Today was uneventful with one exception. The JR Kyoto line, which you use during your journey between Nagoya and Osaka (unless you do it all on the Shinkansen bullet train), passes through the small town of Yamazaki. Yamazaki possesses one thing of note:
The Suntory Yamazaki Whiskey Distillery
Should you manage to make your way there, you can take a half-hour guided tour of the distillery, following the process of making whiskey all the way from the initial ingredients, through mashing, fermentation, distillation and aging, ending with a tasting session of the finished product.
How much does this cost? The princely sum of ZERO.
I don't have the time to really go into details, but the tour was great (it was in Japanese but there was good signing in English), the distillery itself was fascinating to walk around, and the tasting was superb (they basically throw it at you, I guess in the hope you'll then spend more money in the shop).
A few photos:
This is the 'Whiskey Library', walls of shelves all containing different whiskeys. This is amazing (it keeps going all round the walls of the room).
Inside one of the aging warehouses. There are casks going back to 1924 in here (the first Japanese whiskey, apparently).
Trying the Suntory Yamazaki 18yo - great stuff, but at over 100GBP a bottle (THIS is why they aim to get you drunk after the tour) it should be.
I bought a pen, a branded nosing glass and a couple of small bottles and had them sent home from the local post office (so I get the Yamazaki post mark on there, too). Hopefully using half the world's supply of bubble-wrap will keep them intact.
Anyway, off to Okinawa tomorrow. I don't know when I'll next get to update this, so hang tight. If I can, I will.
Take care all,
James
