sake...

Gidday all,
I just got back from giving a speech on New Zealand and in particular the situation regarding governmental support for visually impaired people in New Zealand to a bunch of lovely visually impaired folk at one of the local community centres. It went well.

Until I was about to leave....

Then one of the more talkative chaps in the group was shaking my hand and he conspiratorially leant in and informed me that he was 80 years old; to which I replied "You don't look it at all", which incidentally is very, very similar (exactly the same) to "You can't see. At all". While I stood there stunned and trying to remember how a Hail Mary goes he nodded and said "I know, thats why I carry this big white stick". For future reference the local community centers floors are remarkably well built and there is little or no chance of them opening and swallowing you whole. Ever. At all. Crap.

Anywhoo, enough about me alienating the public and on to Nic doing it.

We had the Sake festival the weekend before last. It was sooper fun. It was up in the hills, about an hour away by train, and Nic and I set off nice and early to have a look around before the sampling was done. The city is called Saijo and they've been making sake since Jesus played for Jerusalem City Rovers and they've got it down pat. There are a bunch of breweries in town all making the good stuff from the lov-er-ly local rice and the lov-er-ly local water. On this particular day you can stroll around and enter the respective breweries where they give away their cheapest sake in little glasses and sell the good stuff for about 70 cents a glass. Needless to say Nic and I kept our 70 cents' deep in our pockets and drank the hooch. And it was yum. It's interesting how varied the flavours of Sake can be (almost like it was a wine!!) and how good even hooch can taste after a few...

So we wandered around and this'd and that'd until we were sure that we'd seen enough and could enter the Sake Festival proper. This entails a large fenced off park, with the ominous sign outside firmly stating in English (?) "Once it is exited, it must not be re-comeback in" telling us that once in, we were in for the long haul. So we paid our 1500 yen (NZ$20) and received our wee sake glasses and strode into the fun times. The area had 5 enormous tents set up, each with sake from different regions of Japan. There were 800 breweries represented with a few from each brewery. You wander up to the tent with your glass, look at the bottles behind the friendly pourer folk (this became more difficult during the day) and ask for the corresponding number, they pour it out, you wander back to your possie on the grass and have a natter, sup your sake, wander back, and repeat to fade.

We went into the Sake Festival site at 12:00, it had been up and running since 11:00 and in that 1 hour there were some folk that were determined to get every penny of their 1500 yen out of the place in one hour or less. These were the folk lying on the grass asleep with red, red, red, red faces, snoring softly, as they would throughout the afternoon. We had a grand time. There was music, Sake, deep fried chicken and some more Sake, and it was good. We wandered out at about 8pm whereupon Nic decided that she hadn't liked her dinner very much so decided to leave most of it at the station.....on the platform.....y'know?.....on the platform.....? Yeah.

So that was the sake festival. Twas good. Not long til Shane gets here (hoorah) and congratulations to Al on taking a big old step recently.

(runawayyoupoorfoolrunaway)

Right-o.

See ya.