♬Kari Kari Kari Kari Kari Gori Gori Gori... (make a rhythmical chewing sound 5 times, elongating the sound and fading out at the end)

Picture the sound of a nice, crisp bite of Yamaga-zuke pickles. Cucumber, muskmelon, Kinchaku eggplant, eagle fern, and spaghetti squash.

These unfamiliar vegetable names are all locally grown and pickled here at the Imanari Pickle Shop. Your culinary experience starts with the crisp texture of the vegetables. Next comes the flavor- the sweetness of Mt. Hakkai sake kasu or sake lees combines with the mildness of the vegetables and the saltiness of the pickles to create a finely balanced and unique flavor. The sensation is truly difficult to put into words, so why not just share the experience by eating together?

“Oh, we don’t really do anything special here...”

Mr. Imanari’s words aren’t just modest. That lack of “anything special” is precisely what makes this place so special indeed. For example, while normal pickled vegetables would include additives to extend shelf-life, as Mr. Imanari says, “We only use sake kasu, salt and sugar. The sake kasu will disinfect the vegetables. We don’t need anything else, so why bother?”

There is no special factory and no special machinery. There is only a storehouse behind Mr. Imanari’s home. He pickles each batch one by one, using traditional wooden caskets and handiwork. Such painstaking handicraft brings out the taste of 100 years’ worth of fermented yeast.

You can’t buy pickles with such an organic taste online, nor can you mass produce it. Even the customers wouldn’t want to if it means keeping the taste of Yamaga-zuke secret from everyone. Since you made it all the way out to the Yukiguni or Snow Country, it will be our honor and pleasure to share this secret with you and you alone. It is a flavor you’ll surely never forget.

Address：1848 Muika, Munami Ounuma
Phone Number：025-772-2015
Price Range：¥1,600〜
URL：http://ag304.jp/kakou/yamayazuke/

──What is most important to the human diet?
An interview with Mr. Imanari of Imanari Pickle Shop↓

--Mr. Imanari, what is “A-Class Gourmet” to you?

Really, I think it is a perfect name because we also want to preserve these flavors for all eternity. We feel like things that are rooted in the history of this land, not just our pickles, are slowly starting to disappear.

What kind of pickles are Yamaga pickles?

Since we pickle our vegetables in sake lees, it is actually pretty close to Nara pickles. Sake lees and vegetables are readily available in Snow Country, so we figured we would be able to make a similar kind of pickles if we tried. At first, we were simply trying to imitate the Nara pickles style. So, it wouldn’t be wrong if you called them Nara pickles, but to us, the Yamaga pickles have a unique flavor which is completely different from Nara pickles.

-What is the biggest difference between Nara pickles and the Yamaga pickles?

Nara pickles are sometimes fermented for years at a time right? Since our vegetables have their own unique consistency, and we put emphasis on moisture and we don’t pickle our vegetables for very long. Also, in the Snow Country we tend to use the fresh spring vegetables and don’t eat them until winter, so they are fermented for almost a whole year before we eat them.

-I see. So you use them as a way to get through the winter right?

Yes, we have to wait until next year to get fresh vegetables after all. If we were to wait that long, the vegetables would all start to go bad right? But if we pickle them, they last for a whole year. Also, the fermentation process brings out a different kind of delicacy and adds to the nutritional value.

All of the pickles are made with vegetables that were grown here right?

-That’s right. For example, the etsuka pickling melon is grown in the town of Muika at a farm has been in the same family for generations. We have been using the sake lees from the Hakkaisan Sake Brewery for as long as I can remember. They even separate the sake lees which are used specifically for the Junmai Ginjo sake for us.

-Yamaga pickles has been around for quite some time, but was there ever a time where you felt the business was in danger?

There has never been a problem with the pickling business. Maybe it’s because we have no shortage of food in this area. Everything we need to make is right here, and we don’t have to import food from far away. There was a time last year when the person we were getting our Nozawana plant from couldn’t find a successor. They ended up recommending someone from the local area to us who we ended up getting the crop from. That’s the kind of place Snow Country is. We can also probably attribute this to the fact that we never tried to make this business into a large-scale venture.

