{"id":33969,"date":"2014-02-27T14:12:53","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T18:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=33969"},"modified":"2014-02-27T14:14:03","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T18:14:03","slug":"wit-life-262-%e6%a2%85%e7%a5%ad%e3%82%8a%ef%bc%81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2014\/02\/27\/wit-life-262-%e6%a2%85%e7%a5%ad%e3%82%8a%ef%bc%81\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #262: \u6885\u796d\u308a\uff01"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-<\/strong><\/em>03).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es some of the interesting tidbits and <\/strong><\/em>t<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>ends along with h<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>er own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>\"20140222_182054\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the weekend I had the chance to try the \u6885\u796d\u308a (ume matsuri<\/em> or plum blossom festival) Prix Fixe at Hi Collar in the East Village.\u00a0 It was my first time going to this cool hole-in-the-wall location, which hasn’t even been open for a year.\u00a0 Hi Collar operates as a coffee shop\u00a0during the day, offering beverages and desserts, and at night transforms into a sake bar\/restaurant.\u00a0 You can see some of the amazing ume offerings in the menu here<\/a>, and I especially enjoyed the rice that closed the meal (although it lacked yuba which is one of my favorite foods, as they had run out).\u00a0 The cozy bar sits about 10 people (and has little hooks for your bags underneath, so convenient!), and we were there on Saturday night so it was packed.\u00a0 However, there is a turnover as some people just come in for a drink and leave fairly quickly, as opposed to people like my friend and I who lingered over our ume course for hours.\u00a0 At $38 it is amazingly reasonable so if you have a chance to go before the end of the month when the matsuri ends I would highly recommend it…<\/p>\n

I also got the accompanying $30 Umeshu Pairing, which was phenomenal.\u00a0 It came with five glasses of various \u6885\u9152 (ume shu<\/em> or plum wine), not all of which were sweet.\u00a0 I really liked the Kimoto Umeshu from Daishichi Brewery in Fukushima.\u00a0 This sake producer was one of a few highlighted in a recent<\/strong>\u00a0New York Times article<\/a> about how the Japan government is using sake to revitalize the economy by promoting this drink along with other softer goods such as anime, music, fashion and food as part of the Cool Japan program.\u00a0 As the article notes, “Sake producers in Fukushima are suffering even more than their peers elsewhere in Japan, rocked not just by the downturn in domestic consumption but also by fears over safety, after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011.”\u00a0 Good to know that one way you can help the Tohoku area affected by the earthquake and tsunami, with the three-year anniversary soon approaching, is to opt for sake produced there!\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03).\u00a0 She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. Over the weekend I had the chance to try the \u6885\u796d\u308a (ume matsuri or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,70,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-food-drink","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-8PT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33969"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33984,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33969\/revisions\/33984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}