As we walked out of the station, the sleepy town of Saijo stretched before us like a cat in the late-afternoon sun.The streets were quiet. Pockets of snow lay in the chilly shadows and melting frost dripped from the telephone wires.
In the photogenic winter light, the colors were razor sharp. The white walls gleamed, and the spindly red chimneys of Saijo's sake breweries were framed against an immaculate blue sky.
The whitewashed and wood-paneled buildings along Sakagura-dori (Sake Brewery Street) invoke a sepia-toned past of streets filled with horse-drawn carts and hawkers selling their wares.
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