When Philip Harper came to Japan as an English teacher from Britain in 1988, he had no inkling he would be working as the first and only foreign "toji" (head brewer) of a Japanese sake maker in Kyoto 20 years later.
Arriving in Japan around the same year as Harper was John Gauntner, 48, an American electrical engineer who is now a director at the Sake Export Association, a Tokyo-based trade group formed by brewers and retailers of the rice-based alcoholic beverage.
Their reasons for coming to Japan were entirely different, yet what they share in common is the way they fell in love with sake and became experts versed in everything from production techniques to sake's cultural milieu.