Japan Affairs Forum

Eighteen keen Japan and sake enthusiast have taken part in the Japan Affairs Forum sake volunteering trip visiting various breweries in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures in Japan. The aim of the trip was to not only educate volunteers on where and how quality Japanese sake is made  but also to gain a deeper understanding of the industry and maintain awareness about how small industries have been affected by the March 11^th earthquake and tsunami.   As well as visiting 5 breweries in the local areas, the Japan Affairs volunteers will also visit Rikuzentakata, a city in Iwate prefecture on the coastline in order to see firsthand the destruction and the reconstruction efforts in the area.

So far we are on the 8th day of the trip and there has been much to do and see for the volunteers.  Volunteers have so far had the benefit of working Niizawa Jozoten, a historic brewery using traditional production techniques.   This particular brewery was damaged by the earthquake, leaving many structures unusable and large quantities of produce destroyed.  However the Niizawa brewery is an excellent example of Japanese resilience excelling in the face of adversity and they have managed to restart production.  Currently it is producing sake using refrigerated storage rooms as sake is usually produced in winter months.  For our volunteers this  meant there were  a number of challenging tasks to jump right into, ranging from working in the Koji room  (Koji is a special yeast added to a portion of rice in order to start the fermentation process) to bottling and labelling sake bottles ready for sale.   Below are pictures showing just a few of the exciting tasks they have had to do! We were also luckily enough to be shown around a further two breweries by Mr Niizawa.  One in Osaki city and one in Ishinomaki, both of which had to be almost completely rebuilt.  The most poignant part of this trip however was visiting the coastline in Ishinomaki, seeing the area first hand was shocking and left the group in a sombre and reflective mood, however it was also noticeable that work had and was being done to get the area back on track.  One could draw parallels with the breweries we had visited earlier, in that 6 months on things were beginning to progress towards some form of normality again.

Please find below some Images from the first week.