). The winner was said to have filled and emptied the “Green Haired Turtle Cup” three times, equivalent to seven and a half of the big double-sized “Isshōbin” bottles in which sake is now sold. In 1927, second place in a similar contest went to a woman called Otome who stomached 34.5 liters of sake in a single sitting. These quantities verge on the unbelievable (and anybody trying anything like this with modern strength sake would risk killing themselves) but, even allowing for some exaggeration, they do show that sake drinking, like all alcohol cultures, has never been a wholly civilized affair.

There are endless accounts of these drinking contests, but I will introduce just two more, held at the Imperial court in 1474, to clarify my point. In the first, called Jūdonomi, two groups of 10 men competed with each other to see which team could neck their sakes the fastest. The second game was called Jusshunomi. Again, two groups of 10 competed: each drinker was served three types of sake and then had to try to identify the samples they had tasted from a range of 10 sakes. These two themes—sake as an object of connoisseurship and sake as an uncomplicated intoxicant—run throughout sake history and have helped shape a modern market in which, as the Kyōto sake bar owner Yoram Ofer said to me, “There is a lot of garbage and a lot of heaven.”

Preparing the organic rice used for sake making at the Terada Honke brewery.

A brief history of sake

Beginnings

Sake was probably not Japan’s first alcoholic drink. That honor probably belongs to prehistoric fruit wines (see page 196). Rice-based alcohol had to wait until the arrival of rice cultivation from the Asian continent between 1000 BC and 300 BC. The earliest sakes would have been quite different from today’s refined drink. They were probably made by villagers chewing rice to promote fermentation and then spitting it out (kuchikamizake). There is a report from the 8th century of peasants in southern Kyūshū still using the chewing method, and Hateruma Island in Okinawa prefecture was holding a chewed sake festival until the 1930s. It would have been an opaque whitish color and quite sour. Some of it may not have been a drink at all: one early account appears to describe a semi-solid alcohol served on a tree leaf.

By the 6th century, kōji molds (see below) imported from the continent were offering a slightly more sanitary way of breaking down the starches than peasant spit. There are also records of priests making and selling sake as a commodity from the next century. Some of this alcohol was quite sophisticated: in the early 900s we know that aristocrats were warming sake, which would have required highly filtered beverages to taste good. Some of the ruling class became very fond of a tipple. When the nobleman Michitaka Fujiwara was on his deathbed in 995, his priests told him to face west toward heaven and chant a sacred prayer. He flatly refused:

Company employees play drinking games at a party in the Nishiura Hot Spring resort, Aichi Prefecture, in 1961.

The since-closed Shikishima sake brewery in Kamezaki, Aichi Prefecture, in the early 1960s.

“What is the point of going to heaven when there is nobody to drink with?” Less wealthy drinkers who got a taste for the cripplingly expensive temple sake faced bigger worries than a lack of drinking buddies in the afterlife: there is a ghost story from the 9th century about a man who bought 37 liters of alcohol from a temple on credit but was unable to pay his debt. He was reincarnated as an ox and had to return to the temple to work off his bill.

The Kōji riot

From about 1200, sake began to be sold as a commodity to commoners in the cities, and over the next three or four centuries this growing popular market transformed the industry. The grip of the religious foundations on sake making loosened slowly and commercialized, commoner-run businesses began to dominate. The transition was never more dramatically illustrated than in the Kōji riot in Kyōto in 1444.

The famous Kitano shrine had a legal monopoly on Kyōto’s production of kōji, the mold used to prepare sake rice for fermentation. But for many years the city’s 340-odd sake makers had been complaining that the supply provided by the shrine’s guild was not meeting booming demand and that the prices were grossly inflated. They started building their own “moonshine” kōji rooms which, throughout the 1420s and 1430s, were periodically smashed by soldiers sent to enforce the monopoly. In 1443, the situation came to a head when the sake makers simply stopped buying the shrine’s mold.

The shrine petitioned the shogunate and, in a sort of strike to put pressure on the authorities, its kōji makers locked themselves in their sacred precincts while they waited for the decision. Initially, the shogunate seemed likely to back the shrine and the status quo, but popular protests in the city and the lobbying power of the sake makers (who were among the richest citizens and the main money lenders) brought a dramatic change of policy. Soldiers were sent, not to break the moonshiners’ kōji rooms, but to root the kōji guild out of the shrine. The scene quickly turned ugly. Forty people were slaughtered. Kitano shrine and other buildings in the area were torched, and the priests’ domination of sake brewing was smashed forever.

It took centuries for the transfer of power to be completed, but the trend was toward secular commerce. In the Muromachi period (1392– 1573), we see increasing differentiation between sake makers, distributors and shops selling to the public. Brands start to emerge and, of course, we get the fitful, often barmy government regulation that seems to be a feature of any mature drink market. At one stage, the shogunate even tried to legislate what commoners could eat at a party: they could either have three different food dishes and one soup or one soup, two dishes and three glasses of sake. Needless to say, no one seems to have taken much notice.

Edo sake

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the population of the city of Edo (modern-day Tōkyō) grew from about 400,000 people to more than a million. Bunzaemon Asahi, the vomiting samurai we met at the start of this chapter, was typical of the population: a man from the provinces living on his own in the big city with money burning holes in his pockets (there were 1.5 times as many men as women). At the peak of Edo’s binge, at the start of the 19th century, the revelers were drinking one barrel of sake a year for every man, woman and child in the city (about 200 ml per person per day). Much of this was a cheap, unrefined style of sake called doburoku, which would have been consumed cold. There were more than 1,800 doburoku makers in the city in 1837. But more prosperous drinkers were drinking warmed sake made out of much more refined brews imported in huge quantities from Kōbe, Ōsaka and Kyōto in western Japan. You will sometimes still hear modern Japanese call poor quality goods kudaranai. The phrase literally means “did not come down” and refers to the Edo view that if something had not “come down” from Kansai’s prestigious production centers it was not worth buying. The view was particularly strong among drinkers, and Kansai’s sake (kudarizake) overwhelmingly dominated Edo’s market, accounting for about 70–90 percent of refined sake consumed in the city.

It was a formidably sophisticated industry. When patronizing Westerners arrived in Japan during the Meiji period to “teach the natives” about modern science, they were astounded to learn that the Kansai brewers had been heating their sake to destroy microbes for more than 250 years before Louis Pasteur’s discovery of “pasteurization” (Pasteur had initially been working for the wine industry). Charcoal filtering was also common practice. The story went that a worker at an Ōsaka sake kura in the early 1600s had become angry with his master and dumped ash from a stove into a batch of sake. The kura owner made a fortune when he discovered that the alcohol rescued from the barrel was of unusual clarity.

Modern sake

The taste, appearance and ways of serving sake have been in constant flux throughout its recent history. In a similar vein to the American economist George Taylor’s famous theory that women’s hemlines rose and fell with stock prices (miniskirts in the boom times, ankle lengths when the crashes come), the Japanese food historian Osamu Shinoda suggested that sake’s sweetness varied with war and peace. Indeed, records do seem to give the theory at least superficial credibility. In the relatively peaceful 1870s, a typical sake seems to have been quite dry by modern standards. In the war years between 1915 and 1920 and from the 1930s to 1940s, sakes became very sweet.

A quick guide to sake

When the sake bug gets you, the seemingly endless variety of types of sake is great fun to explore. But, for the newcomer, these different categories—ginjōshu, honjōzōshu, junmai and yamahai—can be a little overwhelming. So, what do you really need to know to make a start in sake?

Basically, sake is a brewed rice beer (though much more alcoholic than beer, so be careful). It is usually called Nihonshu in Japan, not sake. To find good sake, you need to look for junmai or pure rice sake (with nothing else added). The characters for junmai (純米) should appear somewhere on the bottle. The other type of sake that is highly sought after is ginjō (吟醸), which is made from highly polished rice. You will sometimes hear people talking about daiginjō (大吟醸), which is a more refined version of ginjō. You can drink any sake at any temperature you like, from hot to refrigerator cold. For more information on getting by in Japanese shops and bars, see the Appendix (page 253).

We currently seem to be headed in the opposite direction: away from the obsession with the super-dry sakes of the 1990s. (Maybe it’s all those North Korean missile tests?) Other tastes wax and wane as well: cedar wood smells and flavors imparted by sake barrels were valued in the Edo period—the bottom of a sake barrel could have a positively gin-like spiciness—but the rise of bottling has led to these tastes falling out of favor for the very best sakes.

