Sake in the context of "Aspergillus oryzae"

Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from tree sap and wax and has been in use since antiquity.

Asian lacquerware, which may be called "true lacquer", are objects coated with the treated, dyed and dried sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum or related trees, applied in several coats to a base that is usually wood. This dries to a very hard and smooth surface layer which is durable, waterproof, and attractive in feel and look. Asian lacquer is sometimes painted with pictures, inlaid with shell and other materials, or carved, as well as dusted with gold and given other further decorative treatments.

Tochigi Prefecture (栃木県, Tochigi-ken) is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Tochigi Prefecture has a population of 1,897,649 (1 June 2023) and has a geographic area of 6,408 km (2,474 sq mi). Tochigi Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the west, Saitama Prefecture to the south, and Ibaraki Prefecture to the southeast.

Utsunomiya is the capital and largest city of Tochigi Prefecture, with other major cities including Oyama, Tochigi, and Ashikaga. Tochigi Prefecture is one of only eight landlocked prefectures and its mountainous northern region is a popular tourist region in Japan. The Nasu area is known for its onsens, local sake, and ski resorts, the villa of the Imperial Family, and the Nasushiobara station of the Shinkansen railway line. The city of Nikkō, with its ancient Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Fushimi (伏見区, Fushimi-ku) is one of the eleven wards in the city of Kyoto, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. Famous places in Fushimi include the Fushimi Inari Shrine, with thousands of torii lining the paths up and down a mountain; Fushimi Castle, originally built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with its rebuilt towers and gold-lined tea-room; and the Teradaya, an inn at which Sakamoto Ryōma was attacked and injured about a year before his assassination. Also of note is the Gokōgu shrine, which houses a stone used in the construction of Fushimi Castle. The water in the shrine is particularly famous and it is recorded as one of Japan's 100 best clear water spots.

Although written with different characters now, the name Fushimi (which used to be its own "town") originally comes from fusu + mizu, meaning "hidden water" or "underground water". In other words, the location was known for good spring water. The water of Fushimi has particularly soft characteristics, making it an essential component to the particular type of sake brewed in Fushimi. This also explains why the area developed as a sake-brewing center in Kyoto. Today, Fushimi is the second greatest area of Japan in terms of sake production, and is where the sake company Gekkeikan was founded.

Inari Ōkami (Japanese: 稲荷大神), also called Ō-Inari (大稲荷), is the Japanese kami of foxes, fertility, rice, tea, sake, agriculture and industry, and general prosperity and worldly success, and is one of the principal kami of Shinto. The name Inari can be literally translated into "rice-bearer". In earlier Japan, Inari was also the patron of swordsmiths and merchants. Alternatingly-represented as male and female, Inari is sometimes seen as a collective of three or five individual kami. Inari appears to have been worshipped since the founding of a shrine at Inari Mountain in 711 CE, although some scholars believe that worship started in the late 5th century.

By the 16th century, Inari had become the patron of blacksmiths and the protector of warriors, and worship of Inari spread across Japan in the Edo period. Inari is a popular figure in both Shinto and Buddhist beliefs in Japan. More than one-third (40,000) of the Shinto shrines in Japan are dedicated to Inari. Modern corporations, such as cosmetic company Shiseido, continue to revere Inari as a patron kami, with shrines atop their corporate headquarters.

A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, usually alcoholic beverages; a small barrel or cask is known as a keg.

Barrels have a variety of uses, including storage of liquids such as water, oil, and alcohol. They are also employed to hold maturing beverages such as wine, cognac, armagnac, sherry, port, whiskey, beer, arrack, and sake. Other commodities once stored in wooden casks include gunpowder, meat, fish, paint, honey, nails, and tallow.

Rice wine is an alcoholic beverage fermented from rice, traditionally consumed in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia, where rice is a quintessential staple crop. Rice wine is made by the fermentation of rice starch, during which microbes enzymatically convert polysaccharides to sugar and then to ethanol. The Chinese mijiu (most famous being huangjiu), Japanese sake, and Korean cheongju, dansul and takju are some of the most notable types of rice wine.

Rice wine typically has an alcohol content of 10–25% ABV, and is typically served warm. One panel of taste testers arrived at 60 °C (140 °F) as an optimum serving temperature. Rice wines are drunk as a dining beverage in East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian cuisine during formal dinners and banquets, and are also used as cooking wines to add flavors or to neutralize unwanted tastes in certain food items (e.g. seafood such as fish and shellfish).

Subtitles are texts representing the contents of the audio in a film, television show, opera or other audiovisual media. Subtitles might provide a transcription or translation of spoken dialogue. Although naming conventions can vary, captions are subtitles that include written descriptions of other elements of the audio, like music or sound effects. Captions are thus especially helpful to deaf or hard-of-hearing people. Subtitles may also add information that is not present in the audio. Localizing subtitles provide cultural context to viewers. For example, a subtitle could be used to explain to an audience unfamiliar with sake that it is a type of Japanese wine. Lastly, subtitles are sometimes used for humor, as in Annie Hall, where subtitles show the characters' inner thoughts, which contradict what they were saying in the audio.

Creating, delivering, and displaying subtitles is a complicated and multi-step endeavor. First, the text of the subtitles needs to be written. When there is plenty of time to prepare, this process can be done by hand. However, for media produced in real-time, like live television, it may be done by stenographers or using automated speech recognition. Subtitles written by fans, rather than more official sources, are referred to as fansubs. Regardless of who does the writing, they must include information on when each line of text should be displayed.

Jōetsu (上越市, Jōetsu-shi) is a city located in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 December 2020, the city had an estimated population of 189,430, in 76,461 households with a population density of 190 persons per km. The total area of the city was 973.81 square kilometres (375.99 sq mi). Jōetsu borders the Sea of Japan and is renowned for its abundance of snow, the annual cherry-blossom festival, sake and Koshihikari rice.

Kutani ware (九谷焼, Kutani-yaki) is a style of Japanese porcelain traditionally supposed to be from Kutani, now a part of Kaga, Ishikawa, in the former Kaga Province. It is divided into two phases: Ko-Kutani (old Kutani), from the 17th and early 18th centuries, and Saikō-Kutani from the revived production in the 19th century. The more prestigious Ko-Kutani wares are recognised by scholars to be a complex and much mis-represented group, very often not from Kutani at all.

Kutani ware, especially in the Ko-Kutani period, is marked by vivid dark colors that epitomize lavish aesthetics. It is theorized that the long, harsh and grey winters of the Hokuriku region led to a desire among people living there for ceramic ware to show strong and bold colours. The classical five colours style, known as gosai-de (五彩手), includes green, blue, yellow, purple, and red. The designs are bold and normally depict landscapes, the beauty of nature, and people, and cover most of the surface of each piece.