Niigata Salt

• Salt Businesses
• Shio Café
• Mineral Koubou
• Access

The Incredible Salts of Northern Niigata 新潟の塩

Greg Goodmacher

Perhaps the most delicious salt in the world is created in northern Japan. I am a foodie, so I drove for two hours from Niigata city to a place few tourists reach. The world knows sushi and sashimi, but few people have tasted the artisan salts of Japan. My goal was visiting the salt producing ateliers scattered in the upper northernmost corner of Niigata Prefecture.

Shio no hana Niigata salt

Making Niigata salt

Northern Niigata is exceptionally scenic and quiet. Devoid of major industry, it is a spellbinding region. Spectacular sunsets silhouetted by Japanese pines and craggy islands attract photographers and nature lovers. The salt draws gourmets.

While driving along the seaside road, Route 345, in the northernmost region of Niigata, I spotted occasional fishers with long rods casting fishing lines into the sea from deserted beaches and minuscule offshore islands, seniors gathering clumpy strands of seaweed from shallow water, and disappearing divers in black wet suits submerging in search of abalone and other shellfish.

On the opposite side of the road, farmers were tilling rectangular paddies or hoeing the soil between raised beds of daikon and other greens. These people fit the definition of the proverbial salt of the earth. And some of their neighbors produce the most delicious salts on the earth.

Preparing the charcoal ovens for producing Niigata salt

Making Niigata salt

Salt Businesses

The mostly family-run businesses whose craftspeople transform ocean water, seaweed, herbs, and even bamboo and plums into artisan salts are easy to discover. Visitors don't need to read the Japanese kanji for shio, 塩, which means salt, but it would help. Look for logs and used timber beams cut and stacked next to small seaside buildings. Wood is still the preferred fuel used for evaporating sea water. Blackish smoke puffing out of thin round flues indicates salt making in process.

Walk into the facilities and watch workers transform sea water into glittering pure white diamond-like crystals. Some salt artisans create light green, pink or grey salts with the addition of seaweed, flower blossoms, leaves, and other delicate natural materials found in the nearby sea, farms and forests.

But creating salt is anything but delicate. Workers drag hoses into the ocean and pump seawater into giant containers when the weather is good. Fierce winds and giant waves prohibit outdoor activity in winter and other seasons. In spring and fall, salt workers who specialize in producing seaweed salt (moshio, 藻塩) don wet suits, harvest seaweed by hand and then carry loads of heavy, wet seaweed back to their shops. In the middle of Japan's sweat-inducing, humid summers, they feed logs into red hot ovens to evaporate ocean water.

Soft ice cream lightly sprinkled with seaweed saltMr. Kobayashi, president of Nihonkaikikaku, harvesting seaweed for salt making

Shio Café

One worker was lifting thick heavy chunks of lumber and carefully placing them into the glowing mouths of ovens when I walked into the aptly named Shio Café, which serves, meals, snacks, pure salt, herbal salts, and other goods made with salt. Soft ice cream lightly sprinkled with seaweed salt shouted, "Eat me." The slightly bitter saltiness magnified the vanilla flavor. Surprisingly scrumptious!

Steam flowed around the interior of the shop as I licked an ice cream cone and examined the goods. Sea water was simmering in three-meter-long pans above the ovens. A gray-haired Japanese man - I estimated he was in his seventies - strode into the room. I recognized his face from a photograph on the wall. The photograph showed him in a wet suit standing in the waves while harvesting seaweed. Mr. Kobayashi, president of Nihonkaikikaku, the company that owns the salt cafe, invited me to sit on the outside deck and chat about salt while enjoying fresh sea-scented breezes.

He told me that soon after the government ended its salt monopoly twenty years ago, he jumped into salt making and then opened the small café. One reason that national officials gave for relinquishing control of salt was stimulating the development of small businesses in poor, remote areas. And salt making did become an important cottage industry in far-flung seaside communities. Each area started crafting unique salts by integrating the minerals and flavors of various seaweeds, land plants, and other natural resources. Salt, like wine, is affected by the terroir and the skills of its makers.

