Our main objective for our trip to Japan (besides noodles and ekiben) was to visit the many factories where they make the bar and glassware we select for Umami Mart. We wanted to go straight to the source, and meet the people behind the products. This ended up being far more fruitful than we could have imagined, as we are now armed with information and knowledge of where the products you see at Umami Mart come from.
So we took a shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Tsubame-Sanjo in Niigata prefecture for two nights. A city well known throughout Japan as the headquarters for many manufacturers of stainless steel wares (most notably SPOONS), Tsubame-Sanjo was industrial yet charming. We even got a chance to go to onsen (hot springs), which they are also famous for (and hegi soba!).
But the highlight of our two night stay in Niigata was our visit to Yukiwa factory, where they make most of our stainless steel barware. You’ve seen it: the Cobbler shakers, jiggers, Hawthorne strainers, barspoons and beyond. Yukiwa was originally a tobacco pipe company (remember those?) that started making stainless steel banquet service wares sometime in the 1960s or 70s. Talk about evolving with the times!