Flying to Scotland tomorrow with my 6 year old daughter. My folks were supposed to arrive for a 3 month visit a few weeks ago but two days before they were due to fly my dad had a heart-attack. As such, we are heading over to help his recovery.

Whilst there I will be taking the opportunity to do as much “research” on Scottish pubs as possible and will hopefully squeeze in some brewery visits.

On my return to Kochi, I am very sad to say that I will be giving up my veganism. I will still be mainly plant-based where possible and am not reverting to full on omnivore, but my health has suffered since moving over here.

Being a vegan in Scotland was exciting and easy, being a vegan in this part of rural Japan is exceptionally challenging and my quality of life as well as my health has suffered.

It is unfortunate but in my opinion, currently a vegan lifestyle is not feasible here just now, if that changes and I can thrive as a vegan then I will be back on team plant-based. However, I have kids to think about and I can no longer allow my health to deteriorate simply to maintain my principles.

I am stubborn, very stubborn but I can find a way to adapt to improve my health and quality of life.

Now that I have less than a year left on my initial 3 year spouse visa, we have started thinking about the renewal process. However, we just discovered that, in theory at least, I qualify for permanent residency.

My wife and I have been married for way longer than the required 3 years and I have been living in Japan for longer than the required 1 year.

So, we will start preparing for that application instead, but soon, as I read the processing time can be very long for PR applications.

There are no guarantees of course, I am in my final year of a part-time, minimum wage contract. My wife has a little over a year left of the same contract. We still have some funds from selling our house in Scotland though so we should hopefully be covered there. Aside from their potential concerns about our financial stability though, I cannot see any other areas where they might be concerned.

There will be paperwork involved of course, but most of it is evidence based document collating, unlike a UK permanent residency application which has an enormous amount of form-filling. The main application form seems to be just 2 A4 pages in size.. unless I am missing something.

Whilst this is the first visa renewal or PR application for me, I have was obviously very involved in (the far more laborious) renewals and PR applications for my wife in Scotland, I would be very happy if this was the last one I had to do.

Spent the morning building a DIY hop trellis as last year my first hops grew higher than expected. This year looks even better so have set up an under (frosted glass) car port trellis and we’ll see how it goes.

I am not the handiest so will it handle the wait? No idea!

Will it even be necessary or just an over -engineered waste of string? No idea!

Was it a fun project that made me feel a bit closer to my rural environment? It sure was!

Dreich

Video description: A somewhat rainy scene, water streams down the car windscreen whilst the occasional car passes, in an otherwise quiet village.

As we’ve decided to be a brewery specialising in (but not limited to) Scottish beers, I focused on that today. I read Scotch Ales by Greg Noonan in its entirety and then honed the flavour profiles that I want from each beer style.

Then I wrote 3 new recipes for a 60 /-, 70/- and a “Scottish IPA” based loosely on the traditional brewing techniques and their impacts on bitterness etc. as well as modifying my existing recipe for an 80 /-, tamed my wee heavy recipe to be a dark and smokey 90 /- and modified my reluctant lager recipe to be more interesting.. don’t need to modify my porage stout recipe, it’s good as it is.

All theoretical of course as I can’t homebrew here but they look good and I think they will hit the flavour profiles I have in mind.

Pretty productive day.

Our youngest kid is 2 now and as such we are encouraging her to make choices on her own as often as we can. Choices such as what clothes do you want to wear today? what book do you want to read? etc.

Somehow this has recently been extended to asking her to choose who changes her nappy after she has pooed.. I did not introduce this.. and yet, for some reason she ALWAYS chooses me.. I do not approve of this branch of the game.

It has been a while since my last note here, been a very busy period. Basically, we have found a brewery location that we like and are able to buy (the owner is eager to sell), however we have concerns about the strength of the land supporting the foundations of the building (just the frame/skeleton as the floors have none).

The area was previously affected by floods, which now should no longer be a thing, and the warehouse has subsided by about 20cm on one side. We are discussing it’s safety and options for securing the foundations with various engineers and should soon be in a good position to make a decision and return to the negotiation table.

We are also considering a new build on a different plot in the village just in case this warehouse is not safe. However, we both really want the warehouse to work out.. it will be like a 3 minute walk from our future house! So I am slowly transferring funds over to Japan in the hope that we can close this deal over the next month or two.

On our flights to Hokkaido I designed, and we tweaked a tartan which I think we are going to register as our brewery’s official tartan.. because.. why not?

We are off to Eastern Hokkaido for a business trip for a few days as of tomorrow morning.. if we are lucky we are looking at a max temp of 0°C so that’ll be nice..

Felt my first earthquake today, it wasn’t overly strong but nonetheless unsettling. It is somewhat of a surprise that I’ve spent almost 3 years in Japan (over various visits etc.) that this is the first time. Lasted about 20-30 seconds, of gentle shaking, most folks were unperturbed, but my wife looked pretty rattled.

Happy to wait another 3 years or more for the next, thanks.

There is a Shogun movie coming out in 3 days time?!?!?

Right then, time to watch the original TV series! It is after all probably the reason I eventually ended up living in Japan.

Well our youngest daughter has tonight learned how to say “please, Papa” , so that’ll be game over then.

After waiting for months for my wife to have time to cut my hair, I have this evening, the day before my 47th birthday decided to commit to long hair.

If I unfurl one of the fire locks it now reaches under my chin, my hair is pretty curly so it doesn’t necessarily look as long as it is but for the first time we were able to tie it up at the back and it isn’t an unpleasant look. It needs a few more months before the sides can be tied into so I maintain a straggly rogue-like appearance, which is a little different than the full on barbarian look that I have been wielding of late..

.. it remains to be seen how my DPS fairs but I am looking forward to my enhanced stealth skills.

I am currently reading a book on craft beer packaging design and trying to design templates or drafts for a proper designer to interpret once we are happy with the general look and layout etc.

The core beers will have some sort of vector art landscape background (Scottish or Japanese themed) on the label and I have been trying to simplify the logo and info panels. Definitely making forward progress. However..

My wife, whilst being happy with the general designs asked a good question. Do the designs highlight the inclusive ethos we want our company to be based upon and I guess they partially do (they highlight that they are vegan and gluten-reduced) but I am wondering how we can incorporate inclusion for groups of people. Obviously we could use the colours of various pride flags for different designs and it is one option of course..but I think we could do more. We could include images of varied people within the label design but hoping to keep the design somewhat uncluttered.

So, does anyone have any recommendations on good websites or literature on inclusive graphic design? I’ll also search of course but would be grateful for suggestions from more knowledgeable folks than me.

A very short post on the Visit Kochi website about our aspirations. It feels nice to be included despite not yet having achieved anything of substance.

We Are Kochi-ke: Jon Kelbie

Just checked the Visit Kochi draft about me, it’s short of course, it’s a FB/Instagram post but it feels good to be included as part of the ‘We are Kochi-ke’ series.

