One A Saké Evangelist Shimoki, in his early thirties, has the aspect of a very serious teddy bear-with a potbelly from spending more than sixteen hours a day tasting, contemplating, and serving saké, and eyes that sparkle when he talks about it. From behind the counter of his tiny bar in the mountains of Ishikawa, he is trying to save the Japanese saké industry, which has been in decline since consumption peaked in the 1970s. His thin, neatly groomed eyebrows dance and furrow as he evangelizes for Japan's national drink. He's hoping to convert me. He picked me up when I arrived at the nearest train station. It had been a long journey alone from New York to Tōkyō, Tōkyō to Kanazawa, and Kanazawa to Kaga. I was so relieved to see a familiar face that I hugged him, even though I knew that was very American of me-he looked utterly stunned. Driving the ten kilometers from Kaga Station, we quickly left behind pachinko parlors and chain stores, passing through farmland flanked by a curtain of mountains, the most spectacular of which is snowcapped Hakusan (Mount Haku). It reminded me of catching glimpses of Rainier from Seattle on rare clear days. The temperature dropped noticeably, and rice paddies gave way to lumber plantations as the road climbed toward Yamanaka. Its downtown is situated in a narrow valley along the Daishji River, and you can walk it from end to end in less than twenty minutes. Natural hot springs (onsen), a two-thousand-year-old tree at the edge of town, and a meandering stone path along the Kakusenkei Gorge are its main attractions. Dilapidated low-rise hotels overlooking the river are evidence of a 1960s construction boom and the lasting depression that followed. Even the nicest buildings in Yamanaka are in a perpetual state of decay from the moist climate. But it's easy to become entranced by the icy blue river and bright red maple leaves falling softly on mossy rocks and all but ignore the shabby facades on the opposite bank as you walk the gorge. Shimoki's bar, Engawa, is at the top of a small side street toward the end of town, before the main road heads deeper into the mountains. Where the side street ends, at the entrance to Hasebe Shrine, there's the bar, with its warm light emanating into the damp darkness of late October. I settled into an apartment across the street. Though I've tended bar in some high-end places, my first night of work at Engawa was the first time in my life I had to fasten the very top button of my shirt. I wore a vest, as Shimoki had told me to, and he lent me a tie and a long apron. We matched. I offered to wash dishes and rolled up my sleeves to get started. No, he said, rolled-up sleeves are for laborers. I tried to explain that it was a new shirt and the sleeves were too long. Don't worry, he said, and-still worried-I unrolled my sleeves. I noticed as I was washing and putting away a water glass that a chip on its rim had been smoothed over and repaired with a bit of gold leaf. Next, he showed me how to take a coat and hang it neatly facing the wall and how to offer each guest a steaming washcloth called an oshibori in such a way that they can take it with one hand. Then he told me where to stand and watch him, which is how he expects me to learn almost everything. I'd seen the same thing in fancy Tōkyō cocktail bars, where smartly dressed understudies pour water and wipe the bar for months or years before mixing a single drink. And it was how Shimoki learned too. He spent a year in Kanazawa working temp jobs and going to a whisky bar called Machrihanish every day, ordering two drinks and reading the Japanese translation of the canonical Malt Whisky Companion , a guide to more than eight hundred whiskies. Then he moved to Tōkyō and worked eighteen months at a cocktail bar called Mondo. You can see flourishes of cocktail service in the way he presents saké. With the help of an architect friend, Shimoki renovated a tiny old wooden house into his own bar. Its ornamental carved wooden transom panels called ranma, modern iron and wood chairs with red velvet cushions, and a framed indigo print on handmade paper were crafted by his friends. Under the glass countertop is a miniature garden of raked sand and carefully placed rocks. On a high shelf to the far left, a small television plays old samurai movies on a continuous loop. In the back right corner, there's a tiny shrine just below the ceiling, with a vase of flowers and a cup of saké that Shimoki refreshes daily. Incongruously, a laminated sign for wi-fi is stuck to the backbar. Besides the five bar stools that Shimoki presides over, there's a small private room painted Kanazawa blue, a shade of periwinkle that used to be reserved for high-ranking lords. A sliding paper door screens the four guests it cozily accommodates: