Cycle the Marina and SAKE tasting!

We cycle a lovely route along the East Bay waterfront. Mum gets to fully use her folding bike, shifts and all. Here she is at the Golden Gate Fields Racetrack with SFran city and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.


We cross the pedestrian bridge to Albany- Berkeley.


And see some interesting things along the way, like this white egret...


... John Lennon


Yoko Ono? naw, this drawing is much prettier.

And we see flying lizards! A big banner flown off a plane.

So Kai and Gramma take a break at the lake in Berkeley to play at the play structure there while Greg and I cycle off to a nearby Takara Sake SHO CHIKU BAI headquarters for some sake tasting.

Check out the feng shui in this place! Sho Chiku Bai stands for Health, Strength and Beauty (look for the bonzai, bamboo, and flower stamped on the bottle).

Sake-making vats. We learned that the reason why the headquarters were established here is because of the rice grown here and the temperature/ climate due to the California fog to make their precious sake.

This ball of what was once "fresh" cedar leaves, are hung at the door of the sake-maker to indicate the making of a new "non-aged" sake. As the leaves turn from green to brown, the sake is aging, and finally to deep brown does this indicate a matured sake and ready for sale.

We tour the museum first and then watch a video next.

Huge sake-vats.

The inside of one of the vats. And coins there likely for hopeful wishes.

Later we taste test 12 different sakes! Rice samples are presented before us.

The silver award winners were in bottled in champagne-sized bottles. Greg and I didn't particularly care for it. However we really enjoyed the "unfiltered" sake. Some even tasted like plums, raisins, nutter butter (as a tourist described it), and lichee fruit.

And when the sake tasting wasn't enough- Greg marched back into the museum to try and squeeze out a few drops from the vats...

Arleen, in zen.

Greg and Arleen, tipsy. And Greg purchases a few bottles and takes it home.

As we cycled back, we saw our friend Joel kitesurfing, do a jump...

...and then get tangled up.

Greg runs out to assist with the landing. So how does one "bow-tie" a kite? Only metro Joel would know. hee hee.