The most significant change over the past 100 years has been a dramatic shift in the geography of sake. In the 19th century, the dominance of Kansai’s brewers seemed unassailable. Not only did they sell more than anybody else, but their sake was acknowledged to be of a higher quality. They swept the board at the first national sake tasting competition in 1907. Rakugo performers, Japan’s traditional sit-down comedians, used to tell jokes about the poor quality of jizake (地酒, local sake) from local breweries. But, in 1913, the New Sake Tasting Competition (“Shinshu Kanpyōkai”) dealt a stunning blow to these preconceptions: provincial sakes from Akita, Okayama, Ehime and Hiroshima shared the top prizes with Kansai’s famous Fushimi and Nada districts. Worse, a detailed look at the results revealed that only 60 percent of Nada and Fushimi’s sake had earned top medals, while Hiroshima boasted an 80 percent success rate and Okayama 70 percent. The country hicks kept on winning big prizes and, by 1919, the Nada makers had become so angry that they refused to take part.

These competitive reversals had little immediate impact on Kansai’s dominance in the real market, but impending war in the 1930s brought long-term changes that still shape contemporary sake. A government push to reduce rice use hurt the jizake makers in the short term. Half of the smaller kura were closed, and those that were left were given strictly limited rations of rice, which made it virtually impossible to expand. It was the big Kansai makers who invested in mass production and made most of the cheap, adulterated sake that was all that was available to most people during the war. Disgruntled drinkers talked of “goldfish sake,” which had so much water added that fish could live in it. After that was regulated out of existence, a more potent but equally knavish innovation called zōjōshu hit the shelves. It had so much distilled alcohol and sugar added that rice use was cut by more than two-thirds.

Just as zōjōshu tended to give wicked hangovers to its consumers, so its production affected the industry long after the end of rice shortages. The basis of some of the big kura s’ businesses was no longer making the highest quality sake in Japan, as was the policy in the Edo and Meiji periods, but the mass production of plonk. For many years, the Japanese tax regime favored these cheap drinks and this legacy still marks the industry. The most inexpensive sakes contain added alcohol and other additives, which are there solely to increase the yield. “Nihonshu was dealt a very, very raw hand by the big makers,” says Yoram Ofer. “Today you have everybody from the industry carrying on about falling sales but they have only themselves to blame. They got themselves a terrible image. It is foreigners and the young Japanese in their twenties who are most enthusiastic about sake now because they have not been put off by this foul stuff.”

The Terada Honke brewery in Kozaki, Chiba.

Terraced rice paddies in Saga prefecture.

Rice planting at the Terada Honke brewery.

Steaming rice at Nakashima Shuzō, Gifu.

Happily, the post-war period also saw the rise of jizake of unprecedented quality. It would be wrong to claim that Nada and Fushimi do not make good alcohol. Many makers in these areas have never compromised their principles and the mass-market makers still have very good products at the top of their ranges. However, the stark reality is that Kansai sake is no longer synonymous with quality in the way it was 100 years ago. Regions like Niigata and Akita have gained powerful reputations since jizake started to assert itself in the late 1970s, but great drinks are now coming at us from all directions: Aichi, Chiba, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagano, Saitama and Yamagata. Indeed, just about every prefecture would claim to be producing some good sake.

Sake making

Fortunately for the sake industry’s profits, enjoying sake does not require a detailed understanding of how it is made. After all, most drinkers only have the vaguest notions of how wine and beer are brewed. So, if the technicalities bore you, just read the “Quick guide” box on page 35 and skip ahead. For those who do like to know the technicalities, however, here is a quick, potted explanation of how that ricey goodness gets from the paddy field to your glass:

Sake rice has larger grains and is much more starchy than the rice Japanese people eat. It tends to be quite tall, often exceeding a man’s height, and is notorious for its vulnerability to storm damage. “Yamada Nishiki” (山田錦) is the most famous variety. Although particularly difficult to cultivate, it is still a favorite with many kura because of its flexibility and the complexity of its tastes. According to the sake writer John Gauntner (whose books are a must for anyone learning about sake), Yamada tends to produce drinks with fruity, lively and layered flavors— “a biggie in terms of enhanced sake flavor and fragrance profiles.” There are lots of other varieties, including the very popular “Gohyakumangoku” (五百万石, light and dry), “Miyama Nishiki” (美山 錦, strong flavors and acidity) and “Ōmachi” (雄町, full and smooth) rices.

The first stage of sake production involves milling or polishing the rice so that the outer portions are removed. More expensive sakes will have more of the outer layers of the rice taken off. The weight of the polished white rice as a percentage of the raw brown rice is called the seimaibuai (精米歩合) and is often displayed on bottles (see daiginjō and ginjō below). A low percentage generally means a more refined sake.

The white rice is washed, soaked, steamed and then cooled to prepare it for brewing. About 20– 30 per cent of this rice is then cultivated with mold spores called kōjikin (麹囷) for two or three days in a heat-controlled room. The resulting mold-covered rice (kome kōji, 米麹) is vital to sake making because, when it is added to the rest of the rice in the fermentation vat, it breaks down rice starches into sugars, which can be turned into alcohol by the yeast (kōbo, 酵母). Before the main business of fermentation begins, however, the yeast is given a chance to propagate and establish itself in a smaller vat. The yeast, small amounts of water, kōji rice and steamed rice are mixed in this side vat for 2–4 weeks to produce an extremely yeast-rich liquid called the moto or shubo. Lactic acid is often also added at this stage to suppress unwanted micro-organisms (yamahai and kimoto sake motos are different, see page 41).

Fermentation proper begins when steamed rice, kōji rice and water are added to the yeasty moto. The rice, water and kōji are usually added in three stages over four days, to give a chance for the yeasts to do their work (distilled alcohol and other additives are put in at this stage in some breweries). This moromi is then left to ferment for 2–5 weeks. Philip Harper, the first foreigner ever to earn the title of tōji (master brewer), described what happens next in a wonderfully lyrical passage in The Insider’s Guide to Sake: “The tank appears to contain a great swollen heap of very thick porridge. After a couple of days, the moist surface begins to crack in places, and a thin foam appears there. The mash begins to bubble.... The first fine, watery foam changes into a much thicker, creamier layer of bubbles. At its peak, this foam rises well over a meter above the surface of the mash.... This recedes a few days after reaching its peak ... the mix is much lighter and more obviously liquid by now, and it bubbles and seethes frantically for several days. Gradually, the activity subsides.” The sake produced can reach up to 19– 20 percent alcohol and is called genshu (原ケ酉) if it is bottled at this strength. Most sake is diluted to about 16 percent alcohol for sale.

What are the different types of sake?

The six main categories

Although the term “sake” is in such wide use among foreigners that it is impossible to avoid using it, “sake” is not a precise term. It is actually the general word in Japanese for any alcohol, including beer, whisky, wine, etc. Nihonshu (日本酒) is usually the term used if you want to refer specifically to the brewed rice beverage (although some shōchū makers don’t like it because it implies that sake is the national drink. “Shōchū is Nihonshu too!”). A more technical term is seishu (清酒). These two characters are useful, because they are printed on the labels of all refined sakes. To the uninitiated, sake and shōchū bottles can look quite similar, but shōchū always has 焼酎 printed somewhere and sake almost always carries the characters 清酒.

At the Terada Honke brewery, preparing the rice for sake making is still done using equipment and techniques that have changed little over the centuries.

Priests prepare doburoku unrefined sake at the Shirakawa festival in Gifu prefecture.

You are going to have to know a bit more than that if you want something interesting, however. As Yoram Ofer bluntly put it, there is a “lot of garbage and a lot of heaven” in the sake world. Let’s begin with the “garbage.”

Zōjōshu 増醸酒 The cheapest sake and the close bosom friend of technicolor hangovers. Hundreds of liters of distilled alcohol can be added for every tonne of white rice used in making this stuff. Other additives such as glucose are also often used. Since 2006, these products have been forbidden from calling themselves seishu, the technical name for sake, and are instead classified as a type of liqueur. They still sit on the sake shelves, though. Don’t touch the stuff.

Futsūshu 普通酒 The vin ordinaire of the sake world. Futsūshu accounts for the majority of sake sales. It contains much less added alcohol than zōjōshu. Like vin ordinaire, the futsūshu category encompasses tedious mass-market bottlings, but also quite interesting brews. It really depends on who is making it and for what reason. There are some bargains to be had, because prices are not being ramped up by prestigious classifications.

