Hirado and Why We Cruise

Actually there are many reasons we cruise.  But one of them is when we enter a port, we are more than just a tourist flying in.  We tend to mix into the community a bit differently than if we traveled here another way.  Partially because we have to interface with the hardware stores, grocery shops, petrol kiosks etc i.e. mix with the common folk.  I also think it helps to bring a pretty boat from a distant land.  And you never know how things will play out.  An example of this just happened to us. A couple of days ago just after tying up here in Hirado we invited the guy who caught our lines aboard for a beer.  A little while later another bypasser was looking intently at our boat so we invited him to join us.  He spoke fairly good English and was giving us some of the low down on the area.  He couldn't drink as he had to go to work in about an hour.  We asked what he did and he told us many jobs but one of them was at a convenience store.  Anyway just another aquaintance.  That was until today a few days later, we were a bit tired after hiking up several steps to the museum and 10,000 more steps to the castle (well maybe only a couple hundred but it seemed like 10k!) we stopped into a store to buy a couple of cold drinks.  And you guessed it, the guy behind the counter was our friend from the first day.  He asked us what we were up to and suggested we go next door.  It turns out it was a place they made Sake. Here we met the proprietor whom we think just had a call from our new friend and he tried to explain Sake and Shochu making to us in broken English.  But then he figured the best way to describe everything is break out the finished product for some free samples.  It was really quite fun, us jabbering in our extremely limited Japanese and him in his broken English ( which actually wasn't bad).  And after about 43 samples we settled on our favorite and bought two bottles.  We will remember this and look for it elsewhere as we travel around Japan.  And if we do see it again we will remember the guy in the small Sake making place in Hirado!

The Sake we bought