Three wells in Suita
After over a decade without a new travel logs, here is a simple update to get things going again. The city of Suita in Osaka prefecture is well-known for having a large Asahi Breweries factory that was built in the mid-Meiji period. The close proximity to Osaka city and close access to a large river are obvious reasons for building a factory in Suita, but another important reason was, apparently, high-quality groundwater that was well-suited for making beer. I have no idea what properties of water would characterize it as being beer-friendly, but apparently the water here was deemed as such, although a sample was sent to Munich for evaluation before the final decision to build the factory was made.
In any case, dating back to at least the Meiji period, but likely many centuries earlier, there were three sites in Suita known for their clean (and tasty?) groundwater, known as Suita's san meisui. They are as follows:
- Sai no shimizu, a now dried-up well at the temple Sai-dera.
- Tarumi no taki, a waterfall within the Tarumi Jinja shrine.
- Izudono reisen, a relic of an old well that used to exist in the Izudono-guu shrine, right nearby the Asahi factory.
Here are a few photos, one of each spot.
After several years living in this area, it was interesting to find that there were still three excellent spots that I did not know about.