Shopping Guide
The Moe Syu Summit 2015 was held at Belle Salle in Akihabara on Sept. 27. I’ve been stuck in bed with a cold so please forgive the lateness of my report!
We went and checked out Moe Syu Summit 2015 - the world’s biggest moe and sake festival. First of all I bought a cup at the reception desk for 200 yen. It was a Sunday lunchtime but as there were quite a lot of people sampling the drinks I was able to be relaxed about just blending in with them.
As Japanese sake tends to go to my head, I was careful to select from the “Shunmaishu” (non-alcoholic and sugar-free sake) trying such strange concoctions as the foaming apple sake and umeshu. Unfortunately, as I’m not accustomed to having an alcoholic drink with my evening meal at home, I ended up feeling that I’d have to try and restrain myself from buying some of the sake that I tasted. Having sampled so much sake each them delicious, trying to suppress the urge to impulse buy proved difficult.
However, what I just couldn’t resist was the Minami Kurihashi label umeshu. Other than Japanese sake, even from amongst the Zombie Wine and apple sake it got me thinking maybe I could start drinking a little of this at home. As it seems like umeshu steeped in Japanese sake, it tastes a little different to regular umeshu.
In addition to all of that, there were a fair number of character collaborations too including the official character of nipper manufacturer Godhand, Nipako, and Izumi Products’ Matsumoto Izumi. These collaboration sake have been perfectly created to suit the characters’ individual natures.
At the Moe Syu booth for the massively popular browser game Touken Ranbu - Online, the Sakura Sake corner, an area had been partitioned for waiting to order, but at the time that I asked you could already shop without standing in line. The best part is each booth was devoted to an idea of moe appeal with a display of moe pictures and banners.
Putting together my overall impressions - is it OK to sample sake like this for 200 yen? I thought about the numbers of sampling booths. It was much better than I expected. There were about 20 stands (including those which weren’t selling sake). As each stand had prepared several different sake to sample, if you tried to taste all of them you might end up feeling a little tipsy…
It’s not just normal sake with a moe label, they’ve really gone all out and created each sake along a character theme to match their image. If they still have them next year I’d really like to come back and sample the ones I missed out on this time.
Moe Syu is an event I’d really recommend to anyone over the drinking age who loves sake and moe. Be sure to check it out next time!!
Source: Otakuma Keizai Shinbun
Source article written by Edgar