Kochi-ke basically means the Kochi family, Kochi being the name of the prefecture where we live.

This is the spiel from the Visit Kochi website is ’ “We are Kochi-ke (Kochi family)” is all about highlighting the stories of the people who make us proud to call Kochi our home. Whether you are living in Kochi now or only visited once, you are part of the Kochi family.’

It’s a short piece about me living here and chasing my dream to become a brewer, and has some nice pictures that our friend Aiko took.

My wife wants to study for a Japanese beer qualification in an effort to learn more about beer, it’s core ingredients, production processes etc. She also wants me to do it, despite my own qualification somewhat superceding it. I agreed as I definitely need to improve my Japanese, especially in relation to beer and brewing. Also studying together will give me practice talking about it in Japanese.

There are 3 levels, and we are going to study for levels 3 and 2. Level 1 is unnecessary, it involves writing sections and I don’t have time for that level of study again but from levels 3 and 2, I should be able to more effectively talk about brewing in Japanese.

So, I spent about an hour or so fiddling with my once presumed dead kindle to wipe it and align it with my JP account. Bought the text book for the course and spent about 4 hours slowly reading through the first chapter of the first part. It is only 5 pages long but I am very rusty so much of it was looking up new kanji, noting the readings and key points. I am now ready to study this part with my wife..

This is the part that doesn’t appear to be considered.. 4 hours for 5 pages.. during February we will study chapters 2 and 3 of part 1, that’s 43 pages.. based on today, that’s about 35 hours of study on top of us studying together, March is the biggest month at 44 pages.. there will be repetition of kanji and I will become less rusty but.. it is pretty daunting.

Just composed an email to a brewer way up in Hokkaido to introduce myself and to ask if we can visit for a chat.

This chap built his brewery in the gym of an unused former elementary school.. and he received masses of government funding to do so. Reading some interviews and learning about his setup, his brewery is MUCH bigger than we ever plan to be but seems fascinating as the gym building looks about the same scale of the two gym halls that we are currently considering (read: perpetually waiting to hear about) both of which are also attached to unused former elementary schools.

Anyway, it will be the furthest, most rural and certainly coldest brewery that we will have visited, should he agree.

Also completed paperwork, just awaiting checking by my wife, to seek approval for a business trip to the Shizuoka prefecture. It is jam-packed with breweries and has a very vibrant craft beer scene. Exciting times!

A thought just crossed my mind..

.. as someone who may at some point in the future have a brewpub

.. as someone who would like some live music events on occasion at said brewpub

.. as someone with over a decade and a half of working in pubs, most of which had live music

.. as someone who loves karaoke and has been known to sing with some bands at pubs he worked at in the past..

.. as someone who owns an acoustic guitar, though doesn’t know how to play it.. yet..

.. maybe I can line up a gig or two for myself, on occasion..

Now, when I should be sleeping, I am thinking about what a set list might look like.. most of the bars I worked in were (varying degrees of) Irish and so was the music.. I can think of many Irish songs to fit the bill which is fine, my heritage includes Irish lineage.. but I want to have more Scottish songs.. I have some ideas but want to shift responsibility to you so that I may sleep..

.. so, throw your acoustic suitable Scottish song suggestions at me!

.. incidentally, I have sang both Caledonia and The Braes o’ Balquhidder, acapella at a university event in Okayama many years ago.

This evening there is a small craft beer fare with the 5 breweries from the prefecture getting together to launch a brewers association.

Afterwards, the brewers are all getting together to have drinks for the first time.

As you are all aware, I am not yet a brewer as the location securing challenge is immense here. Regardless, one of the brewers invited me to the event and post-event drinks. Subsequently, the other brewers shared their enthusiasm for us to come along.

.. enter the 18 month old daughter who has an uncanny ability to cause sleepless nights immediately before days which require more energy..

Excited to be invited to the inaugural event despite not yet being a fully fledged member of the brewing family but by jingo am I tired.

I really need to get better at writing a daily activity diary for work purposes. I need to submit such a document, in Japanese, to my department head each month and trying to remember everything and piece it together from emails and LINE messages is tough!

The new year family gathering is without a doubt the most challenging event of the year, but I did better than last year when it came to (difficult) conversations and it only took several tonnes of terrible beer to pierce the language barrier..

.. I want to make beer that is easy to talk about despite the language barriers.

Getting closer to Hogmanay, perhaps the only day of the year that I feel vaguely homesick. I miss night time celebrations and bringing in the bells with friends. No real point in me staying up to bring in the new year here.. I will be the only person awake.

My wife just asked my daughter what day her nursery Christmas party is on.. and yep, that’s right, it’s on the 25th, a full school day..

As he sleepily sauntered through the frigid void that exists between the partition of the room where they sleep and the partition where the live, his tired eyes fell upon some clothing atop the chest of drawers.

The long John bottoms eyelessly peered back and nodded, motionlessly before, in a surprisingly gravelly non-voice suggested that “It is time”.

His legs though humbly grateful for the additional warmth knew that it was merely a marriage of necessity and stoicly resolved to endure the additional itch burden they would experience in the months to come.

Reaching out towards the marl grey thermo-regulated undergarments he returned the nod and ceded, “It is time, it IS time.”

We had maybe our last or at least second last design meeting with one of the construction companies we are in discussions with.. should find out how little they remember about our stated budget and how far our endless reconfigurations made that stated budget nonsensically inadequate.. fun times!

One of the (minor) contributors to my decision that I was ready to move to Japan was that Christmas is a lip-service only event here, not laden with the debt-ensuing pressure of buying mountains of gifts so that your kid isn’t bullied (mileage may vary, that’s what it was like for our neighbourhood when I was a kid).

As an example of how it’s not actually treated as a special event, just a low key commercial opportunity for retailers, my wife and I have been requested to attend health checks on the morning of the 25th. Pretty sure we had our annual check ups earlier in the year so don’t need to attend but regardless, it’s just another work day.

Finished reading a book about farmhouse ales today, completing a series of books on sour beers, wild beers and farmhouses.. and I now know my long game aged sour beer approach and have formulated a saison recipe (in my head) to add to my slowly evolving theoretical repertoire.. sure would be nice to have a location for our brewery sorted soon so that we can move towards a point where I can actually make these beers..

For the meantime moving onto a book which I have had for ages but wanted to read after the aftershock of intense studying for my postgraduate course had died down.. all about yeast, 50+ pages down this afternoon and mainly just revision at this point, interesting though.

I have a list of 18 brewing books I am awaiting subsidy approval on so I really should make efforts to get through the ones I previously bought through the subsidy.. probably about 70% done with them though.

My eldest daughter’s first milk tooth has broken free from its gummy domicile.. in this part of Japan there is seemingly an old tradition where you throw teeth from your lower jaw on to the roof of your house and those from the upper jaw, under the house.. for luck, I guess.. apparently it has been decided that this will be happening..