Honjōzō or Honjōzōshu 本醸造 or 本酗适酒 These are premium sakes made with polished rice, but with small amounts of alcohol added in the production process. The polished rice’s weight is a maximum of 70 percent of its unpolished weight and fewer than 117 liters of distilled alcohol per tonne of rice are added during fermentation. Unlike the cheap zōjōshu, the alcohol is not added for economy reasons. It helps the brewers create light but aromatic sakes. Fragrant components in the moromi dissolve in the alcohol and are brought into the final sake rather than staying in the lees.

Junmai or Junmaishu 純米 or 純米酒 Junmaishu is pure rice sake: only rice, kōjikin, water, yeast and perhaps a little lactic acid to help the yeast are used in production. Not all junmaishu use ginjō or daiginjō polished rice, but this does not mean they are necessarily of inferior quality. In fact, there has been a recent trend towards favoring the robust tastes often associated with relatively unpolished junmaishu.

Ginjō or Ginjōshu 吟醸 or 吟醸酒 Sake made of very finely milled or polished rice. Polishing reduces the rice to 60 percent of its unpolished weight. A lot of ginjō is junmaiginjō (純米吟醸) made of pure rice, but some ginjō have a small amount of added alcohol, like honjōzō. They are not usually labeled as honjōzōginjō. You have to look at the ingredient list to see if alcohol has been added.

Daiginjō or Daiginjōshu 大吟醸 or 大吟醸酒 Ginjō’s more polished sibling. The seimaibuai (精米歩合), the weight of the polished rice as a percentage of its original weight, is less than 50 percent and in some extreme cases can go as low as 10 percent. Small amounts of alcohol are sometimes added.

The promise of free doburoku sake at the Shirakawa festival draws hundreds of visitors to the remote mountain village.

Other numbers on labels

We have already dealt with one of the important numbers often listed on sake labels, the seimaibuai (精米歩合) or degree of rice polishing. There are three more figures that you will often find on labels, which may help you understand better what you are buying. One is the Nihonshudo (日本酒度, sometimes called SMV or “sake meter value”). This measurement is usually between -4 and +15 (but can range much more widely). Put very simply, this measure shows whether a sake is dry or sweet: -3 is sweet, 0 is sweetish and anything above 4 is getting dry. Of course, other taste components influence the perception of sweetness/dryness, so the Nihonshudo is not always a reliable guide. (For example, a +10 sake with a very full body may not taste very dry at all.)

The acidity of a sake (酸味) also affects its flavor and labels often carry measurements of this tangyness (typically from a lowish acidity of 1.0 to highs in excess of 2.0). They will sometimes also measure amino acids (アミノ酸味), high levels of which can give the sake a feeling of body (again, 1.0 to 2.0 is a normal range). But all these figures can be very confusing. Personally, when I am in a liquor shop, I generally take a glance at the Nihonshudo, and do the rest with my tongue when I get home.

Seven variations

If sake could be reduced merely to six levels of purity and refinement, the world would be a dull place. In fact, there is endless variety in the methods of making and storing sake. Here are some interesting variations to explore:

Yamahai and Kimoto sake Yamahai (山廃) and kimoto (生酛) sakes are known for the wildness and richness of their flavors. Yamahai makers do not add lactic acid when they are making the moto, the yeasty liquid that powers fermentation. Lactic acids are usually added nowadays because they suppress wild yeasts and other micro-organisms that might create unpleasant flavors. Yamahai moto making instead relies on naturally occurring enzymes and lactic acids. It takes up to twice as long and involves additional stages of heating and cooling.

Kimoto sake is made using an older method closely related to yamahai: brewery staff work in freezing temperatures for hours on end with long, flat-headed poles to grind the kōji and water into a paste. Until 1909, this was the way that all sake was made: they thought the back-breaking work was necessary for getting the kōji to work on the rice so that the yeasts could be nourished and protected. Historically, kimoto came first, then the yamahai method dropped the pole work by using a slightly different moto mix and warmer temperatures. The benefits of lactic acid were discovered in 1911, allowing today’s warmer, quicker and more reliable moto making. However, many kura are exploring the complex, untamed tastes that the old natural methods tended to promote.

Namazake (生酒) Most sake is heat-treated twice, once immediately after the sake is pressed from the moromi and once when it is bottled. Namazake is not heat-treated at all and it can smell and taste quite different to your average dry sake: boisterous, nutty, fruity, herb-like, and even spicy tastes can be brought out by the extra life non-pasteurization allows. The usual instruction is to make sure your namazake is carefully refrigerated so that all that microscopic partying does not get out of hand, but Yoram Ofer served me a namazake that he had kept at room temperature for three years. It had a wonderfully mild and honeyed taste. “The industry will tend not to want to do that because it is too risky. You will get the bottles that will go off but it is not true that it always goes bad,” he says. There are two halfway houses to namazake: namachozō (生貯蔵), which is not pasteurized after filtering, and namazume (生詰め), which is not pasteurized at bottling.

Koshu aged sakes, such as these at Shusaron, Shinagawa, Tōkyō (page 68), are enjoying a revival.

Isshin, a sake pub in Sendai prefecture (page 57), has a special annex, equipped with “chirori” heating flasks at every table, for customers who want to warm their sake.

Muroka (無濾過), nigorizake (濁り酒) and doburoku (濁酒) Most sake is charcoal-filtered. Muroka is not and therefore tends to retain some of the heavier flavors and yellowish/green coloring that the filtering is designed to remove. Nigorizake takes the unfiltered thing a step further. Rather than pressing the sake out of the moromi through a fine filter, the nigori makers use only a wide-holed mesh or, alternatively, filter the sake clear and then reintroduce kasu from the moromi afterwards. Either way, some of the solids in the moromi are present in the final alcohol and nigorizake range in appearance from cloudy to positively porridge like. The tastes vary considerably too but there is often a strong acidity. Unpasteurized nigorizake is called kasseishu (活性酒) and can sometimes have a slight fizz to it. At the extreme end of the spectrum, doburoku is not filtered or squeezed at all. It looks like porridge and can be quite hard to like, with a strongly acidic taste. I once spent some time teaching English in a beautiful village in the Japanese Alps called Shirakawa. They have a festival there every October where you can drink free doburoku made by the villagers. It is a religious occasion but, when, in the middle of the festivities, an old Japanese man grabbed my friend by the testicles (just, he said, to “size him up”), I realized people can get seriously drunk on anything if need be.

Fizzy sake Fizzy sake brands such as “Suzune” (すず音) from Ichinokura (ーノ 蔵) in Miyagi and “Puchipuchi” (ぷちぶち) from Suehiro Shuzō (末 廣酒造) in Fukushima have recently been gaining popularity. They usually contain a lower alcohol content than standard sake because making the fizz requires that the tank fermentation be stopped earlier than usual. The bubbles are made by a secondary fermentation in the bottle. These brews are usually filtered (so are not nigorizake) but significant amounts of sugar and yeast must be allowed into the bottles for the secondary fermentation to take place. They are, therefore, usually cloudy and quite sweet.

Koshu The rediscovery of long-neglected traditions of maturing sake is, for me, one of the most exciting developments in the contemporary sake scene. There are diaries and letters showing that aged sake, or koshu (古酒), was valued highly as early as the 13th century and Edo-period shop records tell us that 3–9 year old sake was two or three times more expensive than shinshu (new sake, 新酒). The Honchō Shokkan, a food encyclopedia published in 1697, says: “After 3–5 years the taste is rich and the smell is wonderful and that is the best. From 6–10 years the taste becomes thinner and yet richer. The color darkens and there is a strange aroma. Better than the best!”

Yet, when pioneering makers tried to resurrect koshu making in the 1970 and 1980s, they were sometimes met with outright hostility. The traditions of aging had died out so completely and had been replaced so thoroughly by the modern interest in young sake that koshu was seen, at best, as a gimmick and, at worst, a worrying subversion of “proper” sake values.

The basement at Isekane, Takadanobaba, Tōkyō (page 240) is packed with premium sakes.

Why did koshu almost disappear? The growing popularity of wooden barrels for storing sake in the Edo period may have been partly to blame. The barrels allowed much more exposure to the air than the pottery vessels they replaced and therefore increased the risk of spoiling. They also imparted woody tastes that may have become overpowering after long aging. More lethal to the tradition, however, were tax laws introduced in the early Meiji period (1868–1912), which forced sake makers to pay tax on their sake as soon as it was made. Cash-strapped kura needed to get a return on their investments as soon as possible and this factor, plus faster distribution networks and wartime shortages, discouraged long storage of sake to such an extent that it became almost unknown.

