Small beauty in Kyoto

(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)

Continue reading →

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.