{"id":9842,"date":"2019-10-17T04:42:47","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T11:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=9842"},"modified":"2022-10-10T19:53:32","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T02:53:32","slug":"japan-day-44-kamikatsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=9842","title":{"rendered":"Japan Day 44: Kamikatsu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was the only day of my trip that I was kind of worried about. Number two would probably have been that trip to Wakkanai with the flight and rental car, but this one was a visit to a brewery in the middle of nowhere with iffy transportation and a stay in an onsen that also was an unknown. I met the guys from Rise and Win brewing in Portland about three years ago and the old head brewer of Labrewatory sometimes makes it here several times a year. I even finally made it to Rise and Win\u2019s taproom in Tokyo and so I thought why not?<\/p>\n

But first, breakfast in a crowded room, but not too bad. The curry was a little bland and the potato salad wasn\u2019t really to my liking, but it wasn\u2019t bad. I paid extra for this because I knew I\u2019d probably be drinking at lunch.<\/p>\n

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And the view from the counter seat at breakfast.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s the first of three buses I needed to take.<\/p>\n

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I had to change buses at the Tokushima Red Cross Hospital, which was kind of a grim place to wait for a bus.<\/p>\n

The bus came tearing in about seven minutes late. It was a brand new bus, and he made up some time on the trip. It was a \u00a5690 trip and that a deal. It was a long ride and there were only three people on the bus at the peak.<\/p>\n

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I made it in time to catch one of the four Kamikatsu buses of the day. They let me off right in front of the brewery!<\/p>\n

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The brewery was much smaller than I expected. The picture you usually see is of these big recycled windows from the outside. Kamikatsu is a \u201czero waste\u201d town because they were losing so much population that they fell off the map and lost garbage service. So they have a recycling center where they divide up their garbage into 45 different categories and try to reuse as much as possible.<\/p>\n

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This is the whole store, and you can arrange to barbecue with a group of people if you call ahead.<\/p>\n

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The store is on the left and the original brewery is on the right.<\/p>\n

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Portland Kettleworks nine-barrel systems!<\/p>\n

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I had a sampler of the four beers they had on tap. While a couple took some getting used to they were all good, as I knew they would be. \u00a0Charlie, the head brewer I talked about earlier who runs Ronin Fermentation Project in Graegle, CA, made some interesting beers her in the past.<\/p>\n

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And I ordered the pulled pork sandwich. It was quite tasty.<\/p>\n

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They gave me some roasted Kamikatsu shiitake mushrooms as a gift! Those were great, and I wish I could show you how large they were.<\/p>\n

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I took the bus to the onsen, and one of the five people working at the brewery came to drive me to the brewery and give me a tour. They\u2019ve relocated the brewing operation up the hill and have an 18 barrel Portland Kettleworks system.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t take any pictures, but it was a nice big building. It was bottling day and there were two people doing bottling by hand, one after the next. It took a while. I met the head brewer and he gave me some tastes of a couple of bottle-aged beers that had been in a cask. It needed a bit more work, but I don\u2019t think they were quite done with their experimenting.<\/p>\n

When I got back it was still early so I took a quick walk around the area. This is looking from the onsen to the camping area across the river. I think the camping area belongs to the onsen as well.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s the onsen in the middle of the picture.<\/p>\n

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A new pedestrian rope bridge they put up last year? Or was it this year?<\/p>\n

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Oh, and here\u2019s the awful view from my room. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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So there\u2019s maybe one other place to eat around here. There\u2019s no included dinner and there\u2019s no breakfast at all in the morning. Fortunately, there is a dining room at the onsen and it is open for dinner. It wasn\u2019t expensive and the fish was incredibly fresh. Whoever ran the tempura fryer was a master at it. (Buried under all that tempura is another shiitake.)<\/p>\n

The noodles weren\u2019t awesome, but I think that\u2019s just because I don\u2019t like hot soba.<\/p>\n

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I took a bath in the onsen and it had bubbles in the middle of it like a jacuzzi. I tried to sit in the middle and it kind of made me float away. It also shot water up my nose at one point.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was a rather relaxing and fun side-trip. The wireless is great, too, so I\u2019ve been watching Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was the only day of my trip that I was kind of worried about. Number two would probably have been that trip to Wakkanai with the flight and rental car, but this one was a visit to a brewery in the middle of nowhere with iffy transportation and a stay in an onsen that also was an unknown. I met the guys from Rise and Win brewing in Portland about three years ago and the old head brewer of Labrewatory sometimes makes it here several times a year. I even finally made it to Rise and Win\u2019s taproom in Tokyo and so I thought why not? But first, breakfast … Continue reading Japan Day 44: Kamikatsu<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10246,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842\/revisions\/10246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}