Gekkeikan Sake Brewery (お酒)

Before I attended the dazzling bank-front clock show pictured below, I went with a group of Japanese medical students from Kyoto University to the Gekkeikan Brewery.

As a short aside; in Japan you can major in medicine as an undergraduate, so most of the Japanese students were my age. After you get your undergraduate degree you then have to apply to med-school same as in America. Med-school in Japan is also very hard to get into just like in America.

Anyways, back to the juice! The Gekkeikan Brewery is one of Japan's most famous sake brands. A while back my father purchased a carbonated sake for me in America (one of my first sake tastes) and little did I know it was in fact made by this famous brand (you could buy it in the gift shop). They also make sake marinated pickles, sake fruit-juice drinks, sake-flavored soft serve (tastes just like regular vanilla - but maybe I was too drunk off sake at that point to appreciate the subtle sake flavor), and sake body lotions and shampoos, which make the scent of your skin and hair the apple of any Japanese homeless person's eye.

The brewery was basically a museum that showed how sake is made (you can see the steps down below). Most of the Japanese kids found the museum to be pretty boring (I guess I can't blame them - there are more fun things to do than stare at different sized barrels). One Japanese guy had mastered a sarcastic tone in English and kept practicing it throughout the day. He found an actual occassion to use it when describing the sake museum, "I enjoyed it SOOOOOOO much (rolls eyes)."

Sake in Japanese means either alcohol or sake. Just to be a language snob for a moment, *Sake is pronounced saw-kay AND NOT saw-kee as many foreigners say it. Just like geisha is gay-shah AND NOT gee-shah* Japanese people drink warm sake in the winter and cold sake in the summer (though you can always order both varieties...I like warm sake more cause it smoothes out the alcohol taste). Sake is either poured into very small cups or small wooden boxes.

I tried three different types of sake at the museum; a sweet sake, a dry sake, and a plum wine. I liked the sweet sake the best. The Japanese kids told me that this was going to be a picnic so I didn't eat lunch beforehand. Because of this there was nothing in my stomach and the sake got me a little buzzed.

B.E.W.