Day 97: Please Don't Rain On Us

Oh god, what have we done? After the all you can drink wine experience the night before, Adam and I were feeling a little tender. Do Ukon (turmeric drinks designed to avoid hangovers) work the next morning? I figured anything was worth a shot as we had a long train ride into the mountains to visit the Nikka Miyagikyo distillery.

The train into the mountains complete with on board toilet. Now that's convenience.

I hate this photo of me but it kind of captures what we went through to get to this distillery. 

When we got to the train station, we realised we'd forgotten our umbrellas and this town had no convenient stores (how un-Japan like!) so we were stuck walking for 30 minutes with rain looming and nowhere to find shelter. Fortunately it only rained a small amount when we were about 10 minutes from the distillery so we managed to avoid getting soaked. But my god, it was stressful. Far too stressful for those who are hungover.

After checking into the tour and thawing out in the waiting room, we took a guided tour with a bunch of other Japanese people and one Australian family. I'm surprised that on a random weekday in the mountains, that there are enough people coming through to have tours on the hour.

The tour was entirely in Japanese but we were given English audio guides which didn't really work and made really aggressive beeping sounds if you pressed the wrong button.

Distilleries are always located in such scenic spots (because they need that freshhhh water).

The barrel room where you get to smell the difference between the aged whiskies.

Tastings? We are SO ready for this.

You get to try three different whiskies and add ice/water if you want. 

Aaaaand the gift shop. Here you can get distillery only bottles which are basically a reward for making the effort to come.

After learning from our mistakes in walking to the distillery, we ended up "borrowing" the yellow Nikka Whisky umbrellas from the distillery to walk home. And good thing we did because it started raining.

Mountain pizza and pasta, anyone? Basically the only restaurant for miles.

Trying not to get sprayed with water by passing trucks. We were... unsuccessful.

Corn soup to warm me up before jumping on the train.

We got back to Sendai to pick up our bags before jumping on a shinkansen back to Tokyo.

I wanted to get one more gyutan meal in so spent about 10 minutes at the station selecting my ekiben. I wasn't even hungry but it was one last chance for gyutan.