Tamagawa Brewery

Free tours and tastings at this historic brewery

Tamagawa Sake Brewery is a cool place to check out if you're in the Uonuma area of Niigata Prefecture, and they offer free tours with some English-speaking help on hand if you don't speak Japanese. I would recommend calling to make a reservation for a tour in advance if you can -- depending on the day they might be booked, but we have shown up a couple of times on a whim (it's a popular place for us to take international friends/fam!) and they've been able to accommodate us. Really fun experience and we learned a lot.