A roadside station where you can fill bottles with Southern Alps spring water, with a farm shop and café.
This is a sample page. Meisui-no-Sato Roadside Station is a fictional place, and its name, prices and hours are all made up for this sample.
How to enjoy it
Anyone can use the water tap at Meisui-no-Sato for free. Bring empty bottles and you have drinking water for the trip. The farm shop and café share one building, so you can rest after shopping.
Fill your bottles with water from the Southern Alps at the station’s tap, free, 24 hours a day.
How to enjoy it
It gets busy at weekend lunchtimes. If you are filling many bottles, let the people behind you take turns.
Best drunk the same day.
Vegetables, rice and local goods from Hakushu and Mukawa farmers, including rice grown with the spring water.
How to enjoy it
Rice comes in small bags too, a good size for a souvenir.
A small café making coffee with the spring water, and sandwiches with local vegetables.
How to enjoy it
Soft water makes the same beans taste rounder. The terrace looks out to Mt. Kaikoma.
Hours
Farm shop9:00–18:00
Café9:30–17:00（last order 16:30）
Water tap, parking, toilets24 hours
Closed
New Year (closed Wednesdays, Dec to Feb)
NotesThe water tap is open on closed days too
CashAccepted
Credit cardsVISA, Mastercard, JCB
E-moneyTransit IC cards
QR code paymentPayPay
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Matcha with spring water in a pine-grove tea room.
Tip
You rinse your hands and mouth at the stone basin before entering. Each step of etiquette is shown to you, so there is nothing to memorise. Ask why the bowl is turned before drinking; the answer opens up the thinking behind tea.
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A restored Meiji-era merchant house in the post town, rented whole. One group a day, up to 6.
Tip
Kuraya keeps the bones of the merchant house it once was. Look up at the beams over the earthen-floored entrance and at the lattice of the old counting room. Walk the post-town street once in the evening and once in the morning to see its quieter side.
place-8013-hero.webpDrink · Hakushu
Fermented dishes made with the brewery’s koji and sake lees.
Tip
Taru-no-Ma is run by a post-town sake brewery. The koji and lees in the food come from the brewery next door. If you don’t drink, follow the brewery’s flavours through amazake and its brewing water.
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Tour and tasting at a small valley distillery.
Tip
Being small, the whole process from mashing to filling casks is visible in one building. The tasting lines up the same spirit at different ages, so you can follow what the cask does. Drivers get a non-alcoholic malt soda instead.