.. all the while I am silently sitting here, wondering how I can somehow switch it with something so I can keep my firstborn’s first tooth as a keepsake..

I just implemented auto-translations of my English notes using the DeepL API and now I can’t think of anything interesting to write! 😅

I have given my site a small overhaul, adding fediverse commentary, switching out an ever growing and ugly category cloud with a list of breweries we’ve visited here and manually updated the Japanese side of the site to bring it up to date..

As a result I have written a working script to query the DeepL API for auto-translate of short form messages.. I just need to scale the mountain that is the micropub server in order to integrate it.

I will start with only notes, and the process will be that when a new note is posted via micropub a duplicate Japane Hugo template will also be created and the content will be sent to the DeepL API for translation..

Eventually, I’d like to add photo posts but this will require translation of the alt tags too which is slightly more complex than I fancy for the initial phase.

I don’t blog often but long form posts will remain manually translated.

Today is a day of enigma unravelling as I try to find a suitable power and frequency converter to allow me to buy the fermentation control chillers that I want for our brewery.. there are 4 key requirements..

1. It must be able to convert the frequency from 60Hz to 50Hz
2. It must be able to step the power up from 100v to 230v
3. It must have the capacity to run 3 chillers (eventually) continuously, supplying each with 1380 watts
4. It must be able to handle up to 30 A output.. I am a little unclear on whether this is per cooler.

Finding sites selling transformers and sharing all of this information is challenging.. and most of the time they only satisfy 2 of the 4 requirements.. anyway, I’m not yet frustrated! 🙂

Made my 4th or 5th stew of the season and they are getting pretty good! Really fresh vegetables from the Kochi Sunday Market and the Kochi Organic Market contributed to a very colourful and tasty dish.

Lacking vegan convenience foods has really upped my cooking game!

I see a number of folk are using mastodon as a static blog commenting tool and I might have to look into that and see if it would work with the GoToSocial api (I think it would).. pretty sure that my syndication scripts already pull the relevant post URIs and would be easy enough to deploy as a replacement for cactus comments.

Not sure exactly when this will happen but I am intrigued..

At a local event today, just enjoying some craft beer from my friend’s brewery and faced with an encouraging choice of vegan food (3 stalls!), when a lady walks up to me and introduces herself.

She knows who I am and seemingly all about me. It turns out this lady is the head of the prefectural government department in charge of bolstering tourism related businesses in the area. Not only that but she is very excited with regards to our plans.. this is a very good sign.

We received some advice on how we might best position ourselves for some prefectural funding..

Good craft beer, vegan food and funding advice are all rare in these parts on their own.. in combination must be unheard of.

Sometimes the non-availability of ingredients that I took for granted in Scotland, in this corner of rural Japan is a shade frustrating.. 3 supermarkets on a hunt for sun-dried tomatoes and this far empty handed.. I didn’t even try the supermarket in our village as it is only stocked with Japanese staples.

Both of my girls are currently into Lego.. as was/am I.. but neither are ready for a star wars introduction.. I hope this phase doesn’t pass by the time they are.. there is no way I can justify these prices just for me..

Sampled 4 beers tonight, 3 shared with my wife.. 2 non-IPA Japanese craft beers from recommended breweries, a Guinness and a low alcohol (<0.5%) IPA from somewhere in America..

.. the low alcohol beer was by some margin my favourite of the 4.. we have 2 other low alc beers from the same brewery and 6 more (4 varieties) from a Scottish brewer (though they appear to have been brewed in Belgium)..

Legitimate research and off to a better start than expected.

I am really loving Baldur’s Gate 3. I mean I am taking a very long time to progress because I am creating a whole abundance of character builds and having a blast. Only near the start of Act 2 with my main campaign so still lots of adventuring to do.

The last time I played a similar game was probably Icewind Dale which I remember playing with my old flat mate @lesault@infosec.exchange over LAN but I don’t recall how far into that game we got.

If I was in Scotland I would definitely be trying to get my gaming friends into a regular multiplayer game but not something that I could see working from Japan. I do know a few gamers here though so will try to see if there is any interest.

I have set myself a new mini-project (though I suspect it will develop into a fairly major project), to unravel the mystery of whether gluten-free brewing is viable in Japan.

The lack of maltsters and suppliers of gf grains, exogenous enzymes and yeast nutrients makes it sound like an impossible dream but I’ll pull some threads and see what I can do.

Have been considering learning to play the bagpipes, recently.

Any pipers here with some advice for an absolute beginner?

Been pricing chanters and they seem reasonable.

New phone received, was so excited to see the repairability of the Nokia G22 that I forgot to check the dimensions. It’s a behemoth!

Currently, de-googling as much as I can without a custom ROM.

What a bizarre evening.. one which would be a lot more convenient to explain with a keyboard featuring a more functional T key.. sigh

It all started when my fairphone 2 died, completely unexpectedly this evening when working completely fine earlier in the afternoon. No dropping or anything that might make it break.. have returned home and taken it apart cleaned, reseated everything and re-assembled.. still fucked. The last phone I was ever going to buy seems to have outlived that dream.. I am seeing some tech articles in Japanese about the fairphone 4.. wonder if it is supported here..

If I had any idea what the issue was with the phone, I could order spare parts, but would have to order for delivery to my parents in Scotland and then have them send here as there is no support in Japan.

Anyway, not the weirdest part of tonight.. when walking the dog at around 9pm, we met a snake.. only about 25-30cm.. not the bizarre part but wanted to mention it..

So.. I normally keep my eyes primarily on the ground when walking my dog in the dark due to the large wildlife population and me not wanting to step on frogs.. but tonight I looked up and witnessed something which I currently have no explanation for.. so, technically a UFO.. or UFOs as I will attempt to describe.

As I looked up, I saw a line of maybe 9-10 star-like lights, that is to say they looked like stars, they didn´t have perceptible spheres/cones of illumination that you might expect for a light source closer to land.. there is of course a lot of space between the elevation where that sphere/cone of illumination would be perceptible and actually being some sort of gas orb in space.

Strangely, they were moving.. in a line.. too slow, horizontal and linear to be explained away as fireworks (its firework season).. only white light, unchanging, unblinking.. and then after 10-15 seconds, one by one from start to finish the lights went out..

1. I am a very pragmatic, cynical, and logical person.
2. I was drinking some alcohol, but not a lot and on my return from my walk home I disassembled and re-assembled a mobile phone.. so not drunk in any shape or form.
3. I am certain there is some simple explanation for what I witnessed and am not suggesting that i witnessed anything extra-terrestial.

When I told my wife about this on my return from walking the dog, she mentioned that around this time last year her younger brother had a similar experience, albeit with less lights than I saw.

I m curious as to what it could be, I know a guy in the village who is a drone programmer and I would text him to find out if he was doing anything with a large number of drones.. but my phone is fucked.. so I guess I will just have to let my imagination run wild.

