In Hanamaki for Golden Week
May 2nd, 2008 by Q
My parents are visiting Japan and we’re all up at the house in Hanamaki. The refrigerator is so stuffed that there was no room for this 1.8 liter （一升瓶）bottle of sake that I bought today. My father-in-law suggested that I put it in the little stream that runs behind the house to cool. I thought he was joking at first, but why not keep it there? It’s cold mountain water coming from a spring a few hundred meters up, and there’s no risk of anyone taking it. So there it waits for us until dinner time. (If you’re curious, it’s a junmai ginjo called Jikuu (慈空 from 桜顔).)
This has been a great week for mountain vegetables, or sansai. We’ve been picking them from the moist soil near the mountain behind the house. I’ll try to write more about them individually, but here’s a photo of last night’s mountain vegetable tempura.
The little stream aught to cool the sake faster than the refrigerator anyway, due to the (I believe) 1st law of thermodynamics…
“In any process, the total energy of the universe remains the same.”
You remember these things a hundred times better than me. I haven’t read that since high school. Remind me how that relates to a bottle of liquid in a cooler liquid.
By the way, we finished the 1.8 liter bottle in two sittings. Going to a local sake distillery to pick out another bottle this afternoon…