Arima Onsen Hot Spa

(Arima Spar from the bridge)

(Gold Hot Water)

 Arima Spa in Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture is one of the oldest and best hot spring spars in Japan along with Dogo Onsen Spar in Ehime and Shirahama Onsen in Wakayama. Arima is not far away from Osaka but it's only one-hour bus-ride from Umeda, northern center of Osaka.  It's known as an oasis of Osaka which is visited by 1.6 million people a year. People go around spars in yukata, a casual summer cotton kimono, eat big dinner and stay overnight at ryokan or traditional Japanese style inn.   

(Souvenir shops)

Arima Travel Bureau near the bus terminal, offers brochures written in English, Korean and Chinese. Arima has always been a popular resort since the seventh century but it was renovated as a resort not only for the Japanese but for foreigners several years ago. You can find many foreign visitors strolling around Arima while young Japanese people are seen walking around and eating Arima crackers and drinking carbonated soda especially in March when college students go on graduation trip.

(Arima Senbei cracker shop) 

This is one of the source of a hot spring which looks reddish brown because the water contains iron and sodium. You can drink water from Kinoyu Isen or Source of Gold Hot Water which has an effect on the digestive organs.

(reddish Gold Hot Water) 

     

 
You can have fun looking at souvenir shops, coffee shops with retro design, noodle shops, paintbrush shops, Tansan Senbei Cracker shops and hotels.

(Arima paintbrushes )

(Arima paintbrushes)

You can soak your feet in warm water or 'footbath' for free at Kinnyu or Gold Hot Water.

(Ashiyu footbath)

This is Toy and Automata Museum whre 4000 toys and automata collected around the world are displayed. Kids can play with wooden toys on the tird floor.

(Japanese automata at Automata Museum)

(German wooden dolls at Automata Museum)

 
Hideyoshi Toyotomi, a military ruler in the late 16th century is said to have visited Arima 15 times with his wife Nene to take the baths for medical purposes so you can find statues of Hideyoshi and Nene. Nene paid visits to Arima many times as it was believed Arima's water might help women get pregnant. She was not able to give birth to any child to him. Her statue faces to Hideyoashi's statue from the red bridge near the center of Arima.

(Nene's statue facing toward Hideyoshi's statue )

(Hideyoshi's statue) 

This is a statue of Kappa, a water spirit with a red cap and a white muffler. He looks so cold in winter that
local people put these on him. Various kinds of events are held in Arima all through the year. A costume play event and dressed-in-disguise event were held on 'Bean Throwing Ceremony on Feb.3.

(Kappa statue in red cap and white muffler)

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Visit to Fushimi Sake Brewery

 Sake making began about two thousand years ago when rice planting was introduced to Japan. Fushimi is one of the biggest sake producing areas in Japan.

(sake container tank)

(Kitagawa Honten Brewery)

 
When Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a military ruler in the late 16th century built Fushimi Castle and Fushimi castle town, there was a great demand of sake so sake industry flourished so much. Many sake breweries such as Gekkeikan and Kizakura started the business here during the Edo Period. Nowadays, there are about 20 sake breweries in Fushimi. When you walk around Fushimi, a fragrant smell of sake floats on a breath of air.
These are the pictures of sake breweries.




Fushimi prospered as a traffic center between Kyoto and Osaka during the Edo Period. Teradaya was an inn where Sakamoto Ryoma, a high-minded revolutionalist and one of the most popular historic heroes among the Japanese used to stay and is located near the Uji River.


I went to Kitagawa Honten, a sake brewery in Fushimi originated about 350 years ago to see sake making.
They showed us their brewery which is open to the public only on special days in winter. We enjoyed samples of freshly made sake. The website of Kitagawa Honke and their brand Tomio is
http://www.fushimi.or.jp/brewery/kitagawa.html









The authentic way of sake tasting is,
1.Pour wake into a white cup with three blue circles at the bottom.

(fresh sake tasting)

  

(white sake cup)

2. Smell sake first, hold one mouthful of sake in your tongue and mouth.











3. Drink it.


We played a sake taste guessing game. We drank from four cups of sake with lables on and try to remember the taste. Later we drank four cups of sake without labels and made a guess which sake matched the sake with labels. I was not able to make a good guess at all. It was difficult to remember the taste of each sake.

They explained the process of making sake while taking us to the brewery tour.
1. Rice is polished, washed and put into water for one day.

(rice polishing machine)

2. Rice is steamed with hot vapor and also dry vapor so that rice  becomes hard on the surface and soft in the center.





3.Shobo(yeast-starter)making
Steamed rice, water and yeast are put to a container and warmed up at 60 degrees centigrade. Bubbles of carbon dioxide are generated.