Some of the keys fell off the refurbished x1 carbon laptop that I bought and seem damaged so aren’t going back on. Were they less frequently used keys I would live with it but F5 and T are keys that I cannot live without.

Wasn’t able to find reasonably priced individual replacement keys but found a replacement keyboard..

.. I probably should have had a look at the replacement procedure before buying.. this is not going to be fun!

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+X1+Carbon+6th+Gen+Keyboard+Replacement/154084

72 screws holding the keyboard in place.. and a whole disassembly adventure before getting to that stage. I am suddenly cognisant of why I stuck to desktop assemblies in the past.

Been meaning to try overnight oats for ages, but not a breakfast eater so didn’t get around to it. However, as my wife is concerned about her weight and we are both trying to improve our fitness, I suggested we give it a go and prepared a batch last night.

I may be a concert, my concern primarily the texture and perhaps if we went with chia seeds over flax seeds I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much, but it was very tasty indeed. Went for a cocoa, vanilla and maple syrup recipe and it seems like we will stick with it for a while.

Not sure if it was a result of eating in the morning or not, but this morning I doubled my distance on my second visit to the pool, tapped out at 1km, which was a fair bit further than my target.

Just ordered some dried cranberries in order to ramp up the breakfast decadence and found a Japanese soy protein powder manufacturer who doesn’t put dairy into the mix (you’d be surprised how common a practice that appears to be)..

Then finished a brewing book and started reading up on gluten free beer brewing..

All in all a good day.

Last day working at the brewery today.. (we miscounted and “gained” two weeks).. looking forward to being there, not so much looking forward to not being there..

I was fortunate enough to be invited along to a pre-opening event for a new craft beer brewery in our prefecture’s capital city. My friend/mentor Ken got me on the list and we attended together.

It was such a good experience,not just because I didn’t have to drive and the beer was free. For the first time I was with the small core of brewers here and completely accepted within the group despite not yet being a brewer. I loved having a chance to drink with my future peer group and look forward to many future occurrences, but we need to get our brewery odd the ground before I become a fraud!

What was pretty awesome also, was that the head brewer at the new brewery lived in Scotland for about 5 years, studied the undergraduate version of the course that I just (post)graduated from and seemingly work for Brewdog for 3 years.. he knew who I was when I introduced myself and I suspect we are going to become pretty good friends over the years ahead.

We are still traversing a very stressful period of location hunting but today reaffirmed that we made good choices when we decided to start a new chapter in our lives.

Returning after a long break to sweet home 3D has warmed me to one of the (for now) available sites we have been recommended..briefly met the owner who seems like he may be willing to sell it.. we’ll see.

Teetering on the edge of depression at just how difficult it is to acquire (or rent) land in an area of such abundance of unused land and empty properties that I am employed on a government scheme designed explicitly to combat this problem..

Well, that’s my librem laptop finally packed in. I was hoping it would eek out its pitiful existence long enough for frame.work laptops to be available in Japan as I’d like the next laptop I buy to be the last. I guess I’ll need to search for a refurb to tide me over for now.

Quite the turn of events today.. cheeky wee rascal turned down a drip, and an overnight stay with her 3 favourite people in order to stay at home with her papa.. that was unexpected.. maybe I’m higher than 4th after all.. good times had and we may take our first papa and daughter trip to the cinema tomorrow if there is anything at all on that I will be able to understand.

Our tomato farming friends gave us a big bag of tomatoes which were not pretty enough for sale.. they are utterly delicious.. made a pizza sauce with some of them this evening.. was fantastic!

There may be an almost complete lack of vegan options for eating out here but the swathes of fresh produce, frequently free, makes giant strides towards making up for it!

Been really enjoying listening to music on SD card in the car rather than streaming (from my jellyfin server).. so just purchased a second hand Sony Walkman mp3 player online so that I can listen offline elsewhere. looking forward to it arriving!

I have now participated in a Japanese wedding (ours) and a Japanese wake, tomorrow will add funeral to the list.. I intend only to be a witness when we get to the creation of life ceremony, two is plenty.

Here in Japan there are clothes with slots for fans, or fans sewn into them.. this is likely true of other hot countries too but Scotland.. not so much. Anyway, I haven’t looked into them much as I imagine they devour batteries.. but I just thought to myself, what if they could be paired with a solar powered backpack.. the maybe we could go for a cycle in the Summer.. and now I may have a fun project to explore..

A curious thing just happened.. just before bed I picked up the kindergarten bags of both my daughters as is my habit, in order to grab the used clothes for washing..

Due to today’s shenanigans our 1 yr old didn’t go to nursery, but when I dropped off her older sister I also dropped of her bag as we anticipated her attending after the local doctor checkup..

So obviously there were no used clothes in her bag.. but all 3 face cloths were wet..

They were in a water-resistant zipped bag, just by themselves.. if she wasn’t in attendance how did they get wet? Why do we have to brand everything we supply with our children’s names if they are being used even when they aren’t even there? Wtf?

Wow, been living in rural Japan for a year already.. seems to have passed so quickly, especially in the context of sharing a bedroom with a (now) 1yr old sleep thief.

I quite enjoyed season 3 of The Mandalorian, more so than the previous 2 seasons, but let’s be honest.. it’s no Andor.

This was some day for one day, we had our meeting about the site we want for our brewery with the son who is representing the family who owns it..

.. lovely people, their concerns were about how it would work for us rather than anything relating to themselves.

.. they are open to us buying it on one condition, we take all of their land in the village..

.. so we need to find out how much land that is whilst testing water quality etc.

.. beyond exciting!

Five years ago today, I was the happiest, proudest and tiredness man in Scotlandia as I has just become a papa for the first time.

Fiver years on and I am still very tired but in Japan..

The 4th craft brewery in this prefecture opened their taproom doors today and we popped by to support them. By this point I know the brewer well and we frequently share info and ask each other for advice so I understand his struggle to get to this point and am delighted for him!

Hmm, the company who owns a piece of land we were considering for our brewery (whom I figured were tactically playing down the chances of them selling it to raise the price) have emailed us with a price.. it isn’t bad, we could negotiate it down a bit but certainly affordable.. if our preferred site turns out to be a no go (though it still very much seems like a deal can be made).

So looks like we are down to two sites, one preferred and one back up, but importantly both I the village we intend to live until we evaporate into the ether. Totally different projects depending on which we get.

We discovered that a close high school friend of my wife’s works with one of the two sons of the owner of the preferred site and he is the same age as me and a seemingly approachable and friendly guy.. seems pretty upbeat that the property could be used for a brewery.. I think we may call the owner tomorrow for a catch up.

Visited Mt. Koya today and it was beautiful, however I did not appreciate the sudden dip in temp (was about 27°C 2 days ago and 9°C today).. spending the night in what we thought was an old unused train station converted into a hotel.. it is still very active..