Shingen Takeda

Shingen Takeda, known as “the Tiger of Kai,” is still remembered as one of the greatest samurai generals. He once led an army against the Hojo clan in freezing conditions in the middle of January. His troops were cold and facing a well-defended enemy on the top of a hill. Takeda is said to have ordered a large amount of sake to be heated in cauldrons and given to his men. “Do you feel warm now?” he shouted. “No,” they said. He replied: “You see those men on top of that hill? Imagine how they feel!”

A ukiyoe print of Takeda Shingen by Kuniyoshi Utagawa.

The modern koshu scene is rediscovering the complex tastes, fragrances and colors that aging adds to sake. Nobuhiro Ueno, a leading figure in the movement and manager of the Shusaron bar in Shinagawa (see page 68), says koshu can be classified into two broad types: air temperature-aged sake and refrigerator-aged sake. The air temperature koshu is often dark in color, with blood reds quite common (the color usually comes from reactions between sugars and amino acids in the liquid rather than from the barrels or pots used for storage, as is the case in whisky or rum aging). This type has a very wide range of tastes, including drinks reminiscent of sherry or Chinese Xiaoxing wine. Refrigeration, on the other hand, often produces sakes which are lighter in color, ranging from almost transparent to golds and greeny yellows. The taste is usually much closer to the ginjō sakes, with roundness, as well as biscuity and nutty flavors, often added by maturation. The sector is such a hive of innovation that Ueno admits any strict classification is doomed: combinations of cold and warm storage temperatures are being played with, as well as all sorts of storage containers (steel, glass and enamel-lined tanks; bottle aging, barrels, earthenware and ceramic pots) and a seemingly endless variety of brewing techniques (namazake, fortified sakes and even rice wines made with grape wine yeasts).

Mirin In the 1980s, the Japanese media was swept by a moral panic about alcoholic housewives. Shocked newspapermen reported that some of these women were so desperate they were known to drink mirin, a fortified rice wine that is commonly used in Japanese food. It was the ultimate sign of degradation, like lounging around the house in pajamas, swigging the cheapest cooking sherry while watching daytime television. But if the journalists who reported these horror stories had been a little more familiar with their alcohol history there might have been less sneering. Mirin does not mean “low-quality cooking wine,” although there are plenty of low-quality products describing themselves as mirin on the market. In fact, certain types were considered the height of sophisticated drinking in the Edo period (1603–1868); only in the 20th century did mirin come to be seen almost exclusively as a cooking ingredient. It is probably best thought of as “Japanese sherry” (although the production method is closer to port): rice and kōji are used, just as in normal sake making, but shōchū is added during the fermentation, suppressing the conversion of sugars into alcohol and producing a sweeter drink. Most cheap mirin in supermarkets are not really mirin and are solely intended for cooking, but drinking mirin is currently being rediscovered. Look out for glass-bottled (rather than plastic-bottled) mirin and for the words “Hon Mirin” (本みりん). Sometimes, the drinkable stuff is bottled under the Edo-period names “Hon Naoshi” (本直し) or “Yanagikage” (柳蔭).

Shirakawa festival, Gifu.

Drinking sake

My wife’s grandmother did not allow her husband to drink cold sake. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was considered very uncouth, the sort of thing a laborer might do on a building site. Even in the most oppressive months of the Japanese summer, the poor fellow, and many like him, had to drink his sake warmed.

Then the temperature police started getting into refrigeration. There was a time in the 1990s when it seemed everybody who was anybody was drinking a cold sake from Niigata. Heating up some sakes was deemed the height of bad form. There is a lovely story told by the manga writer Akira Oze about a kura owner he knew who asked for his own sake served kan (燜, “warmed”) at a sake pub. The landlord, not knowing who he was dealing with, refused, saying heating that particular sake was a heresy. The kura owner ordered the sake cold with a hot tōfu stew and then plonked the sake tokkuri in the stew, drawing aghast looks from other patrons and a derisive snort from the landlord.

The moral of the story is never to let others dictate how you enjoy your drink. You can have great fun playing with sake’s temperature. Unlike beer and wine, many sake will play fairly freely up and down a whole scale of temperatures. Finding out what temperature you think best suits a particular sake is part of the enjoyment of drinking. If my wife’s grandfather were still alive, he might have rediscovered the delights of kanzake (燜酒) at Isshin in Sendai (see page 57), where customers are encouraged to heat their own sake, monitor its temperature themselves and explore their own preferences freely.

At Isshin, they break their temperatures down to the nearest five degrees centigrade (ranging from 5 to 55 degrees centigrade). The more commonly used categories include hiyazake (cold sake, 5–15 degrees centigrade), hitohada kan (skin temperature, c. 35–40 degrees), nurukan (lukewarm, c. 40–45 degrees), jōkan (well-warmed, 45–50 degrees) and atstukan (hot, 50–55 degrees). Many premium sakes are very nice chilled just slightly (10–15 degrees, warmer than fridge temperature) but there are sakes that really come alive at much higher temperatures.

It is worth saying that, though this is a matter of personal taste, many sakes are served either too cold or too hot in Japanese restaurants in the West. I remember one particular occasion when the sake was just off boiling. There are two good ways of warming sake: you can warm a pan of water to the right temperature first and then put the sake jug in (harder to overheat the sake) or you can put the jug in a pan of cool water and then very gently heat it (which gives less of a shocking heat). Each has its adherents and they bicker with each other like English tea drinkers over the ancient question: “Milk, first or last?”

Ajihyakusen 味百仙 011-716-1000 ajihyaku.exblog.jp

B1F, Miyazawa Kōgyō Biru, 4 Kita Nana-jō Nishi, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido

北海道札幌市北区北七条西 4 宮澤興業ビル B1F

Open: Weekdays 5 pm–12 pm; Saturday 5 pm–11 pm; closed Sunday and national holidays

Booking recommended? Booking recommended on Fridays and weekends Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? No Table charge: 500 yen

There was a time when Hokkaido sake did not have the best of reputations. Minoru Nagashima, owner of Ajihyakusen, has been working for 25 years to dispel that image in this small basement bar out the back end of Sapporo Station. He serves 30–40 types of jizake with some meticulously prepared izakaya fare. Both the food and drink menus change with the season, but when I visited Nagashimasan recommended the mouth-watering kaki to gorgonzola hoiruyaki (oysters and gorgonzola cooked in foil, 650 yen) with a potato salad (500 yen) and the “Kita Sekai” (北世界), a fruity, slightly dry daiginjō from Nippon Seishu. Nippon Seishu has a different sort of history to the old family businesses you will often find on the main island of Honshu. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Hokkaido was Japan’s New World, a land of opportunity (and bankruptcy) where business capital flowed freely across all sorts of bright ideas for developing the frontier. Nippon Seishu was a product of that business environment, emerging from a co-operative venture between seven local sake makers in 1897 and then a formal merger of eight companies in 1928. It is now a large company pumping out extensive ranges of miso and wine as well as sake, but a clear-sighted view of the future of sake seems to have brought a greater commitment to high-quality sake production. Its main sake brand is “Chitosetsuru” (千歳鶴), but “Kita Sekai” was a premium sake project close to the heart of Nippon Seishu’s old master brewer, Wataru Tsumura. Unfortunately, Tsumura-san died suddenly before he could see it to fruition, so it bears the signature of the current master brewer, Kazuyuki Satō. “Kita Sekai” is almost impossible to find on the open market.

DIRECTIONS: Sapporo Station, North Exit. Immediate left out of the North Exit. It is in the basement under the AU mobile phone shop and is directly opposite the Hotel Crest.

