Karakiya, Sangenjaya (酒の唐木屋)

So I was just out for a random stroll through the nether Western regions of Sancha, …

No I wasn’t. Woody told me about this place. I don’t get out so much any more, so I rely on advice.

And I like Liquor and Foods, and I like nothing better than drinking away the afternoon with no obligations. Your level of interest is probably similar to that of this fine fellow strolling by and enlivening my picture. What the heck are we doing outside a neighborhood liquor store?

Ohhh, that’s why. It’s not a Foods store at all any more. Presumably the mad genius son of the founders was behind this conversion from neighborhood grocery to high-end sake shop? What do they need all these folding chairs for?

And why do the bottles all have these funny labels? Oh good heavens, it’s because you can get 60 cc of pretty much anything on the shelf for a low-low price. The Y245 for this guy is actually one of the higher prices for a dram.

This guy is awesome looking, isn’t he? It’s ‘The Black Mask’ from Hyakujurou 

(百十郎 黒面 if you’re keeping score at home). And you saw above that it’s 

You also couldn’t have more fun for $5 if you tried. This is a cool store. Where else could you just line up a few shots of value-priced yamahai sake? This isn’t the whole selection by any means either. You could probably drink 60ml shots of different warm yamahai until you passed out.

And there’s the problem – all those open bottles of yamahai are sitting around at room temperature. The room’s dark and cool compared to outside, but it’s not a big fridge – it’s still comfortable for extended sittin and drinkin. So most of the bottles have that not so fresh feeling.

I gotta tell ya, it was a struggle to get through those three little glasses of warm yamahai. And I was running out of time for the afternoon (those weren’t all the bottle that went before), so I just wanted something refreshing. And there are 12 or 15 fridges against the other walls – you can see some of them above. And they have some good brewery relationships – cf several bottles of Kagiya that I tried. And they have a selection of craft beer. And the have a selection of…what’s that thing called, the one the Koreans call makkori? There’s a Japanese variant on it, and the styrofoam growlers in the panorama up top were for carrying home a liter or two of it.

There’s no food here. I mean, maybe there were some snacks and meat sticks or sumthin. But you mostly need to (and I hear are encouraged to) bring in your own foods from the outside world. And it really seemed like the outside world by the time I staggered out of this rabbit hole and back into the street.

Not that nether Sancha doesn’t seem like another world all on its own or nothin. 
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