Japan has a number of rivers that offer bizarre phenomena that can not be
explained by science.
Asahigawa is one of the five of them called Japan’s Five Great Sake River.

Asahigawa originates near the Hiruzen plateau in Maniwa City, Okayama Prefecture,
and travels the prefecture almost in the central part toward south, pouring it
into Kojima Bay through the central city area of Okayama City. The river is about
280 meters width at wide part and less than 100 meters width at most of the part,
and it is about 5 meters depth. It is a river that has a size and appearance that
are common in Japan. But this river has bizarre characteristics.

The water of the river becomes Sake, Japanese liquor. This mysterious phenomenon
occurs only in a very small part of Asahigawa, near the Takebe Hachiman hot spring
in Kakebe-town, Kita-ward, Okayama City, and only for a momentary time zone during
the rising of the morning sun.
This phenomenon has been known since the late Edo period in the whole area of
Takebe town, and has been narrated in the local area, but it is believed to be
a fiction because visitors who try to confirm it were rare to encounter Sake
at Asahigawa.

However, a folkloreist, Bura Shigeto (1919-2010), experienced its existence,
presented it at the Japan Folklore Society, and described it in his own dissertation
or book. Then it came to be seen truth. However, many scholars and interviewees
visited the Takebe-town basin in Asahigawa to reproduce the experience of Bura,
but there are a mixture of those who can confirm the river water and those who can
not do it. The percentage of those who could be confirmed was less than 10%.
For this reason, it has begun to be told that those who confirmed this liquor must
have been asked or taken over by people in Takebe town and Bura. It is noteworthy
here that only people living in Takebe and Bura are able to touch it almost 100%
when asking for it when the morning sun rises.

Furthermore, the cause of the water of Asahikawa becoming Sake is also told in
this Tekebe town.
The reason is said that ghost called Sakaoni are making sake in the river.

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