YAMATO, KUMAMOTO PREF. \u2013 Fans of the popular Japanese video game Touken Ranbu\u00a0have helped save a centuries-old sake brewery in Kumamoto Prefecture after a major earthquake in the\u00a0prefecture late last month prompted order\u00a0and reservation cancellations.<\/p>\n
Established in 1770, the sake brewery Tsujun Shuzo\u00a0in\u00a0Yamato, Kumamoto Prefecture,\u00a0was not directly damaged by the July 28 quake, which measured the maximum seismic intensity level of 7 on the Japanese scale in some areas.<\/p>\n
But orders from wholesalers stopped as travel plans were canceled and people refrained from drinking.<\/p>\n
Sales of its mainstay junmai ginjo\u00a0sake, Semi\u00a0(Cicada), fell to 120 bottles as of mid-August, although monthly sales of the product typically average 1,000 bottles. Reservations for about 500 people were also canceled at a cafe attached to the brewery.<\/p>\n
Yasuo Yamashita, the 63-year-old, 12th-generation owner of the brewery, said in an X post that Semi is \u201ccrying in the storehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post quickly went viral as the brewery is well known among avid Touken Ranbu fans for its Hotarumaru junmai ginjo sake, which shares its name with a character in the video game.<\/p>\n
According to Yamashita, fans who saw the post rushed to buy Hotarumaru, and the brewery received orders for 500 to 600 bottles. Hotarumaru temporarily sold out on the brewery\u2019s online sales site.<\/p>\n
All employees worked on the shipment, and each bottle was accompanied by a letter of gratitude that read, \u201cThanks to you, sake with nowhere to go was able to depart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the earthquake, I felt that there were quite a few people who wanted to support sake breweries working hard in local communities,\u201d Yamashita said, and he expressed\u00a0his determination to continue the business with the help of supporters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"YAMATO, KUMAMOTO PREF. \u2013 Fans of the popular Japanese video game Touken Ranbu\u00a0have helped save a centuries-old sake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45960,2064,1217,8,3903,20711,51358,9757],"class_list":["post-80290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-2016-kumamoto-earthquake","tag-alcohol","tag-earthquakes","tag-japan","tag-kumamoto","tag-sake","tag-touken-ranbu","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}