Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Ninth Weeks

TWENTY-EIGHT WEEK

I decided to take pictures of the local stores and post them, but I had a problem with my camera and my camera's memory card and I had to format it.  I had a backup of most of my photos, but not the newest ones, including the ones of the local stores.  I'll have to go again and take pictures of them.

TWENTY-NINTH WEEK

SAKE AND VINEGAR MUSEUM

 Due to my problems with my camera, some of my photos are a little blurry.  I apologize, but you can't tell it's blurry from the camera. I have to wait until I look at the photos in a computer to be able to tell.  This week's excursion was to a sake museum and then a vinegar museum.

 We first went to the sake museum.

 Sake producer put this ball of some kind of plant outside their business and they change it once a year once the first sake has been made.  The new ball is bright green, but the ball we saw was definitely not new and kind of brown color.

 The different types of rice are used for different things.  Sake is made from the highest quality.

 Examples of all the different types of rice.

 The process of how sake used to be made.

 Different equipment that used to be used to make sake.

 After we toured the museum, we were taken to another room where we watched the video on how sake is made. After the video they offered tasting of different kinds of sake to those of legal drinking age.

 Afterwards, we went to vinegar museum.

 This wheel had figures of the process of how vinegar used to be made.

 Tools for making vinegar in the old days.

 A red vinegar, which is very difficult to make, was very popular because the taste went very well with sushi.

 Inside those big boxes is where the vinegar is fermented with some kind of bacteria.  They showed us the process in a video and opened one of the boxes to show us what it looks like.  It isn't a pleasant sight if you ask me.

After the tour, we were again taken to another room to watch a video on how vinegar is made and the many uses for vinegar.  After the video we were given a taste of vinegar mixed with blueberry juice to drink.  Apparently drinking vinegar is healthy, and in order to make it more appetizing the company started selling it mixed with juice.  Actually the company said that pure vinegar sales is only 30% of the total sales.  The rest is made up of other products that contain vinegar, such as the juices, or sauces, and natto.