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#sakai

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Continued thread

Finally getting to use this gyuto from #Sakai - now that I'm back home in Pittsburgh. (Wasn't a proper cutting board in our apartment in Kobe)

It has my name on it and now the teensiest tip of my thumb too. Cuts like a dream. Perhaps the last knife I'll buy for myself (specialty uses aside)

(Hitachi) Blue Steel # 2 ; Ho wood handle

Long 🧵 1/18 [edited to number]
Our #Chusen #FactoryTour in #Sakai * was a lot of fun though a while ago - so we were super excited we got a call back for a factory tour of the Suma Seaweed (#Nori ) Factory.

Prologue1: They had a booth/tent at the EatLocalKobe event at #SumaBeach in Oct that we went to in Oct. They said the factory was at the end of the beach and to contact in Dec for tours.

#DasInKobe #Japan #Travel

*mastodon.online/@SRDas/1113062

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7/8
The cloth is then air-dried and folded then rolled up and cut. Here're some of the bags of dyeing reagents. The NaOH (sodium hydroxide gets mixed with the dye). I asked and the water gets treated in a machine before going into the sewer (I didn't ask deeper details on the treatment, but the city inspects every 2 months)

#Chusen #Travel #japan #Chemistry (dyeing)
#DasInKobe (this was in #Sakai )

Continued thread

6/8
(I found out later the cloth is pretreated with baking (not washing) soda) the dye fixes immediately and the cloth is washed right after to remove the paste and washed - by hand and then a roller mechanism that swishes and rolls do the whole length of the cloth gets washed. Some amazing fixer - look at that white! Centrifuge dryer before wringing and then final drying.

Continued thread

4/n
A few more pics from the stellar essentially private tour we got (there was another bigger group, in Japanese, later) but we got personal attention and all our Qs answered.
Small space and everyone was working but accommodated as we were shown around.
The pots with long spouts to pour dye are ドヒン dohin and that's what #chusen is about - dye pouring.
Next the vacuum to pull the dye through

#Sakai #Textile #Japan #Travel #Photography
#DasInKobe

🧵 1/8
Reserved our spots a long while ago - for a #chusen #dye #factory #tour
This is in #Sakai south of #Osaka but away from the other places we'd visited* a few times. So a different set of trains & a bit of a walk (nice sunny morning with cool weather).
We'd seen info on chusen and #tenugui at the Sakai traditional crafts museum - that had nice displays and videos. But we wanted to dig a bit deeper, especially for the kids to see

#DasInKobe #Travel #Textiles #Japan
*mastodon.online/@SRDas/1110729