Kikkoman Soy Sauce Museum and Factory Tour in Noda, Japan...

July 13th, 2018, our family decided to go to the Kikkoman Soy Sauce Museum and to take a tour of their factory too. And to have some soy sauce ice cream and make some senbeis (rice crackers) It's encouraged to make an appointment before going and we made an appointment a week beforehand.

The entrance. 

We love shoyu (soy sauce) and we've never been here before, so we were ready to enjoy our day being here!

Look at their mascot! The soy sauce bottle is her hat and dress!!! Kawaii!!! How cute! She's adorable!

I don't know about you, but I love when I see "normal regular stuff" but in huge sizes. Like this bottle! My kids love seeing big stuff too. So we took pics.

They had a smelling area of what it smelled like at the 3 and also the 6th month fermentation process.

A great big bottle of shoyu. Looks just like the one we have at home, except super sized.

My 2 silly nerds! : )

Talk about a first. Terriyaki sauce goes on sale in the U.S. in 1961. Since I wasn't born until the 70's. I was like wow...terriyaki sauce has been commercially available for such a long time. Wow!!!

The Kikkoman factory in the United States. See the flag? 

Looking inside the factory. So many automated machines now days.

The different soy sauce containers from all over the world.

Important to note we were each given 1 bottle of soy sauce. So we ended up with 4 bottles of soy sauce for free. And the tour and museum was free too. We wanted to make some rice crackers and have some ice cream though. Here are the directions on the wall in Japanese.

My kids loved this place so much. We did too. Branden was sharing pics to his friends back in America and in Japan. 

They came raw in a 3 pack and Noboru and I shared 1. We did this activity mostly for the kids. That's a shoyu type sauce on the right that you coat with... right before it's done. Which makes sense since we were at a soy sauce factory. : )

Even though there's directions in Japanese on the wall and the nice waitress gave us all directions verbally in Japanese. And I did understand her and told her in Japanese, "thanks, I understand" and smiled and head nodded her. My foreign/western face means that she brought out these handy dandy instructions in English for me anyway. @_@ Hahaha. Which...felt that it was 100% thoughtful and considerate of her to do that. I do always take it in a positive way. So, I totally thanked her for her thoughtfulness. Noboru just laughed. Because he knows this happens every time that he goes anywhere with us. Hahaha. : )

Fresh and hot, these rice crackers were delicious. Half was plenty for me to try and to enjoy/taste. : )

They also had a little area where you could try all the sauces if you wanted. I didn't try any. But, Noboru tried a whole bunch. He was so excited. : ) I think Noah tried 2 and Branden tried 2, too/as well.

They also had free iced cold water and free ice cold green tea. Here's a pic of Noboru trying oh....so...many sauces. : )

We next picked our soy sauce flavored soft serve ice cream. We picked the regular whole milk version.

Bran and Noah each got a shoyu cone. And Noboru and I each got ours in a cup. And the flavor? Delicious. It was seriously so good. 

Other products in Japan that are under the Kikkoman corporation. The kids each picked a little soy sauce charm before we left. 

The imperial family still gets their shoyu made the traditional way and they  show you how it's still made. So we went inside. That's where we were walking when I snapped this pic. It's just a 1 minute walk from the other building we were just in.

Like it says, Imperial Soy Sauce Brewery. How cool. 

Soy sauce being made for the Imperial Family.

And on our way to our car and on our way home! What a fun filled day.