Akaoni 赤鬼 03-3410-9918 www.akaoni39.com

2-15-3 Sangenjaya, Setagaya ku, Tōkyō, 154-0024

〒 154-0024 東京都世田谷区三軒茶屋 2-15-3

Open: Weekdays 5.30 pm–12.30 am (last orders 11.30 pm); Saturday 5 pm–11.30 pm; Sunday and national holidays 5 pm–11 pm Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? No English menu? No Table charge: 500 yen

Akaoni is probably the best-known premium sake pub in Tōkyō and the range of more than 100 types of sake easily justifies its reputation. It first opened in 1982 and has been a major force in the rise of jizake. Manager Nakamura-san says the sake market has changed radically: “In those days sake was not a young person’s thing at all. We now get very knowledgeable young people in here, and they are driving changes in sake. Overall, sales have gone down in Japan, but if you are offering good sake then you are actually seeing popularity going up.” With sakes like the junmai ginjō “Kameizumi CEL-24” (亀泉 CEL-24, 650 yen) in stock, Akaoni has clearly got nothing to worry about. It may sound like a Star Wars droid but “CEL-24” is actually the name of a yeast known for producing fragrant and acidic drinks. This unpasteurized “Kameizumi” is fragrant, fruity and sweet (-10 Nihonshudo). Many drinkers will prefer it served cold so that the sweetness does not become overwhelming. Another unpasteurized sake, “Kozaemon” junmai ginjō (小左衛門純米吟 酉襄), from the young brewing team at Nakashima brewery in Gifu prefecture, offered a total contrast: clean and clear. Quite a few sake and spirit makers all over Japan play music to their fermenting alcohol in the belief that it influences the fermentation, but at Nakashima, according to “Et-chan” of the excellent www.tokyofoodcast.com web-site, they play hip-hop. It is not clear whether this is for their own enjoyment or the yeast’s. The sake world is getting younger!

DIRECTIONS: Sengenjaya Station (Tōkyū Den’entoshi Line). Go out of the central gates of Sangenjaya Station and take North Exit A. Walk straight ahead across the side road, then cross the main road to Big Echo Karaoke. Bear right toward the Carrot Tower. Go left just after the bicycle park, right at the T-junction and right again at the end of the block beside the car park.

Amanogawa 天乃川 03-3344-0111 (main hotel reception) www.keioplaza.co.jp/rb/bl05.html

Keio Plaza Hotel, 2-2-1 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tōkyō, 160-8330

〒 160-8330 京王プラザホテル 東京都新宿区西新宿 2-2-1

Open: 5 pm–10.30 pm Credit cards? All major cards

English menu? No Booking recommended? Yes Table charge: 577 yen

Koji Maruoka, the sake sommelier (kikizakeshi) at Keio Plaza Hotel’s Amanogawa sake bar, compares trying a new sake to meeting a new person. “Often people who are very forceful or a bit different will put you off when you first run into them. They might not seem like your sort at all, but once you have got to know them, you grow to like all their differences. You love them because of their differences.” He says some customers at this stylish 10-seat sake bar arrive determined only to drink very dry sakes served very cold. “A lot of that has come from the shōchū boom. People want very clean, cold tastes.” Another type of customer wants their sakes boiled until dead. “In truth, the best temperature depends on the particular sake. It is going to be in a moderate temperature range. The style of sake that best suits the moment is also going to depend on what you are eating it with.” During my visit, Maruoka served a three-food plate (chinmi omakase sanshu, 2100 yen), which changes every day and may vary in price. Our plate featured tōfu, the classic drinking snack shiokara (salted and fermented seafood) and a dish made of cream cheese and sake kasu (the rice waste from sake making). Maruoka-san recommended an “Okuharima Jyōho” (奥播磨誠保) junmai kimoto sake, a pure rice junmai sake, from his constantly changing line-up of around 30 sakes, which he tries to source from small kura rather than the big players. “Okuharima Jyōho” is a fascinating pick. It is a kimoto sake (see page 41). The rich, almost milky tastes represent a step back to a time when all sake was produced by a back-breaking process of mashing rice by hand. It is extremely hard to get hold of. The two expressions released so far by Shimomura Shuzō of Hyōgo prefecture have sold out almost immediately. Maruoka also recommended a “Retsu” (洌) junmai ginjō from Kojima Sōhonten in Yamagata prefecture. Kojima have a reputation for very dry, clean tastes. Most sakes at Amanogawa cost in the region of 900 yen and are served in 90 ml measures. Maruoka-san will sometimes serve two 45 ml measures of different sakes.

DIRECTIONS: Shinjuku Keio Plaza Hotel, Main Tower, Second Floor. From JR Shinjuku take the West Exit, straight up Chūō-dōri. The hotel is on your left and is hard to miss.

Buchi ブチ 03-5728-2085

1F Nomoto Biru, Shinsenchō 9-7, Shibuya-ku, Tōkyō

東京都渋谷区神泉町 9-7 野本ビル 1F

Open: 5 pm–3 am Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? Yes Table charge: No charge

Let’s be honest, some premium sake pubs can be intimidating. The staff and customers are almost always incredibly friendly if you actually take the plunge, but everything that makes these places picturesque and appealing—the grizzled old men slicing sashimi behind the counter, the kanji-covered paper hanging from the ceilings advertising a multitude of unknown drinks and dishes—can also make them feel like too much hard work. Foreigners can be turned off by the suspicion that these places are really aimed at connoisseurs and/or crusty salarymen with drinking issues. Fortunately, many Japanese people, particularly women, have similar feelings and that is probably why places like Buchi are thriving. When Buchi opened in 2004, it was one of the first of a new wave of tachinomiya (standing bars) that have since swept Japan. Standing bars have long been part of Japanese drinking culture—cheap, no-nonsense places where drunk men can get more drunk—but the shiny new tachinomiya of the Buchi school offer modern interiors and sophisticated menus aimed at young professionals. The wine (60 bottles, 10 glass wines) and shōchū (50 types) on offer here might have earned Buchi a mention in either of the chapters devoted to those drinks, but the 30 types of “cup sake” (カップ酒) provide an excellent way to try a range of good sake in a very low-stress environment with an English menu. The cup sake is itself a reinvention. This most unpretentious of serving vessels was developed by the makers of the cheapest plonk. Nowadays, though, an increasing range of premium sakes are available in cup form. When I visited, they had an “Okuharima” (奥播磨) yamahai junmai from Hyōgo prefecture (600 yen). The Shimomura brewery is known for its dry, well-balanced sakes, but this bottling (like the kimoto “Okuharima” we met at Amanogawa, page 48), is a bit special: the labor-intensive yamahai method (see page 41) gives richer, wilder tastes than the normal “Okuharima.” The first bottling of this sold out as soon as it was released in 2007. Buchi say it works well warmed or otherwise and recommended their senba dōfu (tōfu, 500 yen) to slip down with it.

DIRECTIONS: A bit of a walk from Shibuya Station. From the Hachikō statue (a statue of a dog used as a landmark in Shibuya’s chaos), head west up the road to the right of the building containing L’Occitane en Provence and then bear to the left of the Shibuya 109 building up Dōgenzaka (Dōgen slope). When you reach a large overpass, do not go under it but bear to your right past the AM/PM convenience store. Buchi is to your right when you come to a wide junction.

Buri ぶり 03-3496-7744

1-14-1 Ebisu-nishi, Shibuya-ku, Tōkyō

東京都渋谷区恵比寿西 1 丁目 14-1

Open: 5 pm–3 am Booking recommended? No Credit cards? Major cards

English menu? No Table charge: 200 yen

Like Buchi in Shibuya (see page 49), Buri is one of the new breed of standing bars that have been opening up since 2004. In fact, Buri and Buchi have the same meaning in the Hiroshima dialect (approximate translation: “very”) and, although not the same chain, there is some unfathomable link between the investors in the two projects. The concept is also similar: a modern, casual environment serving cup sake of high quality and good, no-nonsense food. There are usually 30–40 types of shōchū and about 20 types of sake on the menu. A fun diversion is their “Majikōru” refrigerator, which cools 12 types of sake so that it is turned into a jelly-like consistency. I can’t say I understand the science behind the trick but Buri claims it produces a very mild-tasting drink that works well on one of Tōkyō’s grimy summer days. The food is a mix of Japanese standards (a delicious smell of yakitori met me as I entered) and Western dishes (“Rebā Pēsuto”, chicken liver pâté, 450 yen), but the beauty of these standing bars for me is that you are not expected to gorge yourself while you are drinking in the time-honored Japanese fashion. Owner Mitsuyuki Shioiri recommended a “Hitakami” (日高見) junmai cup sake from Miyagi prefecture. It is named after an ancient, semi-legendary kingdom in the north of Japan, which is mentioned in the old chronicles as being particularly fertile. The makers, Hirakō Shuzō, use long, low-temperature fermentation, meticulous washing and steaming of the rice (which they say determines 80 percent of a sake’s flavor) and refrigerated storage to produce polished and refined sakes that are designed to go particularly well with seafood (try the kimoiri surume, dried cuttlefish, 500 yen). Buri’s restroom is a little hard to find. A hint: look carefully at the cup sake-covered wall.

