Last month, techno DJ Richie Hawtin — who came to fame in the 1990s under the alias Plastikman — threw a party at The Hangar, a cavernous sake den in Tokyo's hipster Nakameguro neighborhood.
A brown sugidama (cedar ball) hung from the ceiling in the bar's narrow basement floor, where a crowd of sake enthusiasts nibbled from caviar tins filled with carrot mousse topped with greenish-black tonburi (kochia) seeds and sipped glasses of Enter.Sake Aramasa, the latest brew in Hawtin's portfolio, produced by Akita Prefecture's Aramasa Shuzo Co., Ltd.
An avid fan of Japan's national liquor for the past two decades, Hawtin became a sake impresario of sorts around five years ago, when he opened a lounge featuring the brew at Enter, a series of electronic music events he hosted on the island of Ibiza, Spain.