Yay Sado!, part 2: Saké it to me!

~Before I post the rest of my travels on Sado Island, I have an offer for everyone. I've been buying a lot of postcards recently, and I'm going to send them out to many people in the next few days. If you want a postcard, and you haven't given me your mailing address, please email me at dusty788@hotmail.com and I'll send you one. Even if I don't know you. If you've already given me your address, or you're related to me, don't send me any information...I know where you live!

Moving along, here's the rest of my Sado Island trip:

Above: A waterfall outside of the museum. I used the 'slow shutter speed' setting on my camera to create a blurred water effect; do you think it worked well?

~The next stop on the tour was 'Nishimikawa Gold Park', which was filled with items made from Sado Island gold. Nearby was the famous Sado Gold Mine, where political prisoners were sent to work during the Shogun era. The mine was the largest producer of gold in Japan for many years.

Above: This jolly fellow was here to greet me as I walked into the Gold Park museum. I think he's been in the mines for one-too-many years.

Above: Gold silverware (goldware?), presumably made from Sado gold (hey, don't look at me, I can't read the writing). Security in this museum was surprisingly lax; you'd almost think the items were fake.

Above: The lovable mascot of Gold Park, the Japanese raccoon dog (Tanuki in Japanese, or Nyctereutes procyonoides, for those of you who prefer Latin). The reason that he is the mascot is that in the gold mine, there are small pits called "Tanuki ana"; pits so small that one has to crawl like a racoon dog to fit inside. There were stuffed animals of this guy all over the gift shop; I think he's supposed to be a gold-thief, which makes him an odd choice of mascot for a gold museum.

Above: On the way to the next stop on the tour, I took this picture of an oddly-shaped rock. It wasn't until later that I took a closer look at the picture, and saw this:

Above: A miniature shrine on the rock! I wonder who maintains this, and how they get out to the rock. A ladder? Hang glider? Really accurate jumping?

Above: Next stop was by a pier, where women dressed up like...something...took passengers out in large tub-boats for a ride in the water. A very expensive, short ride. I thought it was more fun to laugh at people taking rides, so I passed.

Above: The next stop was an old miso factory, which the Japanese tourists seemed to find very interesting (they purchased tons of miso at the gift shop). Needless to say, this part of the tour wasn't a big hit with the gaijin, but I did get this picture of guys in funny hats working on giant vats of miso. I found the diorama vaguely disturbing; I had this horrible image of a worker falling into the miso vat and truly "becoming one" with his fellow Japanese...

~Finally, the part you've all been waiting for (or at least the part I was waiting for): the brewery!

Above: Our tour group was shown the inner workings of the brewery, the oldest on Sado Island. They make both beer and saké.

Above: A gigantic beer vat. 10,835 liters...I hope you're thirsty. I know I was.

Above: Behind the brewery was the storage room, which looked to me like either a bomb shelter or a pirate hideout.

Above: Definately a pirate hideout...who else would have all this grog? On the other hand, if you're stuck in your bomb shelter for weeks during armageddon or a massive airstrike, you might need this much alcohol.

Above: The best part of the entire tour: all-you-can-drink saké sampling!

Above: I sampled most of these bottles of saké. Oddly enough, the pictures I took afterwards all came out kind of blurry...

~That's it for Sado Island. Stay tuned for pictures and stories from the city of Kanezawa! Remember, if you want a postcard and haven't sent me your address (and aren't related to me), email me with your mailing address. Oyasumi~