Seeking Shizuoka Sake with Jacky Royer

0:02The people of sake actually brought me into sake. Back in 1988, this place was actually in Ginza on the main drag. At first, it was kind of soy sauce. It was miso. To the point where it actually changed my life. New Year's Day 1989. Not just sake as a beverage, but all the culture and history. So welcome back and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Sake On Air, which is the first podcast dedicated to expanding the dialogue surrounding Japan's iconic beverages, sake, shochu and awamori in the world. The show is made possible with the support of the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association.

0:42My name is Sébastien Lemoine, one of your regular hosts. And today I am joined by actually three hosts with our guest. John, it's great to have you on the mic. Thanks, Sébastien. It's been a while since I've been able to appear, but I'm very thrilled to be here. It's going to be an interesting conversation. And Chris is with us today as well. Hello! Always an honor to be on with John. Looking forward to this. And last but not least, from Export Japan, Frank. Hello! Now it's time to introduce our guest and I'm very pleased to have Jacqui Royer with us today. Because Jacqui, because of his very unusual profile, will enable us to combine a couple of things in a single episode.

1:29Because we're going to talk about brewing sake and the life a brewer, but we're going to be talking about Shizuoka as well as a region and share a bit of the attraction of Shizuoka as a destination because Jackie happens to work in tourism as well. Good morning, Jackie. Hello, Sebastian. Hello, everyone. And happy to talk to you and everyone about Shizuoka and sake. So I guess my first question is pretty simple. Would you kindly introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about what brought you to Japan and why did you settle in Shizuoka. Yes, so it will take some time to talk about this because as you said I have kind of unusual like a mastery.

2:11So first time I came in Japan it was in 2012 and I came in Japan for my master degree internship and my master degree was about library science. So I went to Tokyo in Nishifu Skaikan which means Meso-Franco-Japonaise de Tokyo. I am French, sorry I didn't say like I think I forgot to say it, I'm French, maybe you can hear about this. And it is basically a research center about social science and about Japan. It is really important for French people. Like there is Ecole Française d 'Extreme Orient, which is a really big research center also. But this Maison Franco-Japanaise de Tokyo is really focused on Japan science by French people.

2:54It was made by Paul Claudel, which was a Shibu Sawa Aichi. and it was made around like beginning of the 20th century I think. So I started my internship there and for a few months only and why I chose Japan it is because I didn't have so much interest in Japan like lots of other people from my age. I am 38. Lots of people coming to Japan for first time they have interest in manga, animation and this kind of topic. Me I just came there because I I thought Japan is an island and it has an interesting culture. And I just want to know, to see. It looks funny and to go there and learn about Japan. And I went there for the first time and I did this internship.

3:37And then, like it happened lots of time in life, I met my wife. The woman will become my wife a few years later, two years later. And it's how it starts. So it was in 2012. after I was working in India for two years and I came back in Japan in 2014 to live in Japan at least to try to live in Japan get a job and starting my life in Japan at that time I didn't speak Japanese at all so that was pretty hard like you can imagine of course and this is the beginning you have any questions about this or I can continue to explain how I came to the life if you want so like I said my background was library science museum science and I have a specialization in old and rare books so nothing to see with nironshu, with sake nothing connected to tourism, I just basically, I just used all my savings to find a job and to live in Japan.

4:48I couldn't find any job. So the months were passing, passing, and I was losing all my savings step by step. I used to live in Tokyo that time. And I found a job in, I think it was end of September, but I'm not sure about this. And it was a job as guide. One company like Hayao Mias Guide At that time, the tourism was just starting and French people especially just start to come to Japan and more and more. And the salary was pretty bad. It was like at that time, 8000 yen for one day. So you can imagine like it's in euro, about 40 euro, 45, 50 euro for one day. And I had to pay my cost also, like transportation cost and everything.

5:40So after one day of work, you can make you can't make a living in Tokyo with this salary, right? So I thought, OK, it's enough. I will make my website and try to get my customer and get all the money for me. And that was the starting point of my company in tourism. And it starts from there. And I made this company. And years after year, I got new partner, travel agency partner and getting more and more job. and now I am hiring lots of freelance guides and French people living in Japan. Most of my customers are French speaking, but I also work in English. And yeah, basically, yeah, my job is doing what travel agencies want to do.