DIRECTIONS: JR Ebisu Station (Yamanote Line), West Exit (west side). Cross to the right of the taxi ranks, with the fountains beside you. Cross the big road and continue down the street beside the KFC. Follow the road for about 150 yards. Buri is on your left. From Ebisu Hibiya Line Station Exit 1, reverse your direction as you come out of the exit and follow the instructions above.

Chokottoya ちょこっと屋 082-245-7770

12-26 Kanayamachō, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-shi, Hiroshima, 730-0022

〒 730-0022 広島県広島市中区銀山町 12-26

Open: 7 pm–5 am, occasional irregular one-day holidays Credit cards? Visa, Master and JCB, not Amex or Diners

English menu? No Table charge: 300 yen

Chokottoya is in a seedy part of Hiroshima. It faces an establishment offering “school girl play” and I am pretty sure we are not talking cat’s cradle and skipping games. The izakaya’s multicolored, corrugated scrap metal façade adds to the slightly bizarre first impression. Inside, though, the aesthetic is more country farmhouse than Mad Max and the selection of more than 120 Hiroshima sakes is unrivaled. The staff are knowledgeable and friendly. If in doubt, I recommend leaving the selection of sake to them. They may surprise you. “The image is perhaps that Hiroshima sake has a sweet taste, but that is a thing of the past,” Chokottoya’s manager Yasutaka Sakumoto says. “Nowadays, it really varies with the kura. There are some very dry Hiroshima sakes.” By way of example, he recommended “Ryūsei karakuchi junmai” (龍勢 辛口純米) from Fujii brewery in Takehara city. It is quite dry but has a mildness to it that really develops when warmed. Sake drinkers talk about kan agari, the quality in some sakes of developing new, alluring tastes with heating, and this one is definitely kan agari. It is designed to work with food and there could be no better accompaniment for a Hiroshima sake that the local speciality, anago tempura (conger eel tempura, 680 yen). Also try the gyū no yukke (raw seasoned beef, 800 yen).

DIRECTIONS: Kanayama-chō Hiroden tram stop (Station No. M5). Head down Yagenbori-dōri (the road with the UCC coffee-sponsored gate). Take the fourth left (at the crossing with the K2 building). The sign is entirely in Japanese characters, but the corrugated iron-covered shop-front marks it out from the sex traders.

Donjaka 呑者家 03-3341-2497 r.gnavi.co.jp/g873801

3-9-10 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tōkyō, 160-0022

〒 160-0022 東京都新宿区新宿 3-9-10

Open: 5 pm–7 am Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? No

English menu? No Table charge: 400 yen

This place is part of a group of very reasonably priced izakaya in this area of Shinjuku. There is another branch around the corner in Suehiro-dōri with 65 seats and a nautically themed variation, called Dora, a few paces down the road with 100 seats. Together with the 45 seats available at this branch, you would have thought there would be plenty of space for Donjaka’s customers. You would be wrong. Booking is definitely a necessity on Fridays. Donjaka’s alcohol and food menus are well-judged and fairly cheap. Manager Kazutoyo Uematsu recommended the yakitori set (yakitori moriawase, 500 yen) and, for those who like small fry, the potato and fish fry (chirimen jyako to potato no kara-age, 550 yen). Both the shōchū and sake selections are excellent, offering between 20 and 25 bottles of both types. The sake-tasting set, with generous samples of a varying line-up of three jizake (kikizake seto, きき酒セツ卜, usually around 650–750 yen but varies with the line-up) represents a particularly good opportunity to expand your Japanese alcohol horizons. You might also take the opportunity to try “Denshu” (田酒), a very highly respected pure rice junmai sake from Aomori prefecture (特別純米酒田酒, “Tokubetsu Junmaishu Denshu,” 650 yen). Around the turn of the millennium, Nishida Shuzō, the 130-year-old sake company that makes “Denshu,” were picking up so many gold medals at the national sake competitions for this fruity but well-mannered sake that they didn’t know where to put them.

DIRECTIONS: Shinjuku-sanchōme Station, Exit C6. Turn left out of the exit (reversing your direction). It is about nine yards along on the right—the izakaya with a bamboo-barred window under a sign for another shop saying Amigo.

Galali 03-3408-2818 www.gala-e.com

3-6-5 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tōkyō

東京都渋谷区神宮前 3-6-5

Open: Weekdays 6 pm–4 am; Saturday, Sunday and holidays 6 pm–11 pm

Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? Yes Table charge: 800 yen

You could almost mistake Galali for a residential house, which is apparently what the local residents think. There have been complaints from neighbors about the din through the thin walls. This is, therefore, not the best place to come for a noisy night out, but, if you are up for some serious sake drinking (at some moderately serious prices), Galali has an original approach. It is a sister establishment to the nearby Garari kokuto shōchū bar (see page 93), which serves its spirits with an unrivaled range of miso. At Galali, the featured combination is salt and sake, a traditional favorite. Twelve different types of salt line the bar, ranging from quite sour umejio—salt that has been used to pack umeboshi plum pickle barrels—to a delicious sweet sea salt from Ishikawa. Each has a unique taste and, if you ask, they will give you selected salts to taste with your sake free of charge. Salt also features strongly in the menu (for example, Jidori no shioyaki, grilled salty chicken, 1,200 yen), and they recommend it as an accompaniment for their sashimi moriawase (raw fish selection, 2,700 yen). I was recommended the Honjōzō Tamagaeshi “Jū Yon Dai” (十四 代 from the extensive sake menu. In my experience, any bar that has a good supply of “Jū Yon Dai” will want to shout it from the rooftops. It has an almost legendary status but is actually a very young brand. It was first released in 1993 by the 15th-generation head of Takagi Shuzō, Akitsuna Takagi (the sake’s name means 14 and is a tribute to his predecessor). Akitsuna was educated at Tōkyō Agricultural University, which has become a major force in modern Japanese alcohol, turning out a generation of highly educated, innovative alcohol makers (for example, the shōchū innovator Yoichiro Nishi of Nishi Shuzō (see page 98) was a classmate of Takagi’s). The “Jū Yon Dai” honjōzō is made by introducing a small amount of kasutori shōchū (see page 81) into the fermentation tank, both to lighten the taste as well as to bring out flavors. It has a gentle vanilla sweetness but no cloying aftertaste.

DIRECTIONS: Gaienmae Station (Ginza Line), Exit 2. Walk down the right side of Route 246 to the southwest. Turn right onto route 418 just after the Bell Commons building. Cross the road to Starbucks and continue to the pedestrian footbridge. Turn left immediately after the bridge. Galali is hidden behind a cycle shop in what looks like a residential alley across the road from the Oakwood Residence building (just before the Moritex building).

Ginjōtei 吟醸鼎 011-261-0720 www.ginjyoutei.com

Basement, President Matsui Biru 100, 5 chōme, Minami Ichijō, Chūō-ku, Sapporo

札幌市中央区南 1 条西 5 丁目 プレジデント松井ビル 100 地下（電車通り沿い）

Open: 6 pm–11 pm; sometimes closes at 8 pm if empty; closed Sunday and national holidays

Booking recommended? Yes (booking requested by the owner) Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? No Table charge: 500 yen (sometimes there are special events with a higher charge)

When you write a book about alcohol and bars you get used to marathon nights on the town, but nothing prepared me for the evening I spent with Phred Kaufman, the legendary owner of Mugishutei (see page 154), and Kjetil Jikiun, the man behind the Norwegian beer brewery Nøgne Ø. We were still out at 6 am, long past my bedtime! Somewhere in the middle of that hazily remembered evening, Phred took us to Ginjōtei. I remember a veritable procession of superb sakes trooping their way along the bar top into our glasses. A couple of highlights that survived the hangover’s regrets: an unpasteurized “Dassai” (瀬祭) from Asahi brewery with a superb balanced fruitiness, and the overripe melon smell of the rich “Yuuho” junmai ginjō (遊穂 糸屯米吟醸) from Mioya brewery in Ishikawa prefecture. The kanji on the “Yuuho” bottle means “playful rice head” but it is also a pun on the Japanese pronunciation of UFO: Mioya is based in Hakui city, which is known as Japan’s UFO sighting capital. Until recently, the brand was itself a bit of a UFO in the sake world. The kura did not have a strong reputation until Miho Fujita, a women’s college English literature graduate who had been working as an office lady, suddenly found herself in charge of a brewery! In 2004, she met Toshiaki Yokomichi, one of the most exciting young master brewers, at a meeting of sake makers but refused to tell him her name or kura because she felt she didn’t know enough about the business. They met again the next year and her raw enthusiasm and commitment convinced him to commit his bright future to a kura that had, until then, only been making futsūshu (sake’s equivalent of vin ordinaire) for the local market. Mioya has started winning regional and national medals and is now being taken very seriously indeed.

