Less than two hours by bullet train from Tokyo, Niigata prefecture teems with culture and world-class craftsmanship.
Niigata appears locked in a time capsule, steeped in traditional culture and world-class craftsmanship. Yet, it is constantly reinventing itself.
Those with deeper pockets can indulge in some legacy planning: select a stunning, handcrafted 715,000 yen copper tea kettle to gift a young married couple. It will transcend generations. Perhaps the best introduction to Niigata City starts at its train station. Every time I step off the Shinkansen, I make a beeline for Ponshukan Marketplace , an upscale yet wallet-friendly sake bar. I gleefully exchange 500 yen for five tokens, borrow a porcelain sake cup and try to read, with decreasing sobriety, the tasting notes stuck on the sides of some 100 sake dispensers.Strangers exchange tasting notes and hearty laughter fills the hall that buzzes with congenial vibes.
The terroir creates ideal conditions for refined sake. With abundant snowmelt from the mountains, farmers produce top-grade sake rice. The lengthy winter also acts as an air purifier, upping the purity of the brewing process. Step into a brewery in Niigata and you will see giant warehouses packed with last season’s snow, maintaining a low temperature for the fermentation process.
Sit by the lake in the early evenings to watch swans fly overhead, wave after wave in arrow formation, as they return to the serene water.Explore the 65-room farmhouse of a feudal-era wealthy landowner, surrounded by lush gardens of maple trees. Spend meditative moments at its main hall that opens, unwalled and unobstructed, to a cinematic frame of Zen gardens. This view is on a par with Kyoto’s famed Ryoan-ji Temple grounds, sans the crowd.
While a close relative, the hamachi, is widely farmed and available year-round, the wintry, wild-caught buri off the Sea of Japan are in a class of their own. While the language barrier makes conversations stilted, I still enjoy the connections and learning local wisdom, such as how edible wild ferns must be boiled, then dried to remove bitterness. A cooking lesson with lunch costs 9,900 yen a person. Go to), apprentices watch the masters engage in Tsuiki Douki, a hammering technique to create a kettle vessel from a single copper sheet.
Here, nobles, religious leaders and traders mingled with sailors, miners and the odd criminal – giving rise to a unique culture of art and tradition, many facets of which still survive today. A single-occupancy stay at the four-star ANA Crowne Plaza Niigata costs 7,800 yen a night. In Kyoto or Osaka’s ANA Crowne Plaza, the price roughly triples to around 21,000 yen.) dishes out a premium kaiseki course with regional beef stew, matsutake mushroom and mountain vegetables, and gourmet seafood such as the prized nodoguro fish and snow crab.
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