Nada-ku, Kobe
Encyclopedia
Wards of Japan
A is a subdivision of one of the cities of Japan that is large enough to have been designated by government ordinance. Wards are used to subdivide each city designated by government ordinance...
s of Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. It has an area of 31.4 km², and a population of 129,095 (2008).
A leading national university in Japan, Kobe University
Kobe University
Shindai is one of the leading universities in Japan. It can be seen in the several rankings such as shown below.-General Rankings:The university is ranked 10th in 2010 in the ranking "Truly Strong Universities" by Toyo Keizai...
, is located in this ward, as is the city's Oji Zoo.
The Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando
is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field...
-designed Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
is a purpose built municipal art gallery in Nada-ku, Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It was opened in 2002.The major collections of the museum are foreign and Japanese sculptures, foreign and Japanese prints, Western-style and Japanese-style paintings associated with Hyogo Prefecture, Japanese...
is a short walk south of the Nada JR station
Nada Station
is a railway station on the JR Kōbe Line in Nada-ku, Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, between Sannomiya Station and Rokkōmichi Station...
.
Nada High School
Nada High School
Nada High School , is the highest-ranked, private, college-preparatory, boys school located in Kobe, Japan. Nada High School is well known for its severe entrance examinationand superior education especially in sciences...
is in Nada-ku.
Sake production
Nada is a major sake producing region, and along with FushimiFushimi-ku, Kyoto
is one of the eleven wards in the city of Kyoto, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. Famous places in Fushimi include the Fushimi Inari Shrine, with thousands of torii lining the paths up and down a mountain; Fushimi Castle, originally built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with its rebuilt towers and gold-lined...
produces 45% of all the sake in Japan.
A plenitude of water good for making sake and a location near Osaka (the hub of physical distribution) made it one of the most principal areas of making sake. It was one of the sake production areas called Nada-Gogō
Nada-Gogo
are five groups of Sake breweries in the cities of Kobe and Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It is the largest sake producing region in Japan, with breweries in the area accounting for just over one quarter of the sake production in the entire country....
.
The fine taste of the Nada sake comes from 'Miyamizu' mineral-rich water, which was discovered during the Tenpō
Tenpo
was a , also known as Tempō, after Bunsei and before Kōka. The period spanned the years from December 1830 through December 1844...
era (1830–1844) by Tazaemon Yamamura
Yodokō Guest House
The Yodokō Guest House was built as the summer villa for the well-to-do brewer of Sakura-Masamune sake, Tazaemon Yamamura, and is the only surviving Frank Lloyd Wright residence in Japan...
from the Uozaki-go
Nada-Gogo
are five groups of Sake breweries in the cities of Kobe and Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It is the largest sake producing region in Japan, with breweries in the area accounting for just over one quarter of the sake production in the entire country....
district. Miyamizu is hard water high in calcium
Calcium
Calcium is the chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20. It has an atomic mass of 40.078 amu. Calcium is a soft gray alkaline earth metal, and is the fifth-most-abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust...
and potassium
Potassium
Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K and atomic number 19. Elemental potassium is a soft silvery-white alkali metal that oxidizes rapidly in air and is very reactive with water, generating sufficient heat to ignite the hydrogen emitted in the reaction.Potassium and sodium are...
but low in iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
, making it ideal for making rich, full-flavored sake.
Yamada Nishiki
Yamada Nishiki
Yamada Nishiki is a short grain Japanese rice, famous for its use in high quality sake. It is particularly desired by sake brewers for its ability to absorb water and dissolve easily....
rice is grown in the Banshu eastern Kansai plains. It has larger, softer grains than regular table rice and is starchy, which makes it particularly suitable for sake making. Grains of Yamadanishiki rice have hard starch cores. This means that when they are soaked in Miyamizu water, they dissolve slowly but do not lose their shape. It is said that this characteristic is the reason why Yamadanishiki produces such uniquely flavored sake.
The most essential factors for making pure sake are good grain polishing ability and low temperatures. In the five sake-producing districts in Nada, water from the river that flows from Mount Rokkō
Mount Rokko
is a name of a group of mountains in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. This mountain is one of Hyōgo 50 mountains, Kinki 100 mountains, and also one of the 300 famous mountains in Japan.- Outline :...
into the sea is used to power rice-polishing water mills, thus producing highly polished grains of rice, which is not possible with manpower alone. Furthermore, the combination of the cold winds, known as 'Rokko oroshi', and the influence of the inland sea makes for ideal weather conditions for brewing sake in winter.
Yamaguchi-gumi
The Yamaguchi-gumiYamaguchi-gumi
is Japan's largest and most infamous yakuza organization. It is named after its founder Harukichi Yamaguchi. Its origins can be traced back to a loose labor union for dockworkers in Kobe pre-WWII....
, the largest Yakuza
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...
group in Japan, and one of the largest criminal organizations in the world, has its headquarters in Nada-ku.