If you come to Japan, you definitely want to enjoy various kinds of Japanese things, right? One of them is tasting Japanese food products that are registered in non-objects cultural heritage.
For those who love alcohol, feeling liquor while at a place to eat may also be as important as the main menu. However, because you have come all the way to Japan, you might want to try a different kind of liquor than usual.
Sake that is different from usual. Not wine or beer, this is Nihonshu.
You might know the word “SAKE”, but maybe you have never taken real Japanese sake. This time we will introduce Nihonshu (Japanese Sake) which is the result of technology and culture typical of Japan and where you can drink and buy the sake.
Nihonshu is a traditional Japanese liquor that uses rice as its main ingredient. Nihonshu is made from the saccharification of the kouji mushroom (a mushroom in rice to make sake) which is then fermented with yeast. (Reference: Kotobank)
In essence, nihonshu is made from rice. By the way, kouji is a steamed rice or soybean that produces yeast mushrooms named Koujikabi (Koubi Mushroom). Nihonshu has a variety of flavors depending on the combination of water components, rice, mushrooms and yeast used in the making. Based on these combinations, each region and sake factory in Japan has a different nihonshu taste.
If wine comes from grape, then Japanese sake comes from rice. Easy to understand, right!
There are also those who call nihonshu as seishu (pure sake). However, because this is one of the names for Nihonshu, it is not wrong to think that Seishu is the same as Nihonshu.