Tomorrow..Adventure World

As we (hopefully) close in on the location of our wee brewery, talk at the wee brewery where I have been interning has inevitably been moving towards the end of my contract and the next steps etc. My mentor is pretty much sure that he has taught me pretty much all that he can and he has confidence in me, I feel ready too but, as excited as I am about the next step in the journey, I am really going to miss working there.. I have loved every minute and will be eternally grateful for the opportunity.

My contract runs until end of June so still a couple of months to go but it is flying past so quickly.

Having been very quickly (within a space of a day) being told that new potential site for brewery was a no go, we found another site nearby.. spoke to a very friendly local who told us who the owner is and he was sure they would sell it to us (as they previously sold a plot to him).. he called them for us and gave us their details.. we called today and they are open to negotiating since they don’t seemingly have any plans for the land.. my wife is going to meet them tomorrow to discuss..

.. meanwhile a forestry friend showed us a few sites on a mountain that may be available at very low cost.. mostly too small but then he showed us an empty house (with workshop and Kura (grain storage building)) at the top of a nearby mountain which is empty.. we are very interested in this site, and on our way down the hill we met the mum of a school friend of my wife who knows who the owner is and is going to pass on our details next time she sees her (hopefully within 2 days).. even better, if we get this place, he is going to try to get the land opposite to build a campsite!

.. we suddenly have several excellent options, all within the village we live in..

.. things are getting pretty spicy!

Whilst waiting for progress on our water supply discussions to likely future brewery site, we have started parallel investigations into an alternative, nearby site which potentially offers many advantages over the first site.. but it is owned by the village so probably more hoops to jump through to be able to use it.. the first site is owned by the family tea farm so progress on that front may be quicker..

However the first site is in a wooded hill whereas the new site is flat and has better access.. would be a less challenging and less expensive build.. going to follow the stream by the new site today to try to find the water source and see what it looks like, whir up my fledgling 3d modelling skills and start to put feelers out about it..

Investigating just one site at a time here isn’t advisable given how slow processes are.

Yesterday, on my drive home from work I saw four wild monkeys (Japanese macaques)! I had heard that there were some on this Island but didn’t expect to see them on that route.. made my day!

Note to self: hack micropub endpoint to handle audio files.

Not sure if this will work at all (might on GtS but probably not in my site), but recorded this whilst walking our dog in the darkness the other night.. the frogs are back.

My parents arrived today and with them the 6 cans of beer from my favourite Scottish brewer. Two for us, to for my in-laws and two for my brewer friend/mentor.. my folks were travelling light..

Was almost on tears with the first taste.. there is way to much poor to mediocre small batch beer here giving craft beer a bad reputation.. whilst there are great brewers they are small and don’t have a wide spread (generally by choice) but there needs to be way more emphasis on quality over band-wagoning cheap ass table sugar liquors and marketing them as craft beer..

.. and with a sip of beer from the fledgling brewery who first inspired him to (very fucking slowly) follow the same path, his fierce dedication to the raise the quality bar of Japanese craft beer was re-forged.

.. as he reclines against the tiny food preparation area of his inadequately sized kitchen space, the protagonist, not for the first time, has expanded his sights a shade more aloft..

.. it is not for profit but borne from a desparation to be able drink a beer that doesn’t resemble domesticated pet piss that drives his determination.. such is the power of barrel-aged maple ale and raspberry and toasted nut porter..

.. the only thing that could possibly vanquish his unbridled desire to eternally change the craft beer industry in this super corporately focuses nation is the onset of sleep..

.. but our battle-aged hero has an unlikely ally in his almost one year old progeny, her impatient demands for mid-sleep liquid snacks and the females in his family (who represent 75% of the “bedroom”) incessant talent for talking perpetually whilst awake or otherwise..

.. will our grey-haired, white-bearded, ginger eye-browed, middle-aged, peddler of as of yet non-existant theoretical future beers love up to this moments expectations and indeed will he ever stop typing this unnecessarily long drivel-filled, failed attempt at a goodnight fediverse post?

Hard to say really, maybe time wil. te..

💤

Our first non-domestic visitors (my parents) since moving to Japan have landed on Japanese terra firma. Still enough time to tidy the house etc. before we go pick them up this afternoon.

Looking at hop rhizome sites and hoping to place an order and get planting soon.. but first I need to confirm that I can definitely use the plot of land which has been suggested for them, and then that it is actually suitable.

My parents arrive for a few months on Friday so could be a good project to start with extra hands.

I am so tired that when I yawn my eyes release tears.. thinking of collecting and brewing a beer with them.. a gose makes most sense..

Approaching second return date for Leviathan Wakes which I borrowed from the library and I’m only about 150 pages in. It’s a great read but I just don’t, unfortunately, have enough spare time and energy for such a tome. Will revisit if I get more time or go on holiday though as I definitely want to finish the book at some point.

I recently posted about the annual medical test that we did for the first time since moving to the village, and today I got the results of my tests.

Firstly, I am happy to report that my move to veganism appears to have cured my hyperuricemia (which was detected the last time I did one of these tests, in uni in Japan in 2010).. this is good news and to my mind somewhat expected.

However I seem to have fairly low HDL cholesterol (just below recommendation) and high triglycerides.. which I am primarily attributing to my intake of monster energy drink as a result of a massive lifestyle change and parenting of young kids.. also whereas I used to snack on nuts in Scotland, almost everything here is seasoned with some sort of animal extract so I snack a little less healthily and more often than I did when I was in Scotland and healthier options were more abundant.

Not too concerned about this as my job will become increasingly physical and I can easily cut back on sugary drinks and fatty snacks.. just relieved that nothing serious came up.

.. I did recently receive a notice that I am eligible for an array of annual cancer detection tests too (not all free). Waiting for the results from the first set of them will be nerve-wracking but I think these annual checkups are a pretty good service to offer.

I really love my fairphone, due to my clumsiness I had to replace a few parts last year and it was a breeze, it’s a great device but I am not sure that I would have bought it if I had known they were Europe only.. the replacement parts had to be sent first to Scotland and then Japan which wasn’t inexpensive.

I really love the design ethics of the frame.work laptops and, as per fairphone, their adherence to the right to repair. I would love to buy one but they too do not (yet) sell to nor deliver to Japan.

I want devices that won’t need replaced wholesale every few years but this seems pretty difficult in this part of the world at this time.

Just when we thought we had more or less decided on our future brewery location, an unrelated conversation with my brewer friend leads to us finding out about another location in this village that is potentially for sale.. and it is bigger, flatter, more accessible, has existing buildings etc. etc.

The time to be bold is upon us.. we are going to drop by tomorrow and be more direct than is customary for these parts.. fingers crossed!

At some point I am going to write a script to auto-translate my website posts as I rarely remember to manually do so so the Japanese part of the site looks abandoned.

.. should be simple enough only minor complication will be for nested notes such as photo descriptions but shouldn’t be much of a hurdle.

