Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles After the collapse of the original Japanese consortium behind LAODI and the extraordinary circumstances of the distillery’s first chapter (read Part 1…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles In March 2026, I attended the Komoro Whisky Festival in Nagano Prefecture. I had booked the ticket not entirely knowing what to…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles When I think about the whiskies that changed how I understood what whisky could be, there are a handful. Kavalan is one…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles There is a sentence on the website of Otani — the stamp and seal business that is the Tsunoda family’s established enterprise…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles Kameda Distillery does not yet have a defined house style. Its founder, Tsunoda-shacho, is explicit about this — and equally explicit that…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles When Kameda Distillery’s founder was deciding between wooden washbacks and stainless steel for his fermentation vessels, he did what any good former…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles There are moments in whisky that arrive without warning and rearrange something inside you. For me, one of those moments happened at…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles The blender’s room at Saburomaru is not yet open to the public. When I visited in January 2026, I was brought there…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles The building at Saburomaru Distillery is a national registered tangible cultural property. It survived the fires that swept through Tonami during the…
Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles There is a cooperage inside Saburomaru Distillery. It is called Re:COOPERAGE, and it is one of the most important things in Japanese…