All About Sake

We spent our second day in Hakone visiting a local sake brewery; then later on, a dinner at our hotel specially crafted for us to pair with a few bottles produced there. Hakone area, or to a wider extent, Kanagawa Prefecture, was probably not the most prolific sake producing area in Japan, but with the water coming from the nearby Tanzawa Mountain long considered one of the best underground water source in the region, there are a number of decent breweries around. (Of course it won’t hurt by its proximity to the capital and the local demand from the popular travel destination of Hakone nearby)

The Rest of Morpheus

I felt we didn’t spend quite enough time enjoying the hotel facilities and the gorgeous room arranged for us by the PR team of Morpheus Macau as part of our fam tour (and weekend stay-cation). A pity really, because they were just every bit as good as the many meals we had the opportunities to sit down and check out during our brief stay.

Day in Bagan Part 2: Shopping, More Temples and Sunset

Earlier I requested my tour guide Mr B to show me some shops for lacquerware, so we went to one just before lunch in Myinkaba, or the Bamboo Village, an area near Old Bagan filled with small workshops/ateliers for lacquerware, which Bagan was most famous for other than its sights.

Night at a Beer Brewery

I rushed off from office on a Friday evening to catch a bus to the industrial district of Fo Tan up north for a guided tour of the new Hitachino Nest Brewery facility. Over the past few years, the growing trend of boutique craft beers have finally reached Hong Kong. It’s now much common for bars and restaurants to offer a wide selection of beers from around the world with some high quality but lesser known brands, and a handful of local breweries set up here in the city. Some friends even started to brew at home, keeping a container or two  inside their cupboard or wardrobe.

50 Hours in Tokyo: 3 Museums in a Day (Part 2)

At first I couldn't quite connect the dots between the recent opening of Snoopy Museum Tokyo and the timing of my weekend in town, but when I finally realize I could actually be visiting the museum in its first month of opening, I was quite excited, given this little beagle has always been the unofficial mascot of our household.

Crossover at Yardbird



We were at Yardbird just this past weekend in one of their rare Sunday afternoon openings to try out an one-day-only special menu prepared by chef/owner Matt and the visiting Korean-American chef Corey Lee.

Our First Sake Tour - Shirataki Sake Brewery

One of the many interesting parts of the recent Japan trip is a visit to the Shirataki Sake Brewery (白瀧酒造) in Echigo-Yuzawa in the southern part of Niigata prefecture. We were drawn to the area of Niigata mainly for it being a major rice growing and sake brewing region. I always wanted to go up close to learn more about how to make sake, but turned out it's much harder to find a brewery open to public, and even harder to find one that have someone fluent in English to explain everything to us than say finding a vineyard that can do the same for wine elsewhere. But a few email exchanges later, I am glad that Shirataki Sake Brewery agreed to show us around their facilities, and guide us through sake tasting at the end of the tour.