Rocky Aoki and Keiko Ono are quite a team. They were in Japan just last week and now are here again, leading a tour group of 20 U.S.-based serious sake enthusiasts to taste the real stuff on the home ground of the "water of heaven."
But let us backtrack a few days. After a meeting with representatives of JTB and the Yokoso Japan campaign to encourage tourists to visit this country, we are whisked into a hired limo to be driven from the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Yurakucho to the Imperial Hotel. Distance as the crow flies? Less than half a kilometer.
Actually, it's Keiko who does the whisking. And though Rocky trails behind and can hardly get a word in edgeways, there is a smile on his face that suggests he's not unhappy with the situation. "When we married four years ago . . ."