"What is Hip?" in Japan from Japanese frontdesk manager

We did Kumamoto event with the great support from

Ginza Kumamoto Kan. It is located next of Sony building

in Ginza. ( Mainly they close on Monday 11:00-20:00)

http://www.qbg-alfa.jp/  

Ueda-san, Kinoshita-san, Indou-san Yoshinaka-san, and

Matsumoto-san.

They also planned for similar event for us last year too!

Also the rice shouchu brewery Rokuchoushi’s president

Ikebe-san and his family also came to introduce their

great Kuma Shouchu too.

At first, we really worried about they do not eat the

local dishes, but, step by step, our guest started to

eat all of them.

Especially, cooked dried bamboo and vegetable are

so popular.

Fishcake, Renkon with mustard called Karashi Renkon

was also very popular too.

It seems like everybody wanted to talk each other first,

so later, everybody start to try shouchu.

Kuma area’s history of making shouchu is so similar

to the history of making of scotch whisky.

Ikebe-san also did the shouhu talk by himself!!

Kuma area is surrounded by mountains, so most of the

farmer also planted behind the mountains for hided

rice field is not possible to be founded by officer of

Bakufu in old time. They could get big amount of rice,

so they also could make shouchu by the rice.

Yoshinaka-san tried to prepare the slide show for it,

it was quite nice, so everybody stared into the great

view of Kumamoto!

Kinoshita-san and Matsumoto-san cooked Kumamoto

ramen too!! It has so nice taste and flavor, so everybody

ordered to Ueda-san and Yoshinaka-san.

Ueda-san arranged the great sweets with Kitatoki-san

he is the chef patissier of QBG sweets shop in Ecute

Shinagawa. They took so many sweets for our event,

and we really enjoyed so well.

http://www.qbg-alfa.jp/

We really appreciate for Kumamoto peoples kindness

so well, and seems like we could touch their warm

heart called Kumamoto mind.

We need to go Kumamoto this year and need to touch

their great heart more!!

Thank you!!

Takahiko Saito