YAMATO Soy Sauce and Miso Higashiyama Store

This guide to the YAMATO Soy Sauce and Miso Higashiyama Store in Kanazawa starts with a pale gold dust in a wooden tray on the counter: koji, a living mold that in 2006 the Brewing Society of Japan named kokkin, the national fungus, ranked alongside a country's flower or its bird. You'll hear why that honor runs deeper than sentiment, from Shinto priests who once treated what koji makes as sacred to brewers who still travel to shrines like Omiwa Taisha to pray for a good season. The guide also traces Yamato's own history making soy sauce and miso since 1911, in a shop opened for the company's hundredth year near the Higashi Chaya geisha district.