This is a lot.

Mm hmm.

Mhm I feel like no matter how long I live in Japan, I will never be able to see and do everything.

There's just so much to experience.

One thing I always wanted to do was go sake tasting and learn about the art of sake.

Yes, sake is art to me why you may ask.

It's because making sake has so much hard work put into it and each step takes either weeks or years to complete.

Today I'm in Echigo yuzawa to explore kokoro Yuzawa Gangjee Dori Street located in the station building and discover some amazing hotspots for tourists who would like to go a little out of their way to explore deep Japan.

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel, your virtual ticket to Japan.

So today I'm in Echigo yuzawa and we're going to explore this place.

We're going to see some sake breweries, we're going to try some food, lots of things.

So today, the first thing that we're going to do is go to coca cola used yellow which behind me is the shopping center so you can get sake, you can get, oh Miyagi which is um souvenirs.

If you want to bring that back home and they have lots of different things that you can try and eat.

So we're going to go ahead and go shopping and explore a little bit.

So yeah, let's go Coco yuzawa Gangjee Dori Street is where you begin your adventure.

It's basically a shopping center full of delicious foods and popular gifts to take home.

This place is especially known for sake.

You can buy tons of bottles of sake to drink or you can buy sake for your skin.

Yes, sake is very good for your skin and overall health.

So they sell a lot of beauty products that contain well sake.

So I'm getting Sasa dango and sasa dango is just red bean paste inside.

It's inside this sort of like plants.

So the plant is called sasa and then inside is the red bean paste.

So you can get the chunky kind or you can get the smooth kind.

So I got the smooth kind.

Sasa is a kind of bamboo leaf and django is a traditional japanese rice cake.

Thus, Sasa dango literally means rice cake inside a bamboo leaf.

The tradition of Sasa dango began in the Edo period when sasa leaves were commonly used as a way to preserve food.

It took a while for me to open it, but once I did it revealed a green emoji like treat.

Very good red bean paste inside.

That's really good.

Our next popular food item here at Coco yuzawa is in the far back of the station deep within Gangjee Dori Street Central Market past the drunk people statues to find it.

Are you okay?

This is by far the largest spaghetti or rice ball you will ever find in Japan.

There are tons of different flavors to try but salmon is the number one most popular rice ball here.

So I opted for that.

The rice ball was as big as my face and we'll fill you up fast.

So eat with caution.

You also get some miso soup to go with it.

Okay, so I just got the biggest rice ball in Japan.

So I got sake, which is basically uh, salmon.

So it's not like sake to drink.

Some people get confused with that, but it is a massive ball of salmon.

You can get this and in niigata.

So I highly recommend this because it's as big as my face.

It looks delicious.

Oh my gosh, I can't even eat it.

Oh my God, there's no salmon.

My lipsticks on it, but there's no salmon.

My mouth is too small.

Okay, we're gonna do it again.

Mm hmm.

Oh God, the fish is right inside.

Oh, it's so good for, so this is enough for your lunch.

You don't need anything else but this and they just like put tons of salmon inside and they lightly salted.

I'm gonna eat this now.

I'm probably gonna be really full after this.

But yeah, let's eat schemas.

After eating.

I headed over to the sake tasting room.

There are 90 different brands of sake to try all from Niigata as well as some wines you can choose low or high alcohol percentage depending on how much you can handle.

So basically when you come to this place, you can get a small sake cup and five points to try some sake But it's 500 yen to get the cup and the coins.

So I just got my cup and my coins.

So I'm gonna try some of the sake.

We have so many different types here.

So I'm really excited to try all of this.

Okay, so I just learned that basically not all of this is sake.

You can also get wine or plum wine, which is in japan.

I love you.

So maybe we'll try like a couple of different varieties of things.

And yeah, test it out.

Excuse my lipstick situation.

I just ate a big bonus to help you decide what to order.

You can check the chalkboard that tells you what the most recommended or popular sake is.

Okay, so this, this one caught my eye because it has like a sort of mango aftertaste.

So we're gonna try that right now.

So you just put your cup into the machine, you put the coin inside, push the button, I think, oh wow, So convenient and we can have a little taste of this.

So here we don't, don't really taste the mango, but it's very good.

It's very smooth and you can definitely feel the alcohol.

So it says on here, the alcohol percentage, the acidity, the sake meter value.

So if it's plus then it means it's not sweet.

If it's minus then it means it's sweet.

And then it says if it's in stock or not.

So lots of information.

This is a lot.

But this one is caught my eye because it said it has like an aftertaste of chocolate.

So that was really interesting.

But you have to wait a while.

It says you have to wait a while and then you'll start to taste the chocolate.

So I think you have to do that a lot with a lot of these, the flavors don't come until after you drink it.

So they give you a lot.

Thank you.

Mm This one is much easier to drink than the other one waiting for the chocolate to happen.

Ah there it is.

You can definitely taste a little hint of chocolate.

That's weird.

