hum 復習
酒の人気が海外で高まってきているようです。
Japan sake pours overseas as local market dries up
Ozawa Shuzo brewery hums with activity as boxed bottles of sake are loaded onto trucks. But with the domestic market shrinking, more and more of it is bound for burgeoning overseas markets where the centuries old drink is all the rage.
The small establishment has recently drawn interest from potential new customers in Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea, on top of a coterie of existing ones in the United States, France and Singapore.
Sake, a fermented drink made of rice, has hit hard times in its homeland amid changing tastes, but manufacturers are welcoming growing popularity overseas.
A steady flow of tourists visiting Ozawa Shuzo could be a sign of things to come.
"We cannot easily go abroad to explain what sake is all about, so by doing this (tours) at our brewery I hope visitors will get a better understanding of its value," Junichiro Ozawa, president of the 300-year-old Ozawa Shuzo, told AFP at his brewery on Tokyo's mountainous western fringe.
Underlining sake's increasing global renown, the influential guide Robert Parker's Wine Advocate this month issued ratings for the beverage.
Sake exports have doubled in the past decade to some 18,180 kilolitres, according to Japanese government figures, with the United States the largest single foreign market, accounting for about one-quarter of the total.
Impressive growth, but that is just three percent of total shipments, suggesting plenty of room for further expansion abroad.
（以下省略）
今回取り上げる単語は、humです。「ハミング」のイメージを持っていたため、良い意味として使われているのかなと推測しました。
『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版，大修館）で調べたところ、ハミングの他に「〈場所が〉ブーンという音で満ちている，[…で]活気にあふれている[with]」などと載っておりました。例として “The street hummed with life [activity].”、「通りは活気にあふれていた。」と記載されておりました。
Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition Reserved, Oxford University Press)によると、 “be in a state of great activity”、 “make a low, steady continuous sound like that of a bee”などと書かれておりました。
記事内では “Ozawa Shuzo brewery hums with activity as boxed bottles of sake are loaded onto trucks.”と書かれており、「活気があふれている」という意味で使われていると思われます。（Ｇｏｍｅｚ）
