an ancient tower stands still in Yamaguchi

Known to be one of the three most beautiful five-roofed pagodas in Japan, this Buddhist tower stands quietly. A Haiku poem inscribed on a slab of rock on the premises of Ruriko-ji temple in Yamaguchi city says,

 early summer

   An old temple nestled in hills

     A traveler stands still at an ancient tower

AKIYOSHIDO Cavern, the best place to stay while a typhoon is raging

A typhoon came while a tour in August was going on but fortunately it did not hit the destinations of the tour directly. It was amazing but the tour managed to escape the major impact by the typhoon and even gave us more fun when the AKIYOSHIDO cavern was visited. True, it was rainy and windy when the travelers lead by jasmine (it's me) approached the entrance to the cavern. But just five minutes. I thought we could be the first visitors of the day to the cave at 9:00 am when we reached the ticket gate but six already went into the cave on such a stormy day. But we almost occupied the vast cave, the largest limestone cave in Japan and the third in the world. 

Much more water than usual but no rain in the cave.

The cavern is the one let the water gushing out. A lot more water than any other day I have visited. The area leading to the Kurotani exit after the point where the Golden Pillar flow stone stands was particularly mythic and remarkable. More water and more adventurous yet anyone can go. See the pictures of this area below.

And major points:

Dassai is being made in a remote spot in Iwakuni

Centrifugal machine to separate sake and lees

Asahi Brewery is unique. It has often been featured in the media. They've received more orders than they can currently produce. They are building another factory near the present one and expanding operation. 

They only produce refined Junmai-shu or the sake made purely from rice without adding brewer's alcohol. 

The factory's temperature and humidity are controlled and they produce all the year round. 

Their quality control is extraordinarily meticulous. They should have accumulated volumes of data.

Their very premium uses the rice milled down to 23 % of the original weight. 

Centrifugal machine in addition to an ordinary pressing machine is used to separate final mash to sake and lees, which is a rare practice and the machine is more than twice more expensive than the typical accordion-like press. This way sake does not contain any possible smell from cloth bags which is used for ordinary sake pressing machines.

Pasteurization is done only once after bottling, not twice.

Their dassai brand is exported and can be enjoyed somewhere in NY and LA as well as in Taiwan and maybe some other places.

These are some of the facts I discovered through the factory tour. It was worth going, taking 1.5 hours by car from my place.

They have a web site in Japanese, English and French. Here's their site.

I bought two bottles; one is the most expensive Junmai Dai-ginjo, and the other is a sparking cloudy type sake.

They will be served at the home party coming in two days.

Most common pressing machine
to produce sake from final mash