Today was the first time back in the brewery where I intern, for a month.. it’s so good to be back.

Realistically, I am not sure how long I can stay there as at some point preparation for our own brewery will take up all of our time but, I wholly intend to help out as much as I can until we reach that point.

Couldn’t stay up until 1:45am for the rugby, but what a nice result to wake up to!

We have a meeting tomorrow with the deputy mayor and various department folks to discuss water supply to likely brewery site and hopefully will get him to mediate a meeting with the nearby country club owners who pump village water up to top of the hill.

Once we get an agreement in principle then we can get a professional to come and test the water. I’ll borrow a water testing kit too and have a go but that’s just so that I can play with a chemistry set 😄

Then, if all goes well with the results of the water tests we can finally have an official chat about renting or buying the site from the family eat farm.. then the fun really begins!

Day off today, so I have thus far spent the morning tweaking my brewery designs.. which whilst fun, is somewhat work adjacent.. need to do something else!

Finally finished watching Andor this evening, definitely my favourite of the TV shows this far.. didn’t even finish the Bob’s Fett one, found it super tedious.

Wee syndication test

Test since moving servers

Just had a meeting with another groundwater company, this one was prepared with geological maps of the area etc. Not likely groundwater at the brewery site.. but very likely in the farm in front of it..

.. super expensive to bore though and the farm uses pesticides so we’d need to drill down very far.. not sure it’s in the realms of realism for us right now. Will try to chat with the country club about their water supply .

We had a meeting with our town hall to discuss water provision at the potential brewery site. It went pretty well, the village has a water treatment facility and a groundwater pump already and seemingly from their perspective the water is so pure they barely treat it. However, the country club near neighbouring the tea farm where our brewery may be built pumps the water up the hill and we would have to find out more about whether they do any additional treatment and discuss the possibility of a supply contract.

Whilst they were a bit quiet about whether they would pay for exploratory bore hole work at our site, they said our subsidies could be used to test the water pumped up via the country club so this is now plan A.

Interestingly, they think that perhaps the site which I would prefer but which we considered off the table due to multi-level governmental red tape might not be so difficult and may be back on the table. This sliver of hope was very well received!

Still patiently waiting for frame.work to start shipping to Japan so that I can replace this Librem p.o.s. and start playing rimworld in the only (occasionally) warm room in the house.

.. our second winter allegedly starts tomorrow.. I don’t want to work from the office.. although chances are the nursery school will be inaccessible and the day will be spent looking after the girls anyway.

Designing the housing for your dream job is actually a lot of fun and pretty addictive, who knew?

On my 3rd and favourite iteration of a brewery design for the most likely (at this point) future brewing site.. looking cool.. can only imagine how much cooler it would look if I had actually watched or read any tutorial before jumping in arse first.

Going to measure some of the other potential sites from a map and see what I can conjure up for different layouts.. tomorrow that is, for tonight I shall play rimworld!

Despite the wasted hours trying to find 3D models of brewing equipment, I really enjoyed the experience of designing our future brewery yesterday, glad there is still much to be done in that regard.. it’s much easier to explain things and develop ideas when you can actually see how the future might look. Bring on Monday!

First on the list of things to work out is how to add floors to the upstairs level in Sweet Home 3D.. was a bit surprised that it wasn’t a very obvious action.. I’m sure I can find a tutorial video or some such.

Learning how to use Sweet Home 3D to work on brewery design and am struggling to find free or inexpensive 3D models of brewing equipment.. I have a horrible feeling that I am going to have to teach myself how to use Blender at this rate.

Visited the probable site of our future brewery today to meet a couple of groundwater experts to ascertain the likelihood of there being groundwater at the site..

.. there is a non-zero chance..

So we need to bore to find out.. which is pretty damned expensive.. so we are going to see if the town hall fancy paying on our behalf..

In other news, cheeky wee rascal jnr has officially registered her first word.

The criteria applied by me is that it had to be repeatable, seemingly intentional and verified by both parents.

The word is Papa - she pointed at a photo of me and said Papa.. repeated 4 times in with pauses between and dual verified!

やった!

Hopefully in the coming weeks I can raise some issues with GtS and brid.gy and finally get them to work well together and I can get reactions sent to my site.. had it on a previous site when I was on another fediverse software and it was awesome..with the current site I wanted to write my own scripts to handle it.. with some success, I can post to the fediverse and reply, favourite and boost posts from there.. but the feedback scripts were never written, so responses are not displayed etc. I have less enthusiasm and time to write them myself as I did in the past.. so would like to use brid.gy again..

.. considered using bridgyfed and turning my site into a fully fledged fediverse account (which I also tested in the past) but I like GtS and I like my current fediverse account so don’t really feel like changing again , even though this would definitely be the easiest implementation as my site is pretty much already compliant.

So far I have managed about as much sleep in 2023 as I would have back in Scotland where the new year is yet to begin.. which sucks because I haste house to myself and stayed sober in order to encourage a good night’s sleep.

Anyway, hope everyone’s 2023 is a marked improvement on your 2022? 明けましておめでとうございます!

Going to a restaurant this evening with an interesting take on vegan friendly.. I have to take my own food.. but I am welcome to eat it there..

..

Heading to a special annual event today where the beers from the brewery that I intern at are sold to the local community at discounted rates.. should be fun.. oh and I’m not working this event.. I am participating from the customer side!

You can add civet or maybe badger to the growing list of wildlife found in our garden.. three of them this evening!

My cooking skills levelled up so much when becoming vegan re-inspired me to return to the kitchen, but since moving to rural Japan they continue to grow.. being the village vegan puts a fire in my belly.. (not literally, I have to add heat post-cooking as my daughter can’t yet handle spices). Today I made a mixed Japanese mushroom pie with roasted vegetables and the in-laws (and I) loved it.. we saved a plate for my brother-in-law who is working.. but we all have our eyes in it..

Made a 5 mile round trip through the deep snow to the supermarket and back to buy food for today and tomorrow’s dinner..

Tonight is barley and kabocha stew Tomorrow is mixed mushroom and black ale pie

Even helped a stranger by pushing their car through some tricky snowy roads.

The plan that my wife an in-laws’ came up with for how to spend tomorrow was that we’d take the presents for the kids and stay at their place this evening..

Under normal conditions it’s a 10-15 minute walk.. but we can’t walk there with kids and presents and there is just no chance that the roads between here and there can or will be cleared..

So, I guess we’re going to be staying her after all, which is good because here is where my bed is.

Seemingly there will be no further snow today, so it’s a perfect time to clear the ~100m road up to the house of the 3+ft of snow, without any useful implements as my wife wants to go shopping..

.. aye, have at it, good luck.

The snowfall took out our electricity.. our only source of heat in the glorified shed that we live in.. thankfully it was only temporary!

Was meant to be going to the brewery today.. about a foot of snow has fallen overnight and is still falling.. the road to the brewery is narrow, windy and mountainous.. I have never driven in snow before.. undecided .