In addition to meals and ice cream, the salt café sells pure white salt, salt with plum essence, salt with the essence of bamboo leaves, salt candies, dried salted fish, miso, fermented rice with salt, and two varieties of nigari. Nigari is a clear substance that remains when sea water with a high mineral content is boiled. Japanese long ago discovered that nigari turns soy milk into tofu. At the salt café, you can buy a unique black nigari infused with the minerals from seaweed. I had never seen this nigari variety before.

After tasting various salts, I continued my search for more salt ateliers. Within a few minutes, we spotted a unique salt-crafting workshop decorated with sea memorabilia: ancient glass buoy balls from fishing nets, anchors, pictures of ships, and paintings of dolphins. The artists were a husband-and-wife team of salt crafters.

Mineral Koubou, Niigata PrefectureMineral Koubou, Niigata Prefecture

Mineral Koubou

As soon as I turned my car into his yard, Shuichi Togashi, the owner of the salt making facility, Mineral Koubou, greeted me with a beaming smile. While giving me a tour of his small salt atelier and shop, his hands moved excitedly. He pointed to a waterfall on the hill behind his shop, a stream flowing toward sea, and then the ocean.

He told me, "Protecting all of this while creating salt is my goal." After pumping sea water into his tanks, he filters out the plankton and then gives that to local farmers, who use the plankton as fertilizer. "Nothing is wasted," he proudly proclaimed.

Shuichi's father was a carpenter who became a salt maker after the salt monopoly dissolved, and then Shuichi took over the family business. At first, customers were just curious people driving by and impulsively dropping in to sample salt. Many become repeat customers, including some local chefs who use their salt only.

Salt Onigiri, Niigata Prefecture

A few years ago, a much larger company asked Shuichi to create salt for wholesale business. He refused the lucrative offer he said. Although Mineral Koubou does bring in much money selling small amounts of salt to individuals, he finds the personal connection to people who love food and the environment more rewarding than making lots of money. He is happy with his life.

Mineral Koubo specializes in a few varieties of pure white mineral salts, and a few products that utilize his salt. In combination with a flower grower, he has created salts mixed with dried herbal flowers. Japanese rice balls sprinkled with this mix become more delicious and colorful. The herbal salts turn ordinary dishes into earthy pleasures.

Shuichi also creates two types of high-mineral content bath salts in his workshop. One pure white bath salt dissolves without color in hot water. The other contains an ocean-blue dye. I purchased a package of that. When I lowered my body into my ocean-blue bathtub, the water was extra slippery, and afterward, my skin was softer than usual. It was a wonderful way to relax my body after driving back from northern Niigata to my home in Niigata city.

Bath Salt "Golden Shrine of Sunset," Mineral Koubou, Niigata Prefecture

Access Getting to Northern Niigata

Driving is the best option. You will be able to pull off the road freely whenever you wish. There are so many gorgeous sites that will tempt you to stop or to climb or to swim, or take pictures. From Niigata, take either the expressway or Route 7 into Murakami city, and then switch to Route 345. Once you are on Route 345, you cannot get lost. Make sure that your car is full of gas because gas stations are few and far between in this isolated section of Niigata.

By train: take the JR Uetsu Line Inaho Limited Express to Murakami from Niigata Station (47 minutes; 2,590 yen). Alternatively, a Rakuraku Train Murakami (58 minutes; 1,450 yen).

From Murakami transfer to a local train for Kuwagawa (22 minutes), Imagawa (27 minutes) and Echigo-Kangawa (32 minutes).

A Japan Rail Pass is valid on these routes.

• The Incredible Salts of Northern Niigata
• Sasagawa Nagare

The ocean off the Niigata coast, Niigata Prefecture

Book Hotel Accommodation in Nagano Japan

Books on Japan