6:23You are a land operator, is that right? Land operator, yeah. So which means I cannot sell directly to customers, but I can go through travel agency and travel agency book what I'm making for customers and what about Shizuka? so what about Shizuka? so I start to sell service in Tokyo and Osaka, Kansai and in 2016 I thought it was time to go to countryside I am from Bourgogne in France Burgundy and I used to live in countryside and I always wanted to go back to countryside in my life in Japan in other countries but turns out I'm living in Japan and we exchange with my wife and what we can do and we choose to go to Shizoka to live in the countryside and because my wife is from Shizoka and we had some how we say in Japan her Jimoto like how we say in English Jimoto place of origin place of origin yeah is a yeah yeah is the city actually in shizoka and we choose to not stop the company but uh finally after two years i was having lots of job in tokyo as guide you know and i just gumbled all say okay no it's time to go to shizoka and uh all the work i was having in tokyo yeah i will get less income because i cannot guide myself which means i have to ask other guide to guide for me and um i will get less income of course so but i choose to gamble just for living countryside and why i wanted to live in cross countryside it was really simple also because i like countryside but i wanted to have a family and i wanted this family to grow up in countryside that's really simple and uh and now we got three children and really cute kids so So, you know, I'm happy for that.

8:26And that part, we are successful for family side. And company, the company grew up also. And now, yeah, we have lots of work. Well, you very kindly invited me to come to go and see your house. I mean, it is not any countryside. You are living in a very small shuraku, a very small village in the mountain. I mean, I don't know how many people live there, but it's only a very limited number of houses. And you chose to buy and renovate an Akiya and made your life there. So it's not easy to find as a place. although there seems to be a lot of visitors because Japanese people love hiking and you are on a good hiking route.

9:23And I was very curious to see how life would be there because I'm sure it comes with some constraints. I mean, can you tell us about that a little? Yeah, there is a lot of constraints, like you said. like okay so when we start thinking with my wife to move to countryside it was a coincidence this akiya this old japanese house owner decided to sell it my wife she knew about this because her mother still live in the aizu and by humor like she heard like this house was opening and for sale and better it was it was time to try to get it actually and we just went there and say we have interest in this house and we got it you know in this village the village name is Hanazawa no Sato and there is only 80 around 80 people living there it's hard to remember how many people because the average age is around 80 70 80 so every year lots of people are leaving us you know and um it's phenomenal in japan there is lots of countryside who are losing their population right and um i think that time the fact i was a foreigner was an advantage like people they will think like in this kind of village with a old custom and a tradition as foreigner it will be hard to be accepted but i think that time like people thought I can come in this village and give a new you know positive wave as a foreigner so people of this village really welcome us warmly I didn't feel anything bad you know like of course communication was really hard because after it was only after two years in Japan for me my Japanese was not really good still and there is a special dialect of this village maybe Sebastian you could hear like people talking it's a little bit different than normal Japanese and even some Japanese they don't understand sometimes what they're saying so it was very complicated at the first three years but after I used I began to understand like what they're saying and step by step I got more and more responsibilities in this village life because maybe as you know like when you live in this kind of village in Japan you have to do some what we say the village work like for example one time a month you have to clean the river of the village like all the people of the village gather and you have to clean and if you don't come like it's can't be okay but you have to come sometime at least or you will be out of this village and and sometime like a few times a year like we have to climb the mountain and to find a very small shrine in the mountain and to give him sake to the small shrine and to pray and okay we have to do this and it is all a rotation system and we have to take some time for the village all through the year and it's a lot actually it takes lots of time and you have to accept it and it's mostly the sunday or saturday so you know yeah if you want to move in this kind of area you have to understand it will be like this and accept it and from this year i became like we say in japan fokusodai of this village fokusodai is like sodai is the top of the village and fokusodai is under the top of the village so vice director of the village i don't know how we can say it right in english but uh so even i'm french and not japanese i got quite high in the sense of responsibilities of the village.

