Jeanine and I attended a Sake Tasting event this evening organized by the Concord Nanae Network and held under a tent at Verrill Farm. The group fosters Concord’s relationship with our sister city, Nanae, located on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The connection to Hokkaido dates back to 1876 when Dr. William Clark, then President of Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts in Amherst) was invited to help create the Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University). Accompanied by three graduate students, including William Wheeler of Concord, their primary mission was to introduce northern agriculture and dairy farming to the region. Clark served as President of the college until 1879 at which time Wheeler took over. A century later, Massachusetts and Hokkaido became official sister states in 1990, and in 1997 Concord and Nanae, which share the same geographic latitude, officially became sister cities.

Bearing gifts of fine Japanese Sake, Setsuo Ohmor, the Consulate-General of Japan in Boston, talked about our special relationship with Japan and some of the finer points of Sake making. I had an opportunity to speak with him for some time and learned that he grew up in a very rural part of Japan and wanted to experience something more. He has since lived in Brazil, the UAE, Sudia Arabia, and now Boston.

All in all, it was a delightful evening where I also had an opportunity to reconnect with a former colleague and a new Conantum neighbor with very similar interests.