(shubo making)

4. Koji(spore)making
Put koji spore on rice and settle the temperature at about 33 degrees centigrade.

5. Moromi Mash making
Yeast starter, Koji rice and water are put into a tank and mixed. It's called 'Parallel combined fermentation' process.

6. Pressing and filtering process
Raw sake is poured into cloth and pressed with air and squeezed.

(filtering)

Their brand sake Eikun is sold at Aburacho at Fushimi Otesuji Covered Shopping Street and other sake shops.

(Kitagawa Honten Brewery)

 

(Aburacho in Fushimi)

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food display making

(deep fried shrimps)

 

 

(ham and lettuce)

(yellow tail in the making)

I joined a food sample workshop last weekend. The name of the food sample company is Morino Sample in Hirano Ward, Osaka. 

Mold is made from silicon. Was used to be used to make a mold but not any more.

 

(a father cooking with his kids)

  

Food sample display is commonly seen at restaurants in Japan. It may take ten minutes in foreign countries to choose a dish and make an order but here it may take only a couple of minutes thanks to food sample display. The presentation is so real that it's appetizing.  

 They can just point out what looks delicious for them to the restaurant staff with their fingers.  

Food display originated in Japan about 80 years ago and is seen only in Japan, Korea and China

 It hasn't spread to other countries yet. I suppose the custom of using food sample display is closely related to our visually-oriented character.  

(fruit pieces)

The staff at the workshop give us a white plain cake and we put fruit pieces, chocolate, ice cream on the cake.  All of them may look like real but they are plastic food displays.
 

(fruit pieces put on a cake) 

I put kiwi pieces, pineapple, oranges, strawberries on ice cream but I put too much fruits so they looked overloaded.

(Putting varnish on my cakeIt's a piece of cake!)  

Pink ice cream in the center, apple, kiwi fruit on side...It's so much fun!

After topping chocolate on my parfait, I applied a coat of varnish  to finish this. They sold various kinds of food straps including sushi, tempura, noodles. Just seeing them made me hungry but all of them were so cute!

  Morino Food holds workshops every weekends. It takes about two hours to make a cake or parfait. Hopefully this custom of presenting food samples will spread to the other side of the world.

    

(food sample straps)

 

 

 

 

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Gardens in green

(bamboo grove in Tenryuji)

Bamboo grove is something very Japanese. Bamboo groves are seen in Arashiyama, western part of Kyoto City. When the breeze blows, we can hear the refreshing rustle of bamboo leaves.

(Taizoin)

The Taizo-in Garden in Myoshinji is one of the best gardens in Kyoto. It's comparatively a new garden which was laid out in 1966. This garden uses the optical illusion and looks long from front to back. Seasonal flowers bloom whenever you go and the stream of water is running from upstream.

(Sanzenin)

Cedars stand straight up in green garden of Sanzenin in Ohara.

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New Year charms

This is a bamboo rake and a charm for raking in good fortune sold at shrines during new year holidays. 

Seven deities of good fortune drawn from Buddhistm, Shinto and Taoist traditions are on board a treasure ship. These deities are believed to give people longevity, talent of music and art and prosperity in business. It’s a popular custom for the Japanese to visit temples and shrines of these seven deities.

  

Egg plant, hawk and Mt. Fuji are something we can have happiness for the coming year if we have a dream of one of them during the new year holidays.

Rice straw rope is hung at the entrance of a house. An orange and fern are put onto the sacred straw rope with white paper. In the center of the rope, Somin Shorai, a name of a Chinese man is written. According to a legend, he was a poor younger brother who offered a room to Gozutenno, a Chinese deity who is believed to get rid of a bad luck whereas his rich older brother didn’t when the deity asked both of them for a room overnight. The younger brother became rich and happy with the help of the deity so

It’s believed if we put this name on the straw rope, we will be able to avoid bad luck.  

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New Year display

Happy New Year! Akemashite Omedetou!

(bamboo arrangement is displayed at Kyoto Station )

 Christmas displays at department stores, grocery stores and stations are changed to New Year displays over the night. The change is so sudden but through.

Various colored chrysanthemums, plum branches are put into bamboo stems and put on red carpet and places in front of gold screen. 

Gold and red are regarded as happy color representing lighthearted atmosphere of a new year. 

We had an unprecedented disaster last year so I pray for a peaceful year.

      

 

The picture below is ordinary New Year’s pine and bamboo decorations. The flower arrangement above was done by new  style of arranging flowers.

(Kadomatsu-bamboo and pine decoratioin)

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