Well, we are a sorry looking pair. Barry’s rib area is quite painful which makes him walk differently and his knee is looking pretty banged up. Today we will try to take it easy. It looks like it should be an easy day of riding…about 35 km. For our second night in Minamisatsuma, we had to move rooms. We ended up in a really lovely room, traditionally outfitted with tatami mats and futons. Once again, Barry’s thermarest mattress added to the futon did the trick.
The Business Hotel is more than the name suggests. The owner has put much energy into making it bicycle friendly and has resources to offer touring cyclists like bike specific maps and a safe place to park. We were astonished when she told us to bring our trikes inside, especially since she had a large parking lot. Large hotels with enormous lobbies usually deny us this privilege.
She also offered us the use of her laundry facilities. Wow, that was impressive. It was a nice surprise to come back to the room and find a large drying rack for our laundry waiting at the door for us to use.@
A good host and a very kind person to make an acquaintance with.
While Barry was resting yesterday, I went for a walk to get groceries and found this amazing store called Pico. We dropped by this morning to have a coffee and tea for the road. It was too early to stock up for dinner. Their bento boxes looked excellent.
The Japanese love sweets and we see it in any way you can imagine. These sandwiches are made with fresh peach slices, white peach jam and whipped cream. It is aptly called a Sweets Sand. I wonder how Japanese people remain so slim.
We have been having a lovely ride and came upon this distillery. At first we debated about stopping but we are glad we did. The tour was excellent (and free).
In 1909, the Hombo family started making Shochu in Tsunuki. The family was made up of the parents, 7 sons and 3 daughters. To this day, it remains a family business. In 1909 they used sweet potatoes to make Shochu and in 1960, the Company began production of wine and whisky. It took some time before the whisky became popular.
Mars whisky was the Hombo family’s initial foray into making whisky. Initially it was not successful with Japanese people due to its smoky and peaty finish. At that time, a lighter taste was preferred.
An interesting part of their history was that when the Japanese became involved with WW2, the Hombo family was tasked with supplying all of the Japanese soldiers with Shochu. As a result, the distillery was bombed and destroyed with the Shochu burning for over a week in 1945. The Hombo family were not defeated by this. By 1947, they had completely rebuilt the distillery. The accounts we read stressed that every member of the family, regardless of age, contributed to the success of their business. Our tour included a walk through of the current whisky distillery.
We loved walking g through this warehouse called Ishiguro…or Stone Warehouse. The storage was built in 1953 and the Company started aging whisky in 2013. The space is now filled with about 400 barrels.
