Japanese

August 10: Soy sauce museum
	When I was a kid, there was Higashimaru, a big soy sauce factory, here in Tatsuno. The red brick headquarters building is now turned into a museum of soy sauce and run by Tatsuno Soy Sauce Union displaying a lot of old tools.
After paying the entrance fee of just ten yen, we found an unusual bench made of big soy sauce brewery cask.
	The staircase has a wooden handrail with the design of the Imperial chrysanthemum crest. This is the commemoration of the permission to use the crest about 400 years ago, and named the company as "First chrysanthemum Soy Sauce."
The gilt came off from the signboard after a long use in the factory.
Here are raw materials for making soy sauce: from left, soybean, wheat, rice, salt, and malted rice. Soy sauce produced here in Tatsuno features to use rice for making "light" say sauce.
	Ground water once welled up from here. The quality of water of Ibo River features its lower content of iron. The soft water is a must to make light, tasty, and flavorful soy sauce. Thanks to this high quality water, Tatsuno area has become one of the most famous production centers of light soy sauce.
The raw materials are first processed here. Soybeans are boiled and soften for easy breeding of malt germ, wheat is browned, and rice is steamed to make sweet sake. Salt is dissolved using ground water.
	Asai-maru boat When there was no bridge across the river, the boat transported the materials to and from the factory on the opposite site of Ibo River.
The mixture of boiled say bean and wheat is turned into soy malt in this chamber. The malt is then added with salt water. After that, all we do is wait for the mixture to mature in the cask for more than a year. The resulted product is called unrefined soy sauce. Sweet sake is added to this and packed them into cloth bags. The final process is the squeezing with huge lever tools on the right picture.
A shop curtain of Higashimaru is hung on the counter of the restored soy sauce factory.
The production casks with beautiful label were very familiar to me in my childhood.
	Beautiful soy sauce cruets are displayed on the shelves.
Rosanjin Kitaooji, once a famous a cooking expert, wrote, "Light soy sauce is essential for cooking." On the right is another signboard of the factory.
In the lobby, we can view black-tiled roof and white plaster wall of the factory through the arched art deco window. The scene is one of my dear old memory that often wells up to my mind together with the flavor of soy sauce.