美味しい!

I enjoyed my trip to a winery in Tochigi with the other teachers at my school immensely. An escape from the concrete slab on which I presently live to the beautiful trees currently vibrant with the colours of fall was just what the doctor ordered. En route to the winery, we stopped briefly at a quaint town full of Japanese maples boasting leaves of the most intense red I have ever seen in nature. Afterwards, we headed up to the Coco Winery.

Japanese wine tastings, it turns out, are vastly different from those in the United States. Certain individuals who attend wine tastings in America drive me insane. The slightly repulsive spitting, over-emphasised sniffs and swirls, and especially the snobby attempts at demonstrating sophistication with remarks about the flavour of the wine make me want to drink an entire bottle of it. Maybe they are intentionally hired by wineries to make tasters do just that- buy bottle after bottle of their product.

Stop that!

I tried for a long time to understand the various tastes of wines. I would sip a wine and swear it had “subtle pear notes” only to be informed that I was actually detecting “heavy metallic undertones,” whatever that means. I gave up eventually and began lumping all wines into two categories: delicious ones, and ones I’d never buy.

Anyways, back to the point. In Japan, instead of being served many kinds of red wines or many varieties of whites to try and detect the subtle differences, we were served three wines. One red, one white, and one rose. My companions didn't do any of the swirling of the wine in their glasses, nor did they obnoxiously hold them to the light to detect the subtle differences in the colour with one eyebrow raised to look pretentious. Nope. The server said simply “first is our red wine,” and filled our glasses. We all clinked glasses and took a sip. The sole comment made by my fellow teachers was simply “oishii!” meaning “delicious!” which is really the only comment that needs to be made.

After enjoying the wine, we had a four-course lunch and then went shopping. I can attest from prior experience that shopping after drinking is not a very smart order of events. At the Guinness brewery in Ireland, immediately after downing your pint of beer you must exit the building through, you guessed it, a gift shop. I ended up dropping far too many euros that day, a mistake I decided not to duplicate yesterday (though now that I am in Japan, I can’t LITERALLY make the same mistake since I can’t spend Euros here, but you get what I mean). I did desperately need new running shoes, however, but I found some for $30, which I figured was a necessary purchase to make for the sake of my feet.

Wine, nature, and shopping topped off with a gingerbread latte that I didn't have to pay for. Good day, overall.