Kozaki Sake Brewery Festival (こうざき酒蔵まつり)

Giant banner for the sake festival in front of Shimousa-Kozaki Station.

After a couple weeks off, today was time for more adventuring in Chiba! My destination: the town of Kozaki (神崎町...not read "Kanzaki," the more common reading for these characters, but I digress). Kozaki is a teeny tiny town sandwiched between Narita City, Katori City, and Ibaraki Prefecture. Honestly, I'd never heard of Kozaki until I started working at the Prefectural Offices, and I only came across it because I was going down a list of all the cities and towns in Chiba Prefecture.

But don't let the photo above fool you...this wasn't just any rural event. Despite Kozaki being Chiba's smallest municipality with a population of a mere 6,500 people, this one day festival commands a horde of visitors totaling up to 30,000 people...almost 5 times the town's population! Crazy!!

Event map (sorry it's all wrinkly!)

I've been to a pretty good number of rural town festivals, but the Kozaki Sakagura Matsuri is by far the most amazing yet! The content is just as hardcore as the number of visitors. You could stay here all day and not get bored at all!

As first time visitors, my accomplices and I hit worked on hitting up the two main highlights of the festival: the Nabedana (鍋店) and Terada Honke (寺田本家) breweries! Both situated in Kozaki, these breweries boast histories of over 300 years, and are the main organizers of this event.

Only 10:30am and the grounds of the Nabedana brewery were already packed...

First stop: Nabedana's Jinyu Kuramatsuri (仁勇蔵まつり) area!
After warming up with some free amazake, we made a beeline for the sake tasting area.

Before sampling though, don't forget to sign-in! You get your own free guinomi, or little sake cup, which you use to sample the different types of sake, and then take it home as a souvenir.

Sake tasting area at the Nabedana brewery.

And now you're ready to sample the sake! See each of the white sheets lining the walls? Nabedana had that many types of sake available here. I only tried a couple here, but there must have been a good amount of people who tried (to taste) all of them, because there were one too many people looking really red in the face on the way home.

Making use of my new guinomi.

I had some umeshu (plum wine)...and then this! It was a huge pain to get to this corner, because everyone was smashing each other to get a sip...but with good reason. One of the highest quality of sake Nabedana offers, this particular brew comes at a lovely price tag of 5,250 yen (about US$55?) per bottle. I am not familiar with sake at all, but this brew was reaaaaaally good.


Stop no. 2: Terada Honke!

Waiting for sake tasting at the Terada Honke brewery.

About a 10 minute walk away is the Terada Honke brewery (although thanks to the crowd and all the shops, I think it took us more like 20 minutes). Perhaps because it was almost noon and the festivities/crowds had almost reached their peak, we had to wait about an hour to get to the sake tasting area at Terada Honke.

Terada Honke's "MUSUBI (written as むすひ)" brew.

Terada Honke only had about 6 brews available for sampling, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless! Not only was this brew picture above really good, it's notable because it's made with hatsuga genmai (発芽玄米; unpolished brown rice), which is pretty popular in Japan as a health food product. The photo I took was super blurry, so I can't post it, but their brew Daigo no Shizuku (醍醐のしずく) was really spectacular!!! I am pretty set on buying a bottle the next time I come across Terada's stuff.

The sign reads "Enzyme Bath."

But even if you're not big on sake and/or drinking, there are tons of random other booths and activities to check out! Like this one, also located on the Terada Honke grounds - fermenting sawdust foot bath??? Yes - these people have their feet buried in fermenting sawdust. Japanese people really love their ofuro :D

And last but not least, there were tons of tasties to be had! So many that I was so busy looking around that I wasn't able to taste anywhere near as much as I wanted to. Food is a huge factor at these events...and I've never seen anywhere with such a fantastic selection.

AMAZING. I think I could live off of this.

Ok...certainly not a good shot - you can barely tell what it is. But it was so good I couldn't get any other shots before we ate it all up! It's maguro karaage (like fried chicken, except fried fish)...but what makes this so special is that it's coated with shio-koji (塩麹).


Here's an explanation of what koji is: http://www.clearspring.co.uk/japanese/miso/what_koji. So...shio-koji is koji that has been fermented salt. Once again, I'd never heard of this until today...but this was definitely the greatest discovery of today! Apparently they don't sell shio-koji in your neighborhood grocery stores, so I kinda regret not buying a bag to take home...I will have to hunt some down and experiment with it. It sounds like it goes well with everything, from fried foods to salad dressing, or even as a topping for rice. And best of all, it's really good for you!

This maguro karaage was so good I would be happy to eat it instead of chicken karaage for the rest of my life...must figure out how to make this!!!


Some other randomness from the day:

完売、完売、完売....totally sold out.

One of my companions really recommended this store, "Tsuki no Tofu," but by the time we got there, it was totally sold out. Completely. Even on regular days, the store owner recommends that you reserve in advance to make sure that you get your order. They even had tofu donuts, which sounded amazing!!! Argh...well add that to my list of things to do/buy next time I'm in Kozaki.

Space curry?! Jipangu curry?!!

More stuff I didn't get to try, but really wanted to...I think they are both vegetable curries. According to the sign, the Jipangu curry is a miso vegetable curry with brown rice?? Sounds fantastic. And I didn't get to read anything more specific than that the uchuu (space) curry is a veggie curry too, but it definitely got my attention. Almost all of the booths at the festival were selling natural/organic/healthy foods, which are all big themes of this event.

Last but not least, freshly steamed sake manju!!! Can't leave without omiyage.

I'm glad we were able to buy these before leaving! I think these were the last few...almost everywhere, like the place where we bought the maguro karaage. We got to Kozaki at 10am, but I am thinking next year it might be better to go even earlier...


Event information for the Kozaki Sake Brewery Festival 2012:
http://www.pref.chiba.lg.jp/kokusai/english/information/residents/news/issues/february2012.html#event0205

An article about Kozaki Town on the Foreign Press Center Japan (FPCJ) website:
http://fpcj.jp/modules/news6/index.php?page=article&storyid=200&storytopic=3

If you didn't go this year, I definitely recommend going to next year's festival! I promise you won't regret it.