men in suits with the air of good ol' boys who call me in to entertain them by answering questions about what a lady from New York is doing in Japan, or a middle-aged doctor and one of his young nurses (whose drinking together doesn't seem to trouble anyone but me), or sometimes in the late afternoon a family whose toddler daughter uses the same delicate water glass and expensive lacquered chopsticks as all the other guests. In the narrow space that divides the bar from the private room and bathroom, round stone pavers set into swirls of black and white river rocks echo the path along Kakusenkei Gorge. Drunk young ladies in stilettos teeter over the stones precariously, and I imagine the liability this would be in the United States. It's usually around their second drink when a guest notices that the music playing in Engawa is Scottish. It blends with the old wood and stone, and it matches Shimoki's plaid wool vest. He explains that there's music for beer and there's music for wine, but there's no music for saké. The music he hears in other saké bars is too dour. And while Shimoki himself is comically serious, he's managed to create a space that feels relaxed and casual. Engawa is a name for a kind of Japanese porch: a place to unwind, drink tea, and catch up with your neighbors. According to Shimoki, the character "en" implies fate or luck, and "gawa" means side-the bar between him and the customers. Engawa is a place for chance encounters. On any given night the bar draws a mix of onsen-going tourists, saké connoisseurs who've pilgrimaged to Yamanaka, and locals at the end of their workday. There's likely to be a master craftsman or a few students from the wood-turning school (the town is famous for its unique style of cups and bowls), perhaps a government official, or an important guest from one of the fancy hotels. A couple of Shimoki's childhood friends will probably come in later after their soccer game. Once a week, my eighty-one-year-old neighbor Mrs. Kobayashi-a petite woman with a glowing smile-sits at the bar and drinks a saké, a whisky, and a beer. If there's a guest all the way from Tky or saka, Shimoki dotes on them. Whoever is there, it doesn't take long before they are all talking and tasting one another's drinks. Six days a week Shimoki comes in at 11:00 a.m. to tidy and take care of paperwork, and opens around noon to accommodate the occasional afternoon guest. Some time before 5:00 p.m. heÕll take a break to restock. He will keep the bar open until the last guest leaves-sometimes midnight, sometimes 5:00 a.m. He doesn't seem bothered that he has time for nothing else: his work isnÕt separate from his life-it is his life. A neighbor remarks that she has never seen him without his uniform-even at the supermarket or running errands around town. In a place where your options are typically to take over the family business or leave for the big city (as evidenced by the aging population and growing number of abandoned homes), Shimoki's entrepreneurship is unconventional. When he opened the bar on his thirtieth birthday-a year before I arrived-he already had a reputation for his laser focus on Japanese drinks. He used to work in my landlady's sakZ shop, and she recounts with affectionate laughter the time she asked Shimoki to help out with different jobs for the holidays. He refused, saying it wouldn't help him learn about saké. Neighbors speak of him with a combination of awe and bemusement, often calling him Shimoki-kun, like a little brother. But when it comes to matters of saké, they defer to him. There are no employees at Engawa: my apprenticeship here is out of novelty, not necessity. Shimoki is used to doing everything himself, and I'm certain I get in the way more than I help. He seems glad to have me there, but I wonder what's in it for him. He says he views me as his colleague, not his student. Still, I'm not sure he understands that I've come to Yamanaka to learn about more than saké (maybe because of the language barrier, or maybe because saké is what he cares most about). In early December, when we've been working together for a month, Shimoki invites me to join him for a daily ritual before opening the bar. I follow him outside up the steep mossy steps to Hasebe Shrine. As we climb, he instructs me to observe the plants, the temperature, and the feeling of the season so we can determine what kind of sakZ the day calls for. He prays and then tenderly brushes away some fallen leaves and places several coins on the shrine, asking the spirits to bring him good business. We can feel the cold pressing in as we return to the little bar. Tonight people will want to drink atsukan, poured hot from a small iron kettle, at precisely 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit). In