Skip to main content

Always the Journey

The sign at the reception desk said "full". My dream of a whisky factory tour that ends with a complimentary sampler was abruptly shut down.

If you want to take a tour of the Nikka Whisky Factory it's best to make reservations.

Then we got in trouble. The boys love exploring, and there was a pond with ducks. After getting shut out of the factory tour we headed outside and started walking around. It's a beautiful place, nestled in the mountains between Sendai and Yamagata. And it's autumn so the brown, red, and yellow leaves create an astounding backdrop for some backwoods wandering.

Just as the boys and I started to mosey on down a path behind the main building a lady came out and said, very politely of course, that we couldn't go that way. I had seen the sign, but I thought it was just for cars. It turned out there was very little wandering to be done at the Nikka factory. 


We made the best of it.


Upon further reflection, a 70-minute whisky factory tour that ends with papa sampling whisky and getting a bit tipsy wouldn't have been great anyway. I still got tipsy, mind you. Just on my own. 

At one point when we were in the gift shop, right next to the tasting room where the tours end, a group was coming in after their factory tour and about to enter the VIP area. It was then I realized... the tour group was all dudes. And not just any dudes. Old dudes. And any dudes under the age of 50 were sportin' very not ironic mullets. And they all seemed like they knew where the nearest big and tall men's clothing store was.

Bullet dodged.

Eri and the boys would've been miserable on the whisky factory tour. So we enjoyed it our way.


And for 11 bucks (a small price to pay for not having to do the tour) I got a whisky sampler. The boys had some pretty delicious apple juice. And Eri had a taster of apple wine, which she later admitted she could've gone for one more of.


The best part was really the journey. As it always is.

We took the bus from our house to Izumi Chuo. Then the subway to Kita Sendai Station, which connects to the Japan Rail Senzan Line.


That took us up into the mountains to Sakunami Station, where a whisky factory bus picks people up and drops them off all day. The parking lot at the Nikka factory is mostly just buses. People come for the autumn foliage, but they for sure stay for the whisky tasting.

The boys could've cared less about the destination. For them it's always the journey.



Around dusk I went for a walk and reflected on the day. The boys didn't take a nap, they had pizza and donuts, and they were getting pretty hyper/grumpy. We all got very tired. It was a big adventure.

As I returned home after a good hour of walking I was stopped in my tracks by just how lucky I am to live on this street.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...