DIRECTIONS: Ōdōri Station (Tozai/Tōhō/Nanboku Lines), Exit 3. Turn left and walk one block. It is in the basement of the President Matsui building, on the same block as the Hotel Okura. It is one block west of the Nishi 4-chōme tram stop.

Hanamori 花守り 082-247-5722 r.gnavi.co.jp/y120000

3F Taira Biru, 10-18 Mikawachō, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-shi, Hiroshima, 730-0029

〒 730-0029 広島県広島市中区三川町 10-18 平ビル 3F

Open: 6 pm–1 am Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? Visa, Master, DC and JCB, not Amex

English menu? No Table charge: 400 yen

Hiroshima has long been admired for its soft and relatively sweet style of sake. Saijo town, to the east of Hiroshima city, has been a center for the industry since 1650, and there are old breweries dotted all over the prefecture. During the 20th century, the area gained a particular reputation for its high quality and was an early leader in the development of the ginjō and daiginjō techniques. Hanamori is a very good place to sample this rich tradition, with about 50 types of sake available, about a third of which come from the Hiroshima area. The interior is traditionally Japanese in style, with tatami-floored rooms threaded along a long and narrow floor plan. The food is strong on local marine specialities, such as anago (conger eel, 1,200 yen) and kawahagi sashimi (raw kawahagi fish, 2,400 yen). The sashimi moriawase (a seasonal selection of five types of sashimi, about 950 yen depending on the fish used) is very popular with customers. From the sake menu, I was recommended a “Taketsuru” (竹鶴 junmaishu. Taketsuru brewery is the same 300-year-old family enterprise that the founder of Japanese whisky, Masataka Taketsuru, came from (see page 164). Tatetsuru brewery’s current tōji (master brewer), Tatsuya Ishikawa, was a student at Waseda University in Tōkyō when he got hooked on quality sake and decided to make it his calling. He has significantly changed Taketsuru’s style since his arrival, throwing up any effort to make polite, well-behaved ginjō in favor of a much more raucous approach. He calls the junmai a junmai bakudan (“pure rice bomb”). It hits the drinker hard with strong acidity and body, but is rounded enough to end up quite more-ish. Compare and contrast with more typical Hiroshima offerings like the “Shinrai” junmaishu (神雷, 630 yen) from Miwa Shuzō.

DIRECTIONS: Walk east along Heiwa-dōri from the Peace Park. It is about 600 yards after the bridge. Take a left at the gasoline station on the corner. Hanamori is in the building next to the gasoline stand, immediately to your right, and is signed using the Roman alphabet.

Himonoya ひもの屋 03-3844-8088 e-808.com/himonoya

1F-2F, 1-11-1 Asakusa, Taitō-ku, Tōkyō

東京都台東区浅草 1-11-1 御所第 2 ビル 1 ・ 2 階

Open: 5 pm–5 am (but opening times vary between branches) Booking recommended? No

Credit cards? Most major cards English menu? No Table charge: 280 yen

Himono is dried fish. If you drive along the Japanese coast you can still see drying racks lining the roadside, with hundreds of salted fish drying in the open air (and car fumes). It used to be the most reliable way of storing the fisherman’s catch for sale, but it also happens to be a great way to prepare a drinking snack. The Himonoya chain, combining cheap and cheerful combinations of himono and good-value sake, has expanded quickly since it was set up five years ago. There are now 50 shops across the Kantō area. I was recommended the kimoiri maruboshi ika (whole-dried grilled squid, 480 yen) and the saba ishiru (fish marinated in soy sauce and dried, 630 yen) with a 180 ml tokkuri of “Tōjikan” (杜氏鑑, 600 yen) from the famous Hakutsuru brewery in Nada, Kōbe. Hakutsuru is Japan’s biggest sake maker and makes a lot cheaper sake for the mass market. This is a special honjōzō made on a smaller scale by their master brewer, Masao Nakazawa. The idea was to make a product that would appeal to the man in the street rather than the sake snob, and the result is an extremely mild, medium-dry sake, with a relatively suppressed fragrance. For someone who is finding it hard to like sake, “Tōjikan” might be worth one final shake of the dice. If it comes up sixes, you could move on to the “Jōzen Mizunogotoshi” (上善如水, 600 yen), a slightly drier but super smooth and clear sake from Niigata. I have heard it described as the Jacob’s Creek of sakes. Himonoya is unlikely to be top of the list for experienced sake heads, although there is usually some interesting jizake on the menu, but it is a fun and reasonably priced night out.

DIRECTIONS: Tsukuba Express Asakusa Station, Exit A1 (for Sensōji Temple, Kokusai-dōri). If you come out on a side road, turn left and left again. If you are on a main road, turn left, then take the fourth left (at the drugstore cosmetics shop sign). There is no Roman alphabet on the sign but the dramatic black and white design is easy to spot. From the Asakusa Tōbu/Metro Station, Exit 1, walk up Kaminarimon-dōri away from Azuma-bashi (and the Asahi Breweries HQ with the golden sperm on its top). Turn right at the T-junction at the top and then right again.

Isshin 一心 022-261-9888/022-261-9889 (for the Kagen Kan)

B1F Jōzenji Hills, 3-3-1, Kokubunchō, Aoba-ku, Sendai

仙台市青葉区国分町 3-3-1 定禅寺ヒルズ B1F

Open: 5 pm–12 pm; closed Sunday Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? No Table charge: 1,500 yen plus 10 percent service charge

If you find yourself in Sendai, I cannot recommend Isshin highly enough. It is actually two separate establishments, side by side—a general sake bar called simply Isshin and the Isshin Kagen Kan, a sort of sake warmer’s heaven. Founder Kōki Yanagisawa says customers who are new to sake might want to start in the general bar and move next door when they are ready for a slightly more connoisseury atmosphere, but the chirori heating sets, complete with thermometers for precisely measuring what heat you are drinking your sake at, are such fun that some might want to take a plunge straight into the deep end. The two bars operate separately, so you will need to book a table at the Kagen Kan or Isshin, depending on the destination you have chosen (there are different phone numbers). A note on prices: at first sight, the 1,500 yen entrance charge looks expensive, especially given the extra 10 percent charged for service, but the otōshi dish that comes with that is really not so much a snack as a meal in itself. I would advise not ordering too much food beyond the otōshi and getting stuck into the real reason for visiting Isshin: extremely interesting sake, such as the big-boned, ricey “Haginotsuru” (萩の鶴, 750 yen for 180 ml), which Yanagisawasan picked out of the Kagen Kan’s sake list for me. Most of the sakes in both bars tend to hover around 750–800 yen for 180 ml and the more expensive drinks (up to 2,000 yen for 180 ml) can be ordered in small 60 ml glasses. In between sips, take the time to seek out the original prints by the famous sake manga writer Akira Oze, who gave them as gifts after featuring the bar in his stories.

DIRECTIONS: Kōtōdai Kōen Station, Exit Kōen 2. Walk about 150 yards straight up Jozenji-dōri away from the park. It is down the stairs next to the Lawson convenience store.

