Japanese sake with a side dish in season

I’m a lover of Japanese sake, but not a heavy drinker. I just drink one to two gou (360 ml) of sake at every dinner. Except hot heated summer when the thirstiness makes me to choose inevitably beer, I go for sake rather than sherry, wine or whisky as aperitif in most of the seasons. Sake adds special flavor to dinner and I can taste dish more delicious. Sherry is two sweet, wine boasts too much of its sophisticated characteristic, while whisky is too strong for dinner. In combination with Japanese dishes, sake is certainly a friendlier partner. Both  seek to extract more of natural taste inherent to seasonal vegetables, fish, and meats. Sake with one or two side dishes before dinner makes me feel relaxed and forget the everyday ennui and can make me think positively for tomorrow. In cold winter, it’s nice to have hot sake with boiled bean curd or oden, a dish in which a variety of ingredients such as tofu, eggs, white radish, and fried fish paste are boiled together in a large pot of seasoned fish broth. In summer, a small snack like Edamame is consistently good with sake even after drinking a first pine of beer. All these are simple, cheap and easy to be made in anybody’s home.