As can bee seen in some of the stories in this issue, there are some interesting times ahead. The sake industry has traditionally been notorious for its inability to move with the times, but things have been getting better in recent years. Breweries developing innovative marketing approaches, new alliances being formed, and shifts in the status quo, have set the industry on an exciting new path that no one could have completely foreseen. A famous politician once said, “The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change”. While he probably wasn’t talking about the sake industry, it certainly applies.