13:20So I think in terms of integration, it's going pretty well. And the fact I'm brewing local sake is really well appreciated by the village people of this village. How close is your house to the brewery? Is it a walk? Is it a drive? How far it is from this village? Around 30 minutes. my car obviously my car yeah but I'm living in Yaisu but the brewery is in Fujieda city the both cities are sticking together Fujieda is famous for Shidaizumi Hatsukame brewery for example Yaisu is famous for Isojiman but when I start sake brewing it takes 30 minutes to go there but I was sleeping in a sake brewery so the first year I was why I say the first year because it changed after but the first year I was going there on Sunday evening and coming back on Saturday evening to my home and only one day of holiday, holiday of rest and after I was going back to and that time I had three kids so you can imagine for my wife like and for me of course like yeah right right right how old are your kids uh no it's they are like five six and nine five six and nine oh it's a great age i'm sure you ought to be there for them lots of workers yeah i'm sure so now you commute basically you don't stay overnight in the brewery you commute except maybe yes uh yeah that's right like few things happen like when i start working in Shida Izumi Brewery like I don't know four or five years ago first year it was during the COVID the pandemic and how to say like I had time to do this like because my main business tourism didn't was really dead like no tourists came to Japan nothing to do so I had lots of time to go to Shida Izumi Brewery and I could stay and work a lot there but just after like the pandemic stop and the tourism restart really fast and just like it was before the pandemic and I had less time to work for the brewery because I have to focus on my main activity and now and I'm going to Shidezen Brewery Friday evening every week during the brewing season and I'm leaving on Sunday evening so basically two days and a half a week I didn't want to lose like this connection with the sake universe you know like uh even if my main activity is giving enough income and uh yeah i i wanted to brew sake still i didn't want to stop so tell us about um about sake a little i mean because if we take a step back i think as you said earlier you didn't have any interest or particular connection to sake so how did it come did you have any particular epiphany moments why did you end up brewing sake?

16:36Yes, that's a really interesting question. I am born in Bourgogne and I have a love for wine also. I remember when I felt in love with wine. I was drinking a pomard, like a red wine bottle with like a gigodagno I don't know if it's in English but it is sheep like meat. And I still remember this time. But with sake I didn't have this epiphany, like you say. How it starts, like I moved to Shizuoka and I didn't have any interest about sake. I even didn't know about sake so much. And when I started searching information about Shizuoka, I found a blog on internet. It was one French guy living in Shizuoka from Bourgogne, just like me, since 40 years.

17:26His name is Robert Gilles. Like, you know him, Sebastian. You already met him. Yes, sure. I know him as well great person you know right so he became kind of my mentor like a training like about sake he introduced me sake he told me about sake and how it is and he told me it is a very interesting drink and I should have more interest in it and yeah it's how he it starts and I start drinking and I found out like it is really interesting even it takes some time to understand like the variation of taste and for beginning I was really beginner so and at that time I was drinking only local sake I thought there's too much sakagura and I should start only with shizuka sake at beginning because there's too many sake breweries I don't understand anything there's a few southern breweries I don't know like how to start and I just was just drinking local sake and shidaizumi and Mahatsukame, for example, for the most famous one in this area.

18:31And step by step, I got more and more interested in sake and I started to like it. And what I found really interesting sake, me, I like drinking every day. It is beer, wine, chuhai, shochu. And my greatest happiness is having something to pair with food, right? There is no bigger happiness for me than this. And I found out sake makes a good pairing when wine is failing. You can have wine with this food. You can have some sake to pair with it every time. So basically, if you start liking sake, you can be happy every day. It was what I thought. You have wine, you have nironshu. So you can have any drink every day and you can be happy every day.

