Name: Staying at 1,000 Year Old Japanese Hot Spring Resort
Uploaded: 2020-03-24T09:23:10.000Z
Duration: 12 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

So by far the most asked question I get from you guys is when is the best time to visit Japan.

Adverbs of degree

It’s a pretty easy question for me to answer because the best time to visit by far, is

late September to early November in autumn in the fall.

But rather than just talk about it, we’re going to show you today what makes autumn

so special by going out and staying at a thousand-year old hot spring resort about thirty minutes

We’re joined as always by our incredible chauffeur Ryotaro who’s gonna show us around.

So what, you said incredible chauffeur. Somehow incredible and chauffeur doesn’t go together.

You’re a good chauffeur. You’re good at what you do.

There’s is no good or bad chauffeur. A chauffeur is a fucking chauffeur for fuck sake all right.

Anyway, first we’re going to visit the Nikka whiskey distillery.

There are only two Nikka distilleries, and one of them is here in Sendai.

And then, after that we are going to visit a winery that is the only winery here in Miyagi

See, that’s the downside of being an incredible chauffeur. No drink for Ryotaro today, but

we can drink and when I say “we” I mean I can drink.

Hot springs, whiskey, wine and yes, that’s a lot of alcohol.

I sense another disturbing plan to have me killed by alcohol consumption and hot springs.

But I'm not going to complain because that is a pretty good way to die.

I think my favorite thing about Nikka whiskey other than the taste is the logo which is

a Scottish guy with a beard. I mean I’ve met people from Scotland and they do look

But the good thing about the distillery is you can actually try the whisky

and we're going to be doing a tasting session in a minute.

And they’ve got 25 storage buildings like this.

Yes, 25 ! So there’s 1 here and 24 more. And 100 X 25 = 2500 barrels.

It’s good maths. It’s like a vault, a giant vault or something. But it has to be

Yeah, obviously. You know many of them stay here for like 12 years. Maybe older than that.

It’s cool to think, all these barrels will one day in glasses around the world.

People relaxing over a quiet drink in the evening.

It’s like a seminar room that looks very very good.

This is the first thing we’ve done today right?

Drinking whisky, we’re going to a winery, we’re going to drink sake during

dinner then we’re going to an onsen where I’m gonna drown just by drinking so much alcohol.

I’ve been on a lot of sake brewery tours over the years, I always find them very boring really.

They just take you into a dark room and go

But that. That was really good. The tasting session was amazing, the smelling of whisky

if you can’t drink like Ryotaro. And the room with all the barrels was pretty awesome as well.

It’s a really good tour. Highly recommend it if you’re into whisky.

And now, it’s time for some wine which is going to be a difficult thing to do given

It doesn’t seem like a safe thing to do.

Akiu winery was started in 2015 by local architect and entreprenuer, Chikafusa Mori.

In the aftermath of the devastating tsunami, when Chikafsua saw buildings he’d constructed

washed away by the sea, he felt moved to help the region recover.

He noticed that while the region had an abundance of great food, it lacked any good local wine,

and thus set about designing and building the first winery in the whole of Miyagi prefecture.

He chose Akiu for having an ideal climate, with the valley bringing in fresh mountain

However, upon arrival, to my delight I discover he’s also selling cider

which is usually disturbingly rare in Japan and I leap at the chance to sample it.

So this cider actually won an award earlier this year in Japan’s first cider competition.

This one, the Dolce, won the silver award, and the Brute won the bronze and that’s

pretty impressive considering you guys have only been going a year or two now.

What’s the secret to your cider success?

- The secret is we are using the best apples.

It’s all about quality control right. I’m talking like I know what I am talking about

but I don’t. I am just enjoying the cider.

I am currently just full of whisky and cider which isn’t a good mix of things to have.

So Akiu is a hot spring resort and what you find is a lot of Japanese Ryokans

or traditional inns. They put a lot of effort into their gardens and this is no exception.

This a hotel called Ryoku Tsuite. And they’ve got this magnificent sprawling garden built

Filled with bamboo forests, streams, and rivers filled with koi carps. It’s really popular

to come here in autumn and just enjoy the colours.

And also in spring as well during cherry blossom season.

And you can see why people are by the windows at the hotel looking out across the garden.

It really is a beautiful place to just walk through, relax and take in the seasons.

So into the hotel room. We are on the 11th storey of the ryokan.

So we’ve got some beautiful sweeping views of Akiu.

It’s pretty big actually, this is pretty big for a ryokan room. Usually, I just get

like the one room. But, today…come in here.

Usually when I stay in a ryokan, I get a futon. I end up sleeping on the floor.

And also there are two, I’d like to point out Ryotaro has his own room so he’s not

going to be in here thankfully because he snores. It’s horrible.

A nice table here where I can sit and relax and enjoy the view and in fact, this ryokan

has an onsen hot spring that is built into the river down below, which we’re going

to check out later which I’m looking forward to.

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Staying at 1,000 Year Old Japanese Hot Spring Resort

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