Okay, so I was saying that this is a lot of alcohol that I'm drinking today.

So if you can't finish it and you just want to taste a little sip of it, you can put the rest of it in this little container here like this.

And then when you're finished, you can return it over here.

But we're not done yet.

So on this station is water.

So, okay, I'm ready for more various types of assault mesh well with the sake that you drink.

You can purchase a cucumber and some miso to make the salt stick and eat it as a snack while you go on your sake tasting adventure.

So you get a cucumber here, you get a cucumber and you can put miso and salt on it.

This is a nice cucumber.

It's so green.

So basically if you come over here you can get the miso and you can get salt.

So they have a bunch of different types of salts over here.

Um, I can't have the miso.

So I'm just going to put some salt on it and eat it.

You come over here, they have butter salt and they have hibiscus salt, which is very interesting.

Discus.

Yeah, all sites sorts of different salts.

So I'm going to try the Macha but you just take a little bit and I don't know if it'll stick but put it on top and you eat it.

Usually you put miso.

So keep that in mind.

Mm hmm.

Mm That's really good.

It's like a hint of macho for sure, wow.

So you can buy all of these here if you're interested in, if you like it.

What is you?

You can buy any of the sake that you tried in the sake corner if you'd like.

So don't forget to take one or a lot home for your family and friends to try or you can drink it all yourself.

All right.

It was time to do some more sake tasting and find out what all the sake is about.

I knew very little about how they made sake and I have to tell you after getting a tour of the sake brewery.

I had so much more respect for the sake.

I was drinking.

We were guided by a woman who worked here as a sake tester.

She said she is the one who taste the sake before it is bottled and does some tests before packaging.

Mm hmm.

She led us into a room where you could see them bottling the sake.

She told us that they package about 10,000 bottles a day.

That's insane.

Yeah.

In order to enter the sake factory, we had to put on some boots and a hairnet for sanitary purposes.

Yeah.

Mm hmm You have to put on some socks and some boots before you enter.

I wore sandals today stylish.

Yeah.

What you have to wash the boots.

Yes.

Mm hmm.

She explained to us that only the polished rice to make sake come to this factory and this room is where they wash and soak the rice before beginning the sake process in general.

There are three basic types of jin soo jin Joshua in Joshua.

Each requires different brewing missiles and the different percentage of rice polishing to smaller allies.

A good excellent.

She pataki sake brewery dates back 160 years ago.

Outside the brewery was this large brownish decoration.

When this decoration is hung up, it means new sake was just made and finished next.

We headed inside to try some amazing sake.

I can't fit all of what I tried in one video but let's just say I liked a lot of it and ended up taking home a lot of it.

Mm hmm.

It has a very fresh taste.

Sake tasting is a big deal in Japan.

Just as wine tasting is popular in Western countries.

But what I love about sake is how much history it has and how many more flavors you get from sake.

It's a unique taste.

After drinking all that sake.

I was ready for food at Echigo yuzawa station.

They have a food street where you can get all sorts of traditional Japanese cuisine.

I went for the soba because I heard it was quite popular here.

Unfortunately I couldn't eat the sauce.

So they gave me a different sauce to dip it in which worked just as well.

You know?

Yeah.

The main reason besides sake people come to Mexico Yuzawa is for the winter sports.

You can go to the resort expo to buy all of your winter sports gear such as jackets, hiking gear and more.

If you love snowboarding or skiing, this is the place to be my God, I want these.

I want these.

I want these.

These are nice to top off the day.

I went to a famous latte shop called koji latte.

You can get a latte with ice cream in it.

Plain hot lattes or iced ones.

My audio cut out here, but I basically talked about how amazing it was because I don't know about you, but I always crave coffee after a large meal.

One more thing worth mentioning is the bathhouse right next to the coffee place.

They even have a bath infused with sake.

Like I said, it's good for your skin.

So I just learned that Nigata alone has 88 different sake breweries.

So this is the best place to have the best place to have sake and they have the best rice fields.

So they have the best sake, wow, you have to see these magnificent hanging hina dolls.

These dolls are handmade and usually used as decoration for hina matsuda or for girls day festivals.

The day was coming to an end and I needed to do a little more souvenir shopping before heading home.

So I bought a ton more things and set off with more amazing experiences I can add to my diary.

We are about to head home and I'm just getting some last minute oh Miyagi which is souvenirs to bring home and try out and use and yeah, there's so much here.

It's really hard to choose which one I want.

But yeah, I got a lot of stuff.

I need to stop buying things.

I hope you guys learned a lot about HBO yuzawa and cocoa yuzawa Gangjee Dori street.

I know this place isn't talked about much but if you're looking for a very different experience apart from the touristy attractions.

Try going for some sake tasting or eat a large rice ball as big as your face, Your stories about Japan will be much more exciting.

I promise you.

Thank you guys for watching.

Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon for notifications when new videos arrive like this video for more content like this and comment down below if you've ever tried sake before or if you prefer wine, beer or sake, see you guys next time.