19:22I thought it was really fantastic and that's how I become to love sake more and more like it was really very interesting I didn't know there was some some drink like nironshu I didn't know it was so deep and particularly for me like drinking while eating I don't drink so much alcohol when I don't eat so it is my way of drinking I guess I can say like this and how I start brewing sake like because you asked me uh it is a really interesting story during the pandemic of beginning of the corona covid pandemic I went with my wife and my kids to Yamame Daila which is Yamame Daila is in Fujeda it is a fishing pond so you pay some money and you can fish with your kids right so nothing related to the Nihon tree there is no connection at all and uh on the way back there is Shideizumi Brewery and we just wanted to buy some sake on the way back to home and I was driving and my wife she checked the home page of Shideizumi Brewery and she saw some annons and she said like we are looking for Kura Bito and I said like yeah like let's do it and my wife say ah yeah I should be fun to do this and I say I wait but But maybe, maybe, maybe we can try, no?

20:52Because there's nothing else to do. And she said, ah, yes, why not making phone calls? And I came back home and I called Shida Zemiburi. And I already knew about the director of Shida Zemiburi. And I called him and I said, I have really weird asking, but I don't have any experience. I don't know so much about Nihon Shoe, but I saw your announcement about Kura Bito. and will you try me as Kurabito? And he said, I don't know. I will ask my Toji and we have to talk about it. And he called me later and I got one job interview with Toji and the director of Mr. Mochizuki. Mr. Mochizuki, which is the director of Shida Izumi Buri and Mr.

21:41Nishihara, which is the Toji of Shida Izumi Buri. And we just talked and that it was a kind of job interview but really more relaxed and I don't need any suits or anything so I hate having suits so good for me and what was fun at the time is my Toji Nishihara-san he asked me like oh Jackie you are from France and you like wine right right and so you don't drink so much nironshu and I said like ah I live in Japan and I'm starting to drink lots of Nihonchu and I give up wine a little bit but that was not actually so much true I was still drinking wine but I thought I have to show interest for Nihonchu like I wanted to show I have interest which was right but it turns out my Nihichihara-san Toji he's a really really big fan of wine so I should have said like I'm drinking lots of wine actually and he love bourguen wine especially and so yeah but turns out like they accept to try me as a curabito for the no experience curabito so I start the same year on October the first two weeks I was going back home and for the third week I think of sake brewing I start staying at Shidei's Me Brewery and from morning to evening every day and that's how it starts and in Shida Izumi Brewery every week we drink wine which is pretty different from lots of other breweries and other Kulabito have lots of interesting wine and red wine and we are trying lots of different wines but also Nihon Shu of course but I think lots of people have very big interest in wine in Shida Izumi Brewery Do you think that Nishi Harasan wants to teach you and other Carabito something while he proposes you or he imposes you to drink wine or is it just because he just loves it he just loves it and he's making like this year for example we made like the sake for the competition like national competition of sake and I just after pressing the sake I drank it and I told him it was really similar to some white wine and he said if you tell me it is my greatest happiness because I want to make this kind of sake interesting Nishikara-san he's really a gourmet he has lots of knowledge about food and wine he can talk hours about wine and food and Saki, of course.

24:37Like Sebastian, you met him. You could see how much he can talk about Nihon-chu and very deeply. It is really a fantastic Toji, in my opinion. Yeah, and he's a great character. That's true. How old is he? He's from Osaka. Yeah, from Osaka. And he's around 50 years old. 50, so he's pretty young then still. That's cool. Yeah, he's pretty young. And he's been working Shidaezumi since 2009, I think, if I recall correctly. but not sure but more than 10 years definitely he's from Osaka so he's using Osaka Direct when we talk so it took time for me to get used to this but I've become to have a pretty good understanding of Osaka Direct now that's cool yeah please I was just going to say I've been to the brewery it was a long time ago I'm wondering if we almost missed each other just slightly because I visited, I think it would have been 2015.

25:38Is that before you entered the brewery? Yeah, it was way before I came here. I came like four or five years ago. I don't remember. Four or five years ago, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I remember. I always remember this brewery very well because it has a cool story about its facade. There's a massive stone in front of the brewery. And I think it's memorable for that reason. Also, it has a unique facade, I think. It's surrounded by the countryside, isn't it? It's in the middle of the countryside. It's surrounded by beautiful scenery. Yes, that's right. There is a wide alley of Sakura in front of the brewery, which is blooming soon.

