Kazaridaru means “decorated barrels” and refers to the sake barrels donated to Japanese temples. They serve a practical use, in that the sake is used at festivals and ceremonies but they are also highly decorative:
In some older Japanese texts the word used for sake is miki, written with the characters for ‘god’ and ‘wine.’ These days, the word miki (or o-miki when given its honorific prefix) is reserved for the rice wine used in Shinto rites and festivals and drinking it symbolises closeness to the gods.
Sake brewers donate the wine that shrines need for ceremonies and festivals, hence the towers of decorative, empty barrels at the entrances to Shinto temples. There is even a Brewery Reverence Committee (shuzokeishinkai) at the temples, whose responsibility is to work out how much sake is required. To request too much would be frowned on as wasteful.
Linked to Frizztext’s Tagged “K” challenge and Alphabe Thursday.
Travel with Intent 
I am not a big drinker but I have always been keen to wine boxes… And now I am keen to these sake barrels too!
I never knew any of these interesting facts!
Thanks for linking to the letter “K”.
A+
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Interesting and something I have definitely never heard of before.
Thanks.
=)
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“Kolorful” post for the letter “K”!
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LOL!
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I love me some Sake! 😉
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I’m not a big fan. But Iove the barrels.
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I can’t tell how big the barrels are. The first photo looks like jars, stacked on a shelf! {:-Deb
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They are works of art, seems a shame to drink the contents!
Wren x
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Thank you for that I love learning new things here.have a great week
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Kazaridaru means “decorated barrels” – seems to be a complicated job to write those letters …
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