Cheeky wee rascal jnr. was this evening attempting to stand of her on volition for the first time. I was pretty impressed by her determination, I’m jumping to no conclusions but she does seem to demonstrate some of my traits, more so than her sister did.. anyway.. she managed 3-4 seconds a few times and was beside herself with excitement.. pride²

I obviously knew of the existence of fingerless gloves in Scotland, I just didn’t understand their place in my hierarchy of needs.. I was lucky enough to live in places that were warm enough to not risk frostbite indoors.. and outdoors I wore thick gloves when warm..

.. now that I have a pair and am wearing them for the first time, I am not sure that they will be coming off before Spring! Though, I ordered another pair of indoor gloves today (with fingers) too.. indoor gloves.. what an eye-opener!

We’re it not weird enough that I had a photoshoot yesterday afternoon.. we have a meeting tomorrow morning about another photoshoot.. oh how I wish I still looked like my profile picture and not a sleep-deprived barbarian Santa..

Today was our presentation in front of the mayor etc. my nerves just about held together and I don’t think I did a bad job though mainly as we chopped it down into about half the size as we realised we prepared way too much. Glad that I don’t have another presentation in Japanese anytime soon and that all of the high stress tasks for this year are now done!

Hopefully we did enough to get the mayor (and his funds) on board for our plan A situation.

The vegan event went well today, at least from the catering perspective.. time will tell how well the workshop went .. if even one village cafe or restaurant puts a vegan option on their menu enabling me to eat out in the village the. I’ll consider it a success.

On the train home from a rare night out. We visited the city to attend an event that a few of our friends were involved with. I initially noticed the event on my village vegan IG account but my taco truck friend (also a sound engineer, formerly for Los Lobos and Norah Jones etc.)invited us saying there are vegan options.. the event was a collaboration between his culinary and musical selves as well as a local nut butter company and another friend of mine who will soon open his craft beer brewery.

.. I initially thought that the vegan offerings would be only from my friend but when we arrived my attendance was announced.. My name was on the menu blackboard and they made a proper big deal about it.. I was a little embarrassed at first but Christ on a bike, the food was amazing!

The weird thing was I met someone who I believe to not be Japanese and indeed to be natively English speaking who perhaps felt that I wanted to speak in Japanese and after an initial chat told me she read my posts on note.com.. a Japanese blogging site.. fuck me, my mind is blown.

What, surely not, checks diary, can it be?

.. seemingly I’ve been married for 10 years today..

😶😯😲😳🤯

That feeling when you see mentions of a new star wars series in your timeline and finally get control of your remote control only to discover that Disney+ is wise to your Japan move and won’t be sharing it’s goodies with you any time soon.

I really need to find some time to re-implement brid.gy into my site, I need my photo posting process to be website based with syndication out to here and IG as I’m not posting to my website (and as such not here) these days.

My final assignment of the current course and of my PgCert was announced yesterday. I was really hoping for a topic that I had already researched to some degree as December is insanely busy.. but alas, it is on something that I haven’t read a single paragraph about to date.. balls!

It will be interesting but I don’t see how I can actually get it done with the amount of events that have been placed in my schedule.. wish I could just clear the decks and focus on this but cancelling engagements isn’t the done thing here, even if you had nothing to do with their arrangement in the first place.

In other news, cheeky wee rascal jnr has discovered the advantages of bum-shuffling and can now slowly move around the room.. increasing the need for morning ☕

Perhaps a somewhat controversial thing for a wannabe brewer (beer) to say but Fire One Day Black chilled coffee is by far the best beverage that Kirin produces. So much so that it’s appearance in convenience shops is brief, they sell out quickly. Very much my go to daily ☕

Back in 2010, I started dating the girl who would become my wife, we were in Okayama, Japan and the world cup was awesome. Watched every game, mainly with friends and beers and supported my host country as well as I could.

Skip forward 12 years, we are back in Japan and the game that I am struggling to stay awake through is the first and maybe last of the tournament I’ll watch.. My interest in this sport ended at a Scotland vs Canada friendly match in Easter Road some years ago and shows no sign of returning.

Thankfully, I am here to try and support my host country in other ways, so I don’t feel guilty.

Another village festival where the only “vegan” option was fries (cooked in the same oil as chicken). just as well I knew not to have any expectations and had a big bowl of ramen before we attended.. but the village must do better..

.. next stop though is the brewery where I intern, where for the first time in ages, I’ll be drinking the beer!

Thinking ahead to when we have a brewery.. I want to brew in a kilt, yes, it is gimmicky but story is everything here and it would be a crowd pleaser.. but I don’t want to brew in a woollen kilt for obvious reasons..so looking at utility kilts and wondering if I’ll ever be welcome back in Scotland if I wore one..

Cheeky wee rascal jnr has a fever and we’ve had name sleep for a couple of days so had to reluctantly cancel my shift at the brewery today.

On the plus side, we are just finalising the schedule for our next business trip to visit breweries in Ehime prefecture at the start of next week. All 5 of the breweries I contacted are happy for us to visit and have a chat, so pretty excited.

Rustling up some pumpkin and barley stew for dinner using ingredients (including the barley) primarily grown in this village or our family veggie garden.

Smells pretty good!

I have to record a 2m20s or so presentation contribution tomorrow.. wonder how many hours that will take.

My family are away visiting my wife’s grandmother which meant that I had the weekend to research for my assignment. However, due to sleep deprivation, I was way too tired yesterday to focus so got very little done.

Thanks to the village’s early morning public announcement activity any hopes of a long lie to capitalise on the empty bedroom were dashed..

.. this morning I will bathe in espresso and hopefully power through my assignment.. still tired but what else is new..

As well as working very hard over the past couple of days, I have also had the chance to visit my friend’s washi factory in the village and see the world’s thinnest paper being made.. which was cool.. and also been rushed in the pitch dark by a wild boar whilst walking my dog.. which wasn’t cool.. life is a rollercoaster!

Another day, another early warning national alert about missiles being fired in the direction of Japan by North Korea..

Washing kegs today! 36 inside and out.. it doesn’t feel like a chore yet, all part of the glamorous life of a brewer (I’m just a keg washer right now but some day!).

Today at the village festival, which I attended after completing my assignment two weeks early, I was encouraged to take part in an activity called katanuki in which for a small fee, I randomly selected a thin candy square with an animal imprint on it.. the challenge is to remove the animal without breaking the candy frame, using a safety pin.

Seemingly my wife has never seen this completed successfully.. today on my very first attempt, I completed it and won a giant inflatable baseball bat for my daughter.

.. It didn’t seem like something that few people complete but there were a whole lot of people coming over to watch. Life is weird sometimes.

Looking after my baby girl whilst her sister has her sports day and I started singing to her .. Caledonia.. but I couldn’t remember the order of the lyrics on the second verse so I played the Dougie MacLean video.. which led to..

