This excerpt has been adapted from Water, Wood & Wild Things by Hannah Kirshner, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (C) 2021 by Hannah Kirshner.
One of the great pleasures of life in Yamanaka—a mountain town in Ishikawa, Japan—is eating saké kasu soft serve after a soak in the public hot spring. The local sake brewery, makers of Shishi no sato, sell the cones year round at their shop, just a block away from the baths. The ice cream’s refreshing and not-too-sweet flavor has all the floral yeasty aromas of saké without the alcoholic burn.