Ponshukan Sake Museum in Niigata
The Ponshukan Sake Museum in Niigata is about an hour from Tokyo by bullet train. This place is home to a number of distilleries producing the famous Japanese rice vodka - sake. To get to the museum, you need to get off at Echigo Yuzawa Station; it was reconstructed in 2010, which is very convenient for foreign tourists. They have convenient information desks, as well as numerous shops and restaurants. While waiting for the train back to Tokyo, here you can try the famous drink and even take a dip in the onsen - a hot spring with the addition of sake.
Brief description
The Ponshukan Sake Museum in Niigata is officially called a museum, but the building looks more like a store. The attraction is open in a two-story building, with shopping and tasting rooms located on the top floor, and a restaurant downstairs. They say that more than a hundred types of national Japanese vodka are stored here.
In order to start tasting, you need to get a ceramic cup at the reception and buy 5 tokens. In the Ponshukan Hall of the Ponshukan Sake Museum in Niigata, you can find numerous drink dispensers, essentially vending machines. Having placed the token there, the visitor receives a 25-ml portion of the selected drink in the cup. The choice is not easy, because the assortment includes about 100 types of tasty and varied sake.
Museum Features
Wherever you are in the Ponshukan Sake Museum, tasting room staff will be nearby, ready to help at any moment and explain the features of each drink. For example, a woman will most likely like sweetish sake with a pink tint. Tourists love getting another refilled cup in exchange for a token at the Ponshukan Sake Museum in Niigata. They say that the best way to reveal the taste of a drink is to put a pinch of salt on your tongue before tasting a cup of sake. There are also dozens of varieties of salt here.
If you like a certain type of sake, you can purchase a whole bottle of the drink at a nearby store. The shelves here are simply bursting with a variety of varieties, each of which can be taken away with you as a souvenir. They also sell souvenirs here. Those who are hungry should try "bakudan onigiri", which means "bomb rice ball". Large and filling, made from stuffed rice and wrapped in a seaweed leaf, bakudan perfectly satisfies hunger and complements the taste of sake.
Swimming in the spring
Completing your visit to the welcoming Ponshukan Sake Museum in Niigata, be sure to visit Ponshukan Osnen for a dip in the bath. A portion of sake is added to the healing water from the purest hot underground spring, which, according to experts, significantly improves blood circulation. The bath procedure is so pleasant and relaxing that the visitor risks falling asleep and missing his train. You only need to worry about this; the trip as a whole will bring only positive emotions.