-I mean, you don’t even have a sign or anything like that! (laughs)

But that may just be the reason we’ve been able to continue. Since long ago, we have always sent out pickles to Niigata or Tokyo, so we had no need for a sign. We didn’t even have a shop in the beginning!

-You didn’t even have a shop?!

Back then, we mostly sold our pickles at the pharmacy store. The pharmacy is still there, it’s just a little bigger now. My grandfather is the one who was behind everything and he was also a pharmacist. He mostly did pickling on the side. So while there are many people who know Imanari Pharmacy, there are some people who don’t know about Imanari Pickles. We don’t have a website and don’t do online sales, so most of our customers come to us through word of mouth. So when people ask us, how late are you open, we say, if you plan on coming at 7 PM, we will be open until 7pm. That’s how we run the business.

-Your story is so heartwarming.

Since we work out of our home, we are able to do things like that. In the past, that’s how all shops used to be. Many of the shops that were open for their customers whenever, are the kind of shops which still exist to this day.

-That philosophy seems to have been passed down as well.

The Imanari family is a family has a pretty stormy past, so you could say it’s part of my nature. (laughs) After the war, once everything had calmed down, a councillor from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked us if we would be able to provide shelter for someone. That person was Ba Maw, the former head of state in Burma, who had been sent to Japan in exile. At the time, Japan was under the control of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (GHQ), so it was quite a complicated situation for the Japanese government. But eventually they decided to have him hide in our place. Well, our place stood out too much, so he ended up staying in a nearby temple...we all felt as if we were going to die. To ensure that no one could get any information if caught, my grandma even went so far as to keep potassium cyanide in the collar of her Kimono. Since we ran a pharmacy, it probably wasn’t hard to get access to. My mother had just married into the family, so she must have been thinking what terrible timing she had.

-Why did they choose the Imanari family?

I ask myself that same question. It might have been because they knew we wouldn’t struggle to provide food. We actually managed a food factory at the time as well, and our place was stacked with curry powder and canned goods. The food from Burma is known for its spiciness and they must have thought “in an era where food is this scarce, the Imanari family will surely have food to spare.” Ba Maw was staying in a temple at the time, but they only served Seishin Cuisine, which is vegetarian. So it’s said he would come to our house to eat curry. In the end, Ba Maw ended up giving himself up after only half a year. All of us ended up going to Sugamo as well.

-Wait, Sugamo Prison?

As a punishment for betraying the GHQ, my family was sent there for half a year. It’s said they were able to meet some big figures like Yoshio Kodama and Nobusuke Kishi. At least that’s what I heard from my uncle. He was quite the character.

-I would really love to hear more about that, but let’s return to the topic of the “Yamaga Pickles.” There are 5 different kinds of pickles used for Yamaga pickles, I like the Hechima sponge gourd pickles the best. The texture is so interesting. When you bite into it, it feels like pieces of string coming apart.

It’s sometimes referred to as Hechima, but it’s official name is Kinshiuri or Spaghetti Squash. It is part of the Yamaga pickle line up, but for those who just want to eat the Kinshiuri pickles by themselves, we have sell those on their own. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes, but the Etsuka pickling melon is also pretty famous. Its name derives from its origin in Echigo city. It’s pretty close to the cucumber melons used in Nara Pickles, except fresh pickling melon has a beautiful jade hue to it.

-There are also Eggplant Nasubi pickles as well right?

Ah, you mean the Kinchaku Eggplant, right? It’s a strangely shaped eggplant and the skin it pretty tough so it also has a stronger flavor. The texture is pretty slimy and it is a different kind of deliciousness than that of a regular eggplant. Then, there is the cucumber. We use thorny kind of cucumber called Suiyou. But lately, we haven’t had enough of it. About ⅓ of the pickles are made using clovers and we have been using regular cucumbers instead of Suiyou.

--The skinny long ones are Warabi or Eagle fern. You can eat vegetables which are only grown in the spring all year long.
There aren’t any other places which pickle warabi using sake lees. Since it’s so rare, people are usually excited about it. I think we have pickled every kind of vegetable which grows in this area.


