Despite my lack of knowledge and general experience with alcohol, I agreed to go to the Inaba Brewery in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki, as a part a tour with about ten of my students.

To me, the outside of the building didn’t look like much, but once we went inside, the place had a very classy feel to it. There were refrigerated bottles of sake and “raw” sake on the left, room-temperature, bottled sake on the right, content information on a board on the left wall, and this very small door at the front of the room.

Why was this door so small? Was there an illegal operation going on behind the small door that was used to slow down the authorities? Were there Inaba Oompa Loompas waiting on the other side? I was really excited to find out.