26:24This month it will bloom. and the river, like from this river, we are taking the water. It is really in the countryside, yeah. And that river has been a problem in the past, hasn't it? Like it's created a lot of floods and that's where the stone comes in, isn't it? Yeah, you have a very good memory of this. Yeah, it is right. But I did... I did meet the Toji. I remember very well his personality and I can understand, I think, why you guys get on. And why perhaps, you know, because I think normally in sake breweries, it would be difficult for not only Japanese, but non-Japanese to sort of, you know, enter a brewery.

27:06And toji can be quite difficult people to deal with at first. You know, you have to understand their way of working and what their expectations. And so my next question to you is sort of what were the challenges when you first started brewing at Shidaizumi? Did you have any communication difficulties? how did you communicate with each other and what was what did the sort of the toji expect of you did you ever have a conversation where he said like so i want you to do this i want you to work in this way or was it just sort of a kind of um a natural organic sort of um yes yeah i understand what you mean like uh that time when i started brewing sake my communication skin in japanese was okay like i think i have a good command of japanese like uh so that part it was okay osaka direct for when we work it's okay because there is not so much influence like you know like it's just like uh work the vocabulary we use it's about work so it's i know this vocabulary it's okay and uh i had to learn of course um all the many honcho making words like uh hangiri which is uh which is like a, I don't know how to say, a really big bucket.

28:20Yeah, the half. The tub, right? The tub. And Soe, Naka, Tome, which is, you know, like the basic. The different editions of the Murami. Right, and all this kind of small world, like what is the Yabuta? I already know what is the Yabuta, the press. But all these small world I had to understand step by step. But I started sake brewing in October, so it was not so hard because step by step, we are setting the rice washing machine. And I had time to learn slowly before we really start brewing during the setup of the brewing, like setting up the machine. So it was OK to learn this word step by step.

29:06the most challenging things like you said first one it is really obvious from but you know it is a working time like the first year it changed from now we are working a little bit more late but from three o 'clock 30 morning we start working until five o 'clock afternoon every day so basically the working time is from four o 'clock in the morning but in japan four o 'clock which means you have to come 10 minutes before like at least 10 minutes before and you have to be wake up ready more before around three o 'clock right and we had to end at five o 'clock every day so yeah the most complicated part it was this one maybe from the beginning but the physical work also like there's some machine of course but lots of physical work we have to walk every day and carry heavy things and that I should say it's more about mental than muscle like when you do this one week two weeks in a row your body gets used to this anyway but waking up when you don't want to waking up it's hard you want to enjoy your bed and it's cold outside and actually it was pretty cold there also putting the hands in cold water and you know this is waiting for you right when you wake up and you don't want to wake up but you have to do it maybe this part was a little bit harder I guess and the most the second part the most obvious one is like not seeing my family like three young daughters I want to meet them of course and around like December there was still four months of growing left and I thought like sometimes I was thinking like still four months I will do this and I was like this still four months to do this hard work every day not seeing my family but it lasted only like one week two weeks after I got motivation back and after I stopped thinking about this and I just focused on sake brewing

31:21that was the most challenging part I think of course all learning from zero, from nothing I was working as Motoya so taking care of the mash and I had to learn from everything but like I said my toji is really good for teaching and the most fun moments of this sake brewing was evening at the dinner and we talk about sake and he's teaching everything, he doesn't have any secret about sake brewing, we ask, he answer and he doesn't hide anything so I could ask him anything I want to learn, he always have on so on. Good on so on. Really good on so on. Because many, many toji don't, like their style of a lot of toji, they don't tell you anything.

32:06In Japanese, they sort of say like, gei onusumu, to steal the craft from them, you know. Ah, yes. Maybe because he's still quite young. But that's really nice to hear that you've got a toji that is very willing to share their knowledge with you. Yeah, to be honest, my toji, like, he thought I would give up, actually. he told me after that. He thought I would give up. So that's why maybe he didn't give me any information, right? What's your favorite part of the brewing process? Well, you were in charge of the mash and the moto, right? Did you ever get to try your hand at the koji or any of the other stages?

