Good news for anyone with an interest in Japan's traditional tipple: The Ginjo Bar is up and running again for the summer. This annual event is organized by the Nippon Ginjo Kyokai, a loose affiliation of kura (sake breweries) around the country that specialize in premium sake, most of it prepared in small batches with a high degree of hands-on artisan care.
Over the past 11 years, it has been held on and off at various venues around town, including, most recently, a stark basement room in the bowels of Tokyo Station. This time, though, it's in a much more pleasant setting — the excellent specialist sake bar Kuri in Shinbashi, which (coincidentally and most conveniently) is in the building right next door to the ever-welcoming izakaya Nozaki Sakaten.
Every weekend between June and the end of August, Kuri — an offshoot of the sophisticated little bar of the same name in Ginza (and of a reputed sake retailer, Kurihara in Moto-Azabu) — will be stacking up its chairs and turning into the classiest tachi-nomi standing bar in town. Manager Teppei Takeuchi will still be behind the counter, but instead of drawing from his own cellar of fine nihonshu the sake will be supplied by the brewers themselves.