the United States, heat is deployed to disguise the flavor of cheap swill. But here, heating saké is an art. Next to the counter Shimoki displays a chart showing how intervals of a few degrees highlight different flavors. Part of my education has been drinking from five or six cups with the same saké heated incrementally warmer in each. At 55 degrees a robust saké burns pleasantly going down, warming you to the core. Each day, Shimoki has something new for me to taste. In broken English and Japanese-with the help of Google Translate, a saké textbook, and the experience of tasting together-we're developing a shared vocabulary. We've figured out words for bitterness versus astringency, characteristics like tingly or smooth, the names of fruits and flowers, ideal serving temperature and alcohol content. We don't have the language to talk about anything personal, but we can talk about saké. Before I came here, I could tell that one saké was sweeter, another more delicate, I could see that it was clear or cloudy, but pretty much saké just tasted like sakZ to me (some better than others). But only a week into my stay I could distinguish all sorts of subtleties and aromas of persimmon . . . kelp . . . pear . . . pine. I quickly fell in love with the fresh and unpasteurized ones often considered too fragile to export, then grew to appreciate rare old saké too, so oxidized it smells holds up to dark chocolate. On days when he's too busy to teach me, people come to ogle at the novelty foreigner, and my job is simply to entertain them with my presence. Sometimes they don't even want to talk to me; looking is enough to tell their friends about. It gets worse when the regional paper comes to interview me. Foreign woman works in saké bar, they report, with a picture of me dressed like Shimoki and smiling uncomfortably, pouring the local saké called Shishi-no-sato. I help translate for the occasional Western guest, but you don't need to speak Japanese to understand when Shimoki describes a drink. Piri-piri , he says to describe effervescence, wiggling his fingers near his mouth to express tingly little bubbles. He waves his arm in a grand downward motion, leveling off toward the end and saying, Loooooooong finish . He bounces like a cartoon character, and his enthusiasm is contagious. If a guest asks for a recommendation, he sizes them up and directs the arc of their drinking like a DJ picking the perfect progression of songs. One of his favorite tricks is to serve you the same saké in two distinctly shaped cups. It tastes dramatically different, even to the untrained palate. While a scientist might tell you it's a simple matter of how much aroma reaches your nose, in that moment it's magic. Each time he opens a new bottle, he thinks hard about how best to enhance its character, tasting it in various cups. Its expression becomes more umami, earthy, herbaceous, or floral, depending on the shape and material. A couple from out of town is asking about a glossy blond cup they're drinking from. It's made by Takehito Nakajima, a Yamanaka woodturner, who designed it for Shishi-no-sato saké, brewed down the street by his friend Fumiaki Matsuura. Shimoki pulls open drawers of the antique wooden cabinet behind the bar and a familiar scene begins: he brings out another style by a different craftsman . . . then another and another until the small counter is cluttered with a dozen cups, each with its own story, each capable of bringing out a distinct expression of a single saké. Every day, he prepares an assortment of otsumami (drinking snacks) using a tiny toaster oven, a torch, an induction burner, and a cutting board. There's roast pork from the butcher up the street, which he heats and mounds on a plate with a blanket of brown sauce and a handful of sliced scallion. There's miso-cured tofu, pungent and creamy as cheese, that he cuts into tiny cubes and stacks neatly in a small ceramic dish. There's tuna that he's marinated in saké and soy sauce, which he sears with a torch before fanning it out on a plate. And there are soy-sauce-cured egg yolks (the eggs from his friend's farm near the seaside), which lately he serves spooned over slices of soft, fresh tofu. Or you can simply have a handful of deep-fried soba noodles to snack on like potato chips, which he transfers from a big plastic jar to a beautifully turned wooden bowl. For guests with a sweet tooth he arranges chilled dark chocolate and ykan (adzuki bean gelée) on a mirrorlike lacquered stand, dusting the chocolate with a snowfall of powdered sugar that he wipes into a crescent shape and delicately placing bits of gold leaf on the yōkan. Excerpted from Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town by Hannah Kirshner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