32:44I used to go in the koji room like after the steaming of the sake, we bring the like you said, the rice in the Koji Muro, and on the morning, like, I was going sometimes. So I used to work in the Muro, but not for a long time. Like, it was only a maximum 30 or 40 minutes. Yeah, but I was managing the motto, not the Muro, but I used to go. Yeah, the Koji is, maybe this part is the next one I want to learn. It's about Koji, I think. It is a missing part in my training, I feel. which is a really important part of course but yeah you asked me about the most like funny part like funny part like great moments like you said when you work in sake brewing all through the day I cannot say if there is any great moments right when you finish the day you can feel proud of what you did and the hard work you did but when you work the day you just the task you know like uh you are like uh you are washing rice and uh you are doing the koji you are taking temperature and um when you work you don't think so much about the funny part of sake brewing at the end of the day you think what work you did and you can be proud of it and uh and the funny part interesting part for me it's coming after the brewing season like finally we did it we made this year and it's finished and uh uh i think the great moment is there when you finish one season because when you work so much hard every day from morning early to evening and uh evening you eat your dinner and after you just sleep you don't have so much time to get satisfied so much.

34:35It's really short. The dinner with our toji and talking about Nihonchu is of course the most interesting moment in one day, learning about sake and the end of season. Of course, when we are making the sake for Nihonchu for the competition which means it is the hardest time we have to take lots of care about hygiene and the sake bags also. It is new because when we brew sake all year we use the Yabuta but for the competition we use like you know this hanging bag to filter the sake and it's all new and if these sake bags are getting dirty at any time or in contact with air like it is really a big problem and that part I felt lots of stress for this because I didn't know how to manage this I didn't learn about this but But it was really exciting in some part.

35:31It is the summum of the one year of sake brewing, right? The summit, like this competition. I mean, coming back to what you said earlier, so you were receiving instruction from the toji. Now, as you were saying, he's happy to share. He doesn't have any secret. He was happy to explain. But when he was giving instruction, was he telling you why you needed to do it that way? or was it just do it and if you didn't ask, you wouldn't know why you had to do it this way rather than the other way? I would say like both of it. There is lots of things to consider. Like the first year I came, we had a lack of personnel, of cool habito.

36:16That's why we are working really hard because we didn't have so much staff to work, right? So we are basically focused on work and when it's really busy, the toji didn't have time to explain why i have to do this just do the work and do it correctly and after if he has some time like during the break time he can explain or talk why i asked yeah explain why i had to do this and how i had to do this and uh when he has time he can explain but when we work we work and we don't have time to talk about this uh and some other part is uh And he was not explaining everything because some part, like I was Motoya, like I said, he wants me to understand myself why I'm doing this.

37:03Right. It is a responsibility work. You have to understand why you do something yourself. He cannot explain everything. You know, like sometimes he just told me like, just do it and see. and I just tried to do it and I saw and I understood by myself. It took time for me to start to understand like he expect me to do things myself. And I think it was around December of the first year or like January. He said, oh, Jackie, you understand, you understood your work. He told me. So that time I thought like, ah, finally, I understood what I have to do.

37:52that's cool and you you i mean that that job is not only very hard but it can be as well um and one thing that i noted as i visited the brewery he's and it's not shinaizumi only of course but the stairs are really steep so not only you've got to carry you not only you've got to carry heavy loads but you have to be truly concentrated and focused because you you would fall and hurt yourself very easily i think you're going to confirm that and the other thing i wanted to to to mention is that incidents that you had in the in the uh in the fermentation room yes uh physically like uh like you said it was really hard like uh i think the the first year i in sake brewing i lost around 50 kilo 15 15 50 around 15 yes uh in six months of course because uh yeah all day we are moving and uh you talk about the stairs like uh actually like uh sake brewing asked you to like you say get focus on everything you have to be focused all day you're so climbing these stairs was never a problem actually for me and for anyone but somehow but uh yeah when uh some people are visiting the brewery they say like what is this stairs like you carry heavy bag on the stairs and you don't fall but uh we don't fall we just don't fall because we are focused and sometimes i thought it's dangerous i will fall maybe but it didn't happen actually yeah and we didn't get hard like because i think we focus yeah it's all day focus.