Juttoku 十徳 03-3342-0339 www.juttoku.com

B1, B2, New Sentoraru Biru, 1-5-12 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku ku, Tōkyō, 160-0023

〒 160-0023 東京都新宿区西新宿 1-5-12 ニューセントラルビル B1, B2

Open: 4 pm–12 pm; Friday–Sunday 4 pm–4 am; no holidays except New Year

Credit cards? No English menu? No Table charge: 350 yen

Kimiko Satō features in her izakaya’s logo: a cartoon figure of a well-padded motherly type holding a generous jug of sake. In person, she carries off the motherly image with aplomb but you get the definite feeling this is the sort of mother who gets things done. When we met up, she was as interested in finding out about British and American property prices and discussing possible openings for her company abroad as in telling me about her Tōkyō izakaya. She set up her original pub in 1982 with the idea of serving properly stored sake at good prices. There are now six shops under the Juttoku banner, including a shōchū bar and various restaurant ventures, but the basic philosophy of no-nonsense excellence is still in evidence. The lino-floored, green plastic-seated Shinjuku izakaya keeps a seasonally changing selection of more than 80 types of sake, and the reasonable prices, which rarely stray too far from the 400–600 yen range, make it an ideal place to get your sake footing. The three-glass tasting set (nomi kurabe setto, 飲み比べセ ッ卜) varies in price with the sakes featured, but it is usually excellent value at around 550 yen. The food is also pretty cheap for central Tōkyō. Try the selection of five skewers loaded with grilled meat and vegetables (go shurui kushiyaki moriawase, 450 yen) or the mountain vegetable tempura set (sansai tempura moriawase, 650 yen). You might perhaps wash it down with a glass of the classic “Hakkaisan” sake from Niigata prefecture (“Hakkaisan futsū seishu,” 八海山普通清酒, 550 yen). The best way to explain Hakkaisan’s place in the sake market is to compare it to Moët et Chandon’s Champagne brand. Someone looking for a safe bet for a bottle to take along to a swish party is never going to be embarrassed by “Hakkaisan,” because these brands build their reputations by consistently producing unimpeachable alcohol. The makers, Hakkai Jōzō, have been producing crisp, well-balanced sakes from the soft waters coming off Hakkaisan Mountain since 1922. The “Hakkaisan futsū seishu” is the least expensive sake in their range.

DIRECTIONS: Shinjuku Station, Exit B16. Go up to the street. Turn left down the road between the second-floor McDonald’s and the Odakyu store. There is no alphabet used on the Juttoku store front but it is opposite the Arc academy and has a display of sake bottles.

Kaasan かあさん 03-3344-0888 www.kasan.jp

4F Nishi-Shinjuku Kokusai dōri Biru, 1-16-4 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tōkyō

東京都新宿区西新宿 1-16-4 西新宿国際通ビル 4F

Open: Weekdays 4 pm–12 pm; Saturday 4 pm–11 pm (varies between branches); many branches closed Sundays

Credit cards? Most major cards English menu? No Table charge: 400 yen (some branches cheaper)

Kaasan means “mom” and they take their name seriously at this cheap and cheerful izakaya. It seems (how can I put this and avoid death by rolling pin?) that only women of a “certain maturity” work there. “There is no actual rule on the age,” insisted Kōtarō Nanaumi of head office. “I think it is because of the shop’s name. We just get a lot of women of that sort of age applying.” Kaasan started off in Kawasaki city in 1988, but there are now more than 20 of these unpretentious, Formica-topped establishments dotted around the Tōkyō area. Kaasan’s eponymous “mom” seems to be an indulgent sort. She maintains a first-class sake list for her family. There were 40 or 50 sakes available at the Nishi-Shinjuku branch I visited (and 22 shōchū). Try the fragrant “Uragasanryū Kōka” sake (裏雅 山流香華, 700 yen) with the mochimochi pizza (720 yen) or the nikujaga (pork and potato, 580 yen). “Uraga-sanryū Kōka” sake is made by Shindō Shuzō, a long-established kura in Yamagata prefecture, using the famous Miyama Nishiki sake rice, a speciality of the region (see page 38). It is a honjōzō sake, meaning that a small amount of distilled alcohol is added during the brewing. The technique often lightens the taste and brings out flavors and aromas from the moromi. See what you think. Kaasan also recommend the “Denshu” sake (田酒, 800 yen, see page 52).

DIRECTIONS: Kaasan has branches across Tōkyō. For the Nishi Shinjuku branch: Shinjuku JR Station, south entrance. Turn right and follow the yellow signs to the “Skyscraper district” and “Tōkyō Metropolitan Government Office” until you get to an exit pointing you down the stairs to your left. Instead, walk straight ahead. You want to go straight up the alley beside the KFC restaurant that is immediately ahead of you across the large road. Pass Gaia Pachinko on your right. It is on the fourth floor above Ringer Hut.

Kōjimachi Japontei 麹町じゃぽん亭 03-3263-3642

2F Kei Biru, 3-4-7 Kōjimachi, Chiyoda ku

千代田区麹町 3-4-7 啓ビル 2F

Open: Weekdays 5.30 pm–12.30 am (last food orders 11 pm); closed Saturday, Sunday and national holidays

Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? No Table charge: 400 yen (varies slightly with the otōshi dish served)

Kōjimachi, the name of this part of Tōkyō, literally means “mold town” and uses the same kanji character as the kōji mold used in sake making. One theory has it that this used to be the base for Edo’s kōji makers. Although booze making has long since been displaced by diplomatic wrangling in what is now a major embassy district, Japontei is doing its best to live up to the district’s alcoholic billing with a superb selection of 40 jizake. The staff are knowledgeable without being intimidating and, while not English speakers, are quite used to dealing with foreigners: they attract a lot of custom from dipsomanic diplomats, it seems. They specialize in “Jū Yon Dai” (十四代, see page 53) from Takagi Shuzō and their refrigerators normally have at least 15 different bottlings of the famed brand. When I visited they had a very rare “Ryūgetsu” bottling for 3,000 yen a glass. I am afraid I have no idea what it tastes like because it was well beyond my pocket, but it is a measure of the relative cheapness of sake in Japan that they were incredulous when I told them that wines in some Tōkyō bars could reach 10,000 yen and whiskies more than 90,000 yen (see page 180). A selection of three types of sashimi (sashimi moriawase) will set you back 1,500 yen. More adventurous types might want to try out the ultimate Japanese drinking snack: chinmi (pickled unidentifiable seafood bits, 500 yen).

DIRECTIONS: Kōjimachi Station (Yūrakuchō Line), Exit 3. Turn left around the coffee shop, left up the road and it is the next entrance on your left.

Komahachi 駒八 03-3453-2530 www.komahachi.com

Sake annex: 1-2F Ishii biru, 5-16-14 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tōkyō 108-0014

[Main restaurant: 1F Hashimoto Biru 5-16-1 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tōkyō108-0014]

〒 108-0014 東京都港区芝 5-16-14 石井ビル 1 ～ 2F [Main restaurant: 〒 108-0014 東京都港区芝 5-16-1 橋本ビル 1F

Open: 5 pm–1 pm; closed Sunday and national holidays

Booking recommended? No Credit cards? Most major cards English menu? No Table charge: 300 yen

Komahachi is a chain izakaya with a commitment to proper sake. The first restaurant was opened in Shiba in 1975 and there are now 20 stores across the Tōkyō area. It is the Bekkan (annex), just round the corner from the original restaurant, that you should seek out if you are interested in sake. Most of the branches offer at least 10 good sakes, but the annex has a choice of about 50. Despite the scale of Komahachi’s operation, they are strong on small kura sake. They had “Houou Biden” (鳳凰美田, 800 yen) on the menu when I visited in 2008. The makers, Kobayashi Shuzō in Tochigi prefecture, operate on a very small scale and have come up with what must be the ultimate manufacturer’s ruse: they actually get their consumers to pay to help them make the sake. Twice a year, at rice planting time, they invite people from all over Japan to come to Tochigi for a “rice planting festival.” By all accounts, it is a fun occasion and the payment probably barely covers the cost of the free sake that is laid on in the evenings after hard days spent hand planting rice. They do the same at harvest time. Houou Biden is not heat-treated at bottling (namazume, see page 41) and has a pronounced floral, slightly melony aroma with a soft, mild taste. All of Komahachi’s sake is priced between 700 and 900 yen. The food is generally reasonably priced too. The gyū motsu nabe (beef off al nabe, 980 yen for one person) and kabocha āmondo age (pumpkin and almond fry, 580 yen) are favorites with the salarymen who make up much of Komahachi’s clientele.

DIRECTIONS: Mita Station (Toei Mita and Asakusa Lines), Exit A3. Turn left away from the larger road and left again. Turn right at the T-junction and take the third road on the right. The main izakaya is immediately after the slight kink in the road, about 60 yards after you turn. The annex, which specializes in sake, is a few paces down the road to the right, just before the kink.

Kushikoma 串駒 03-3917-6657 www.kushikoma.com

1-33-25 Kita Ōtsuka, Toshima ku, Tōkyō

東京都豊島区北大塚 1-33-25

Open: 6 pm–12 pm; closed Sunday Booking recommended? Yes Credit cards? Most major cards

English menu? No Table charge: 1,000 yen