-What kind of qualities does someone need to have to be good at pickling?

My Grandmother was good at pickling, but I guess they would need to be dedicated. She would often go to check in on the buckets in the storage area to see how they were doing. What exactly was she looking at? She was looking at how the fermentation process was going. She would taste the fermenting pickles to figure out if they were too salty or if they needed more sake lees. We usually pickle our vegetables three times over, but it’s not like we decided that was how many times we would do it. There is no manual, so we all decide on how to do it based on previous experiences. There is no secret recipe to make each batch exactly the same. There is a certain degree of “deliciousness” and as long as it is within that degree it is okay.

-That has to be difficult to pass down through generations.

It’s not like there is some great secret or anything. It just takes time and labour. It’s strange because even though I’ve been making pickles for so long, I sometimes question whether we are making a profit at all. But there are people who think it is delicious. That’s why we do it. The sole reason. Some people call us just to tell us that our pickles are the most delicious pickles they ever had. Those kinds of reactions are what keep us going.

-What is the best part about Pickling?

The pickles taste completely different than the original vegetables. Of course, the umami brought about by the Amino acids and inosinic acid is one part of this, but it’s not like we cook it or anything like that, it just ferments naturally. The yeast works hard to ferment the vegetables within the barrels. If we were the ferment the vegetables in brand new stainless barrels, it wouldn’t have the same flavor. That’s why we decided to keep using the wooden barrels.

--In other words, it’s rare for pickling shops to use wooden barrels.

I don’t know about other places, but I’ve been told there is no other place that use wooden barrels in their homes. There are some places that have them as decoration, but mainly they do their actual fermentation in a machine in a factory. We’ve been told that the strong point about Snow Country is that “there are no lies, they don’t do things for show. They work on the premise of truth.” Those are the kinds of things which make us want to keep going.

--It’s true, the Imanari warehouse does have a great atmosphere.

At first, we were too embarrassed to make the warehouse open to the public. It is an old warehouse, and it is damaged in many places. Even if we asked for a new license under the law, we might get denied. I think we’ve been allowed to keep working like this because we’ve been in existence for over 100 years. Despite all that, there has never been an accident in our factory. We have never had an incident with food poisoning or cross contamination. Most people think it is most important to maintain the barrels and wear coveralls when you’re working with food. Though, that thought process might be weakening a bit more recently. That’s why we were embarrassed to show people our warehouses. Warehouses like ours used to be the standard. We wanted to show people that these kinds of warehouses are safe as well.

--Lastly, why do people continue to live in such snow ridden areas? We wanted to hear what you had to say about this.

It can be harsh living in the Snow Country. But it’s also a very rich lifestyle. One of the most important things for humans is eating. Two of the necessities of life are clothing and shelter, these can be achieved with technologies, but food comes from the land, and in order to produce food, you need water, a certain climate, and other natural requirements. I think all of these can be found in the Snow Country. So contrary to popular belief, it might be easy to live here.

-After reading Hokuetsu Seppu and learning the damage that can be inflicted by living in snow prone areas, I still feel there is still something magnificent about it all.

If there wasn’t something to be gained, we wouldn’t choose to live in this kind of place. Niigata had the highest population in Japan up until the Meiji era. That is how important it was for people to have access to food back then. It’s also said that children born in Niigata are also the tallest in Japan. Nutrition is very important to childhood development, so their height could also be thanks to their balanced diet.

-That means this land has enough food and sustenance to support its people right?

When it snows, it looks as if the world is covered with a blanket of snow. Just by looking at that scene, I start to cry, and I feel as if my heart is cleansed. When you live in a big city, everything just looks the same, and even a little bit of snow will affect the train lines. The sight of Snow Country in the morning after snowfall is a sight to be seen. That alone makes it worth it.

-Even in you live here for a long time, you can still be moved by something like that.

Within Hokuetsu Seppu, there are illustrations of the crystallization of snowflakes. If you pay attention to these small details, you will come to understand how beautiful snowflakes are. As soon as the children see snow, they will run towards it and start to play.