Japanese Wine Country – The Wine Cave

We spent the weekend with some friends up in Japanese wine country. Tucked into the foothills of the Alps, you’ll find a little town called Katsunuma, and in it – a lot of Koshu grape vines. You’ll also find the cave at Budo no Oka (Grape Hill), where you can sample 150 Japanese wines for just over $10.

Even though our enthusiasm was not matched by the quality of wine, we managed to have a pretty great time. I was feeling rather inspired by some of the wine labels, and I’ve decided to make a professional goal: Someday, I want to design a wine label! How cool would that be?

The format of Budo no Oka was really cool – the wine was set out on the tops of barrels for you to sample. It was organized in the same order you should drink it: dry whites > sweet whites, roses, light reds > full-bodied reds. You get a little cup when you go in, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Sip, sip, sip. I wish they had crackers or water around.

I’ve joked about how it’s easy to speak Japanese; just add an “u” to the end of any word. What does it say when the winemaker apologizes for their wine before you try it?

Yeah. It was about as good as you’d expect. Actually, a lot of the wines weren’t very good. Koshu is a tough grape to do well.

Here’s what we learned: None of the reds were good. None of them. Some were less-terrible than others, but we didn’t have a single red wine that we would have been happy with purchasing in a restaurant. Koshu is best if made in off-dry white style, when they take on the stonefruit-and-mineral characteristics of viognier. When they’re made too dry, they get super acidic and the lime & grapefruit flavours dominate. When they’re made too sweet Koshu turns into a cloying buckets of nectariney goo.

Don’t let me fool you though – we still had a great time. (below is me with Emi & Mao)

Outside the wine cave, we strained to see the ever-illusive Mt. Fuji (it was too cloudy), and commented on how we all love to visit the countryside.

Tune in next time: finding a place to sleep, farmers market, and green curry ramen!

Yuzawa

There’s something really charming about the idea of a snow festival. We grew up in Wisconsin, a place where I’ve never know the people to celebrate the back-breaking winter weather. In Tokamachi, however, the perspective is different.

61 years ago, the locals decided to celebrate the mounds snow around them, instead of feeling oppressed by it. They built snow castles and drank in the streets. It was festive. Joyous. It was a way to lift spirits in the middle of a hard winter. I think I read that somewhere. If not, I might have made it up. As jon will tell you, I’m prone to doing that. Anyways, that’s the picture I want to keep of the Japanese people 61 years ago.

On Saturday morning, with little more than an idea of which train to take, we loaded ourselves onto the Shinkansen.

I packed brunch, which amounted to a bottle of sparkling wine (wrapped hobo-style) and some juice:

…and we sat back for 2 hours, as or bullet train carried us towards the mountains.

**

Remember from last year, we talked about how every little area seems to have it’s own local food specialty? The big one here is rice, but the omnipresent street food is a something packaged brightly in leaves.

Isn’t it beautiful? It looks like it could be a tropical fish, with all of it’s tails and tendrils.

Oh. It’s… green. Okay. And to think I had just sworn off macha for good this time (the thick green tea drink). But okay. We’ll go with it. I wonder what’s inside!

Oh. (sad face) it’s bean paste. in retrospect, why on earth would I have expected the bundle to be filled with anything but bean paste? Foiled again.

Perhaps 4 photos of that was gratuitous, but i wanted you to experience the excitement (and subsequent disappointment) with me.

**

At this point, we’re wandering around the town of Yuzawa, which is akin to a neighborhood ski town. Not ritzy like Vail, or quaint and charming like Breckenridge. Yuzawa felt like the working-man’s ski town. There were onsens (hot baths) abound, and lots of houses. Very neighborhoody-like.

Despite all these [theoretical] housing opportunities around us, Jon and I came to Yuzawa without a hotel booked. I think I’ll leave you there, since the telling of that story could be quite long.

Instead, I’ll leave you with this totally awesome picture of the area that we were in. Mountains are so pretty. (Although I find it’s best to look at pictures of them rather than to climb around in them!)

Ode to a Large Tuna

4:30 and the alarm goes off. I swear I just fell asleep, and what is it again that I’m waking up so early for?

Ah yes. The tuna action at the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, where one fish can sell for as much as $20,000, and travelers brave their way through the maze of highspeed fish mobiles to stand in a warehouse and watch.

For a while, the tuna auction was closed to tourists – a response to some of our more obnoxious brethren prodding and poking where they didn’t belong. These days, they rope off a place for us to stand…

…and quietly insist that we mind our manners.

From 5 to 5:30am, the bluefin tunas are tagged and sorted for auction.

The tips of their tails are cut off, so that the buyers can inspect what they’re getting and make appropriate auction bids

Now’s a good time for some Pablo Neruda, don’t you think? Jon was happy that, despite my best intentions, I didn’t remember to bring the poem with us to read on the auction floor.

Among the market greens,
a bullet
from the ocean
depths,
a swimming
projectile,
I saw you,
dead.

The poem goes on, but I’ll spare you. It’s a fantastic poem though. Let a love-poet write about a dead fish and this is what you get.

As I was saying. By this point, the warehouse is filled with both tuna and tourists. The tuna is being inspected by flashlight and poked with ice picks. This article explains how fat freezes much slower than meat, so if the fish gives a little when you poke it, it is worth much more than one that’s frozen solid. It’s hard to believe that these lumps were living, breathing things just a few hours ago.

While the wholesalers are at work, the tourists are madly taking pictures and wishing they had brushed their hair before leaving the house. Try not to judge – it’s only 5:15am at this point!

A bell rings and the auctioneer stands up on his perch. “How much for this one?”

If you’re like me, you didn’t get to see the auction while it was happening because you’re short and you happened to be standing behind a concrete pole. Luckily, your husband is taller than everyone in the country, so you could watch it on video later.

More bells ring. The tunas unceremoniously await their next fate on the backs of the speedy fish mobiles.

Kitkat – Flan

The chocolate-to-wafer ratio is way off in the big size of kitkat. Regardless, I was still excited to find that flan was back on the market.

Last year I found big bags of the miniature sized flan that I brought home and shared in the office. We also found kitkat icecream bars in this flavour last year! I think I bought about 12 of them – they were so good. Because of that particular find, I’m obsessed with looking in the ice cream case every time we go into a convenience store. I think it’s a habit that will slowly drive Jon crazy.

Semi-Sweet Chocolate

Oh!  I haven’t given you a kitkat in a while.

Along with last year’s Yuzu & the Sakura Coffee from last month, this one is quickly becoming my favourite.  Semi-sweet chocolate – it’s… perfect and lovely.

…okay. I *think* it’s semi-sweet chocolate. I could be wrong because I can’t read the label. but it tastes a lot like chocolate, just a little bitter, and it has a stream of brown stuff on the cover of the box. …. which could only be …. chocolate. Does anyone watch “How I Met Your Mother”?