Name: Day in the Life of a Japanese Hot Sauce Maker
Uploaded: 2025-08-11T18:16:51.000Z
Duration: 19 min 25 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...

This is a day in the life of a Japanese hot sauce maker.

Adverbs of degree

This is Kentaro, 43 years old, living in Japan's heavy snow region of Myoko, Niigata, and he's just waking up for work.

Kentaro has a wife and son, but last night he spent the night alone here at the Shotaku company housing.

In Japan, many companies often have these residential facilities for their employees to stay, or even offer permanent lower-cost housing as a part of their benefits.

He had to work quite late last night, so he decided to stay here because it's a lot closer to work.

He usually makes breakfast for his family, but today he's just cooking something quick for himself.

I guess he's eating rice with eggs, sausage, takuan radish, and freeze-dried instant miso soup.

Oh, that's an ultralight down from Uniqlo, a very common wear for Japanese in the winter due to the country's exceedingly cold winters.

Luckily, it's not snowing today, so he's leaving on time.

But on heavy snow days, he often wakes up much earlier as it takes him twice as long to commute to work.

In fact, Japan is the snowiest country in the world, with Japanese cities taking the top three positions for annual snowfall worldwide.

In this Myoko area alone, there are 142 snow days in an average year.

Hey, I noticed you've got basketball shoes in the back.

Well, that's important. Who's your favorite player?

Good morning, everyone. I'm back with another day in the life, and I'm beyond excited for this one because I also get to share with you the makings of my new original made-in-Japan Paolo from Tokyo hot sauce.

This has been one of my dreams for such a long time now, and one of the people responsible for helping make it all happen is Kentaro, who should be arriving shortly.

This is his workplace, Kanzuri, a family-owned small batch producer of a one-of-a-kind fermented chili paste, also named Kanzuri.

Its original form dating back more than 400 years as the Niigata people carried it into battle as a way to supplement their nutrition and warm their bodies.

Still undiscovered by much of the world, this spicy, umami-rich ingredient is widely known among culinary experts and chefs throughout Japan, and Kentaro has been working tirelessly for the company for the last nine years in sales, along with 18 other artisans and staff to make it all happen.

The first thing he does is clean with all of the other workers.

It's a typical part of Japanese office culture as they believe that it will brighten the workplace and improve work efficiency, so much so that there's even a common saying in Japan, make it cleaner than when you arrived.

Oh, they're studying Chorei, a typical Japanese morning meeting that's attended by everyone in the company.

After practicing formal greetings and discussing the day's agenda like most other companies, here they read from their workplace education booklet as they believe that this form of proactive participation energizes the atmosphere and fosters a strong sense of unity.

So, what's the most challenging part for you?

Unlike widely understood Japanese condiments like wasabi or miso, which are produced by a multitude of companies, they're the only ones in the world who produce Kanzuri.

It's a massive business challenge for a local producer like themselves to introduce their product to a wide domestic customer base, let alone the rest of the world.

Yet, it's Kentaro's primary responsibility to get it done.

And when he does, he says there's nothing like seeing his new customers fall in love with Kanzuri after just the first taste, which is exactly what happened to me and why nothing brings me more joy than to be able to help and support local Japanese artisans like them who perfected their rare craft

Now, he has a meeting with the artisan responsible for crafting their hot sauce.

So, what are you two going to talk about?

It's truly been an amazing experience to be part of this meticulous journey to create the perfect bottle of hot sauce.

In fact, these are just some of the final blends as many more samples were created before this, the ultimate goal to craft a premium fiery hot sauce with a deep Japanese umami flavor that I'd be proud to share with all of you.

We experimented with various types of chili peppers, and we even made our own hot sauce.

We experimented with various types of chili peppers, premium shoyu, Japanese soy sauce, and even premium kanzuri chili paste aged for at least six years to get the perfect blend of spiciness, taste, and consistency.

And now, they're reconfirming my top selected blends.

Kentaro, what do you think about my favorite blend?

Let me just double check that this is the one.

You can tell I'm already sweating just a little bit.

Seriously, there is no hot sauce like this in the world.

The umami is so flavorful, and then the fire is unmatched.

So, it looks like Kentaro is going to be doing a little bit more desk work over here.

So, while he's doing that, let's see what's cooking up around here.

So, now that I'm suited up, let's go see what's going on in the factory.

I'm going to start preparing the ingredients by mixing them with a seasoning called Kanzuri.

Apparently, the blending only happens a few times in the winter months.

Kanzuri itself is a chili paste that's been fermented for at least three years, crafted from four simple ingredients.

Rice koji from Niigata, fresh yuzu from Kochi Prefecture,

Akaho sea salt, and snow-bathed red chilies grown on their own nearby fields.

One of the elements that sets Kanzuri apart is its use of fresh yuzu, producing a captivating zesty citrus flavor which pairs harmoniously with the spiciness of the red chilies.

Hot damn, look at that fiery red chili pepper.

They're newly planted locally every year with seeds from the previous harvest.

This ensures a high and consistent quality, but it also means that the quantities are highly limited.

The blend is fermented and aged for at least three years, which elevates its umami to new depths, forming a unique chili paste infused with yuzu's citrus notes, a technique that these artisans have refined and mastered over the last half century.

Now, let's go to the kitchen where they craft the hot sauce.

Nice, what do you need to be most careful about?

I missed a skilled artisan's hand-blending what's gonna be the red Kaminari hot sauce, made with Kanzuri, aged at least three years, habanero chili peppers, and shoyu.

So this is where my hot sauce is going to be bottled.

Well, let's hope it all goes well later today with the owner.

Then my signature Paolo from Tokyo premium Kaminari hot sauce will go into production.

Made with an original blend of their premium Kaminari chili paste aged six years for a deeper umami, locally grown Carolina reaper peppers for that extra fire, and shoyu, a Japanese soy sauce.

And it'll be bottled just like this by one of the artisans, each empty bottle one by one to ensure that there are no breaks or defects.

And it was only just recently they installed a labeling machine.

Before this, each and every label was applied by hand.

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Day in the Life of a Japanese Hot Sauce Maker

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