39:41Like when we clean something, it has to stay clean, right? Like it is the basics of sake brewing. It has to be clean everywhere. And when we drop something on the floor, we just clean it. It is the basic rule of sake brewing. Don't put dirty things anywhere. And this part, like when you are retired, maybe you will think like, I just dropped this tool and it's okay. it felt only one second and it's okay we will put there for later and we will not watch it maybe you will think about this but you don't do it because our togy is giving us really deeply this sense of responsibilities like i think he said like if you mistake if you mistake i don't forget you because you mistake and you don't clean i i cannot forgive you because from now i cannot trust you anymore.

40:33And so if you don't clean one tool and he sees that, he will never trust you anymore, which is obvious. Like, if when he's not watching you, you don't clean things, like, how can he trust you anymore, right? So that cleaning part, like, it is really important also, I think. But in any brewery, it is the same, I think. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize how much sake brewing is cleaning. Yes, yes, yes. It is more than creator. Mostly creator. How many tanks a year do you guys make? How many liters? How many tanks? How many shikomi? Tanks? How many tanks? Tanks? I don't know, but we make... A few years ago, we made like 133 ,000 liters of sake.

41:23I need koku. How many koku do you have? You work in koku. You need to do the other. How many koku? calculation is it is it is it 600 or 700 like i don't know like uh coco it's about 800 that was fast 800 okay so around this that's cool i say six seven eight or eight which is not so big but not so no no you have better knowledge than me yes yeah it's stable i think that's cool and we sell everything every year i think so that's cool the sake of sherry is pretty popular for like local people. How many kurabito are making all that stuff? With the toji included? So it is changing every year. So this year, like, we have four kurabito, the toji, and the part-time helping us.

42:15I see. So part-time will be three or four people, or like, when there is, when we press sake we ask more people to come for example so um just local people seriously yes wow pretty cool

42:34so the part-time people are local people but the kura bito there is me my french and from yeah and this year two kura bito are coming from osaka also wow so osaka team by the invitation of the toji yes my he researched like um people usually do and i yeah that's cool so when they're talking osakabetic it's even harder between the three i got used to this and like i said we are drinking wine not sake no that makes it but that makes it kind of evens the evens the playing field doesn't it yes yes it is a brain film. No, but I'm joking about wine. We drink more sake than wine, but I like to say we drink wine in the brewery.

43:23I think the wine has a good influence, like a deep influence of my toji brewing. He likes wine and he wants to make sake like wine. What is your go-to Shizuoka dish, local dish and sake, if you have? you mean like what I choose for local dish with sake what I like to have exactly like Shizuka and especially Yaesu is famous for fish especially tuna bonito it is like one of the main port when the bonito and tuna is coming in Japan right so you can get tuna for really cheap anytime in the aizu for example where i live so when i drink sake i like to choose tuna of course and to have sashimi for cheap but in shizuoka there is a very wide gastronomy and we have mountain we have sea we have good countryside in shizuoka it is almost not snowing in winter so for vegetables and for even sunset and like wild vegetables, there is anything in Shizoka.

44:41And it is famous for Oden and for meat also. We have a really, I like to say we have everything in Shizoka. Like every kind of food. Maybe, Sebastian, you went there also. Maybe you have some good memory of a local dish in Shizoka. I don't know. But yeah, it is a really rich area for food. And I think quite important, like wine doesn't traditionally pair very well with like sashimi, right? It's not a good match with sashimi. It brings out the fishiness and sake doesn't do that. I like to drink like a junmai ginjo made from home refugie, like in Shizuka. And with Shizuka fish, it's pairing really well.

45:26I always have a bottle of junmai ginjo in my home. Another specialty is himono, isn't it? like the dried fish, fish drying in the wind, which has a pretty strong taste, or I should say pretty strong smell, because you put it on a grill, on a barbecue, and suddenly you have this fishy smell coming out. And that's another one which is hard to pair with Burgundy, I think. Yes, of course we find lots of himono in Yezu. It is more, I think, a speciality of Atami, which is a little bit far from, not so far from Yezu, but of course in Yezu we have lots of himono. But it's still part of Shizuoka. I mean, it's part of the Shizuoka culture.