On May 22, 2010, my wife and I, along with other members of a group of people that were into food and things related to food, went up to Nihonmatsu in Fukushima prefecture to plant rice for a special sake that Daishichi Shuzō would make with it. I had almost forgotten about it and then a couple of weeks ago my wife and I received messages informing us that some of the sake made with our rice would be delivered soon. And this week it arrived.
My wife and I went up the day before and stayed overnight near the sake brewery. The next morning we were picked up by a van that took us out to the tanbo (paddy) where we would do our planting. Before we started a Shintō priest said some prayers and we had a sip of sake, and then it was time. I remember I didn’t have any mud boots, so I wore an old pair of tabbi to protect my feet. The planting wasn’t too difficult; it was just a matter of staying in a straight line and keeping the seedlings evenly spaced. Working bent over like that reminded me of picking strawberries when I was young. A local newspaper and I think TV reporter were there to document our efforts, and of course they wanted to interview me, the only non-Japanese person there. When I was asked what my feelings about planting rice were, I tried to say something about what it must have been like back before there were planting machines, when ones’ life depended on a successful rice crop every year.
After the two paddies were planted we returned to Daishichi to get cleaned up before having a tour and then a nice meal which of course included plenty of Daishichi sake.There was another event in the fall to harvest the rice, but we were not able to make it. A year later we were informed that thanks to some recent work reinforcing the buildings that the brewery and its products pretty much escaped damage from the massive earthquake that struck on February 11, 2011, despite not being too far away from areas with lots of damage.
Can’t wait to crack one of these bottles open!