You may not be able to enjoy a walk through the heather or a plate of steaming haggis anywhere nearby, but there is one corner of Japan that will be forever Scotland.

In the 1920s, a Japanese man who had studied in Glasgow and got a taste for whisky decided to set up a distillery back home. Now one of the most respected producers in the country, he founded the Yoichi distillery in Hokkaido, the part of Japan he thought looked most similar to the Highlands. The whisky, it now turns out, regularly beats its competitors in global tastings — which isn’t as unlikely as it sounds, given how much whisky is drunk in Japan.

What is surprising, on the other hand, is that the Japanese would ever opt for a wee dram when they could be knocking back sake instead. Are they mad? Sake, the delicate national Japanese drink, comes in a headache-inducing range of styles, from hot, sweet and cloudy to dry, clear and chilled, with innumerable variations in between.

Though the unaccustomed may crinkle their noses up at the thought of something brewed from rice coming into contact with their ice, here the Americans are ahead of the game; the hippest drink in New York at the moment is the sake cocktail. But if you want to taste the real thing, you’re best heading east, to Kobe in Japan.

About 250 miles southwest of Tokyo, Kobe is renowned among Japanese gourmands for two things: the price of its beef and the quality of its sake. The latter is largely produced in the city’s Nada district, which benefits from the happy confluence of an especially fine rice-growing terrain and mineral-rich water.

With a generous supply of paracetamol you could easily spend a whole day touring the various breweries that are based here; there’s one that inspired a very well-known Japanese literary masterpiece, another featured in a Japanese television series, and down the road there’s another one housing a famous on-site pickle shop.

The one I visit, Nada Izumi, produces one of the only remaining hand-made sake brands. The brewery’s real selling point though is the architecture of the building. The stately cedar planks that make up much of the production area were originally slotted into place 250 years ago and make for a magnificent backdrop. Other parts of the brewery aren’t quite so ancient, however.

Joining a tour of the premises, I am whizzed upstairs in my socks to admire an elegantly carved stage area that’s used for entertaining groups with performances of traditional Japanese dance. When I ask when it was built, the story begins with a sigh.

It is almost exactly 10 years old, an anniversary that has been etched into the souls of Kobe’s citizens since the infamous 1995 earthquake. Hitting the city just before dawn, the quake registered a terrifying 6.9 on the Richter scale, a ghastly precursor of the horrifying events three weeks ago in the Indian Ocean. Visit the city’s disaster museum today and, between emotional personal anecdotes, one of the volunteers working there will reel off the statistics in shocking detail: 6,433 people died, 43,792 were injured, 67,421 buildings collapsed, 6,965 more were destroyed by fire.

Yet, in 2005, the city appears so well healed that you have to search hard to see the scars. In fact, take a ride on the cable car that climbs up to the herb garden growing on the mountain behind the city and, as you peer back down, it’s difficult to get your head round the fact that the polished glass offices, wide open boulevards, gleaming Louis Vuitton shop fronts and busy street-side cafes of this glimmering modern-day city are almost all the result of reconstruction work.

Back in Nada, there is little time for reflection, however. Izumi Yunosuke, the brewery’s jovial owner, is more concerned with continuing his tour around the enormous wooden vats, encouraging us to stir the steaming rice with huge wooden paddles, and sift the malted grains through our fingers in the cedar-lined fermenting chamber — a room so warm and aesthetically pleasing, you find yourself going slightly woozy (or maybe that was just the effect of the sugary fumes). After decades in the business, he is obviously still an enthusiast.

Not least when it comes to tasting. While we wobble about trying to put our shoes back on single-handedly, Yunosuke plays the perfect host, topping up our tiny glasses with more sake and explaining that the difference in taste comes from the extent to which the grains of rice have been polished before processing. The consensus? Each one delicious, a moreish mix between a gentle, foamy vodka and a very still cider.

Just around the corner, at Shushinkan breweries, is a restaurant designed specifically to work off the effects of a morning on the rice wine. Set in an old wooden brewing hall overlooking a cute Japanese garden and with staff dressed in what look like Yohji Yamamoto kimonos, the menu is meant to match the different sakes on the drinks list.

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