.. SRU - Highland Cathedral .. .. Stanley Odd - Son I voted yes .. Stanley Odd - marriage counseling .. The Proclaimers - cap in hand..

.. wondering if there is some sort of theme developing..

I appear to have mistakenly picked up a non-study-mode-triggering variety of chilled coffee.. certainly well below the RDA of studytocin..

Maybe another mug will help..

Today is the start of a 3 day study marathon, by the end of which I hope to have completed (a decent draft at least) of my first assignment.. if I get it finished it will be almost 3 weeks early.. but I have so many appointments and meetings this month that if I don’t get it finished by the end of these 3 days it might not get finished in time.. which is crazy..

Seems like I’m going to have to be the one to reach out to other group members to start talking about assignment 2 as well since no-one else has.. I really think group assignments and distance learning are an awful match but we are where we are..

The last couple of days at the brewery have been pretty physical and I didn’t sleep well last night so today’s study session is proving to be quite the challenge!

Covered the material from the lecture, just need to get through the additional reading and maybe make a start on research for my first assignment..

.. but currently I’m trying to work out if I can use a Cornelius keg as a portable continuous coffee ingestion system..

Just watched “Everything everywhere all at once”, what a profoundly excellent movie that was.

Today, I will start studying my latest uni course on “Cereals, Malting and Mashing” which started this week. Will be learning all about the structure of a barley kernel.

I may also start researching my first assignment on climate change and it’s impact on barley crops.

Last night when taking our dog out for his walk in the pitch black rural neighbourhood, we were stopped in our tracks immediately upon leaving the confines of our house by a booming bark. My best guess was that it is a wild boar and carefully retreated.

My wife and brother-in-law (the latter being somewhat of an expert on them) confirmed this morning that we do indeed have a wild boar living about 5 metres from our house.

Going to try and convince it to leave this morning before my brother-in-law takes more.. terminal.. actions. Can’t have a wild boar living quite so close to my daughters.

I was seemingly a cameo on NHK’s spot on the brewery I am interning at, but I missed it as I opted to help out for an extra 4 hours today at said brewery.

My daughter saw me on TV though and is seemingly very proud.

Instead of perpetually skipping through my unorganised music collection, I’m going to try to listen to brewing related podcasts on my drive to the brewery today..

.. lined up are “troubleshooting acetaldehyde”, “fundamentals of CIP” and “yeast stress”..

Rode an electric kickboard for about 24km today on a trip into the mountains to harvest some hops.. easily the most fun I have had in a very long time.

..seriously considering buying one.. I’d far prefer to travel by an electric scooter for short errand runs than in a car..

.. I had, I seem to recall put aside some money for a steamdeck.. can get a kickboard for about the same amount.. hmmm.

Holy shit! Vegan pizza (and soup curry) available at a food court in Kochi city.. accidental find.. my other options were onigiri or potato, result!

A couple of interesting things happened today..

.. we were travelling over a local mountain on a rarely travelled road and I saw my first wild boar, a young un, was very cool.

.. was told that some of the snakes around these parts are venomous.. tonight’s dog walk in the pitch black, unlit rural neighbourhood was a shade more edgy than normal.. yon lass from encanto with the super hearing had nothing on me.. I heard EVERYTHING!

Have a couple of days off! Wondering what to do, I have a few little tasks that I’d like to get through but they will all require more coffee, a shower and air conditioning before I can even think about them.

Just registered for my next uni course which is exciting after such a long break. So I may study a bit before I head around to my brother-in-law’s place to hook up his internet.

The things I want to do are related to my future brewery but I need to force myself to take the days off when they come.

Wondering if any Gàidhlig speaking friends can suggest a third ’te’ ending word with similar vibes to slàinte and fàilte?

Full disclosure, I want to make three beers in the future utilising my in-laws’ tea and ’te’ can (artistically.. loosely.. sort of) be pronounced similarly to how the Japanese word for tea is pronounced so I have 2 out of 3 names..

.. and zero recipes.. yet..

A month or so after deciding to retire my pixelfed instance (purely due to being to busy to administer multiple personal social media sites - well mainly at least), I have created some social media accounts for the future brewery.. all on the evil silos, let’s be honest the fediverse isn’t a welcoming place for businesses (which is fine) regardless of their small, local producer intentions.

Anyway, Instagram seems to be the most useful tool for connecting with locals around here and I’m not dis-enjoying (?) the initial endorphin fuelled set up game.. I have enough traction to combat the slippery slope of these gamefied silos for my personal accounts but for future business purposes at this point for documenting our story is ok, I think.

Allegedly, according to openweathermap.org the temperature here today will not breach 30°C..

.. I live in hope but have little faith that this will be the case.

A wee bit surprised to turn up to the brewery to meet an NHK camera crew filming us making beer today.. hair is a mess..

They seem quite interested in our story too and have taken some of my details..

Interesting adventure indeed!

The day started by helping out a my friend Masa and he showed me his potential future tortilla kitchen, then I scouted the Northern boundary of the village and now have 10 potential sites for the brewery.. No clue about availability, just currently un-utilised spots, seemingly abandoned buildings or potentially shared spaces with existing tenants.

Just pulled together a map and document with photos of sites..

.. very much not a day off so I may take my day off tomorrow instead :)

Today is my day off so I am going brewery location hunting around the village.. technically that’s working but I’ll take my time and really try to explore.. without traipsing too much on people’s property!

This evening our 5 month old daughter achieved two milestones .. she managed to get her foot into her mouth for the first time.. and then shortly after she rolled over on to her tummy from lying on her back, again first time..

I started calling her “destroyer of worlds” and then she fell asleep on my chest.. so she is MY destroyer of worlds.

Saw my first tanuki in the flesh today.. one who I hope was just dangerously narcoleptic and not in fact deceased on the road.. 😳

Seemingly we now have a tanuki living in our garden! My wife saw it yesterday morning.. I am only mildly jealous..

On the mountain road to the brewery where I work there is construction being done and on the days that they work the road is closed for 50 minutes out of every hour. I really need to get better at working out when it is and isn’t happening. The sign has a date range but makes it clear that work doesn’t happen over the weekend.

.. however I am often here during the week and they often aren’t working despite the sign.. hmm.

Busy weekend ahead bartending as this is apparently the taproom’s (expected) busiest weekend of the year.. but to maximise my utility I also volunteered to come in a couple of hours early to vacuum-pack a big bag of hops.. no point in half-assing the brewery experience, if the brewer is going to be exhausted then so am I.

Just spent 3 hours manually weeding “our” garden whilst my wife’s parents wielded powered machinery to tackle the big stuff.. rural living is just a constant battle against the super-fast growing foliage..

If it was down to me I’d just let it win.. fucking knackered!

In the mountains of Towa (where I accidentally left my phone last week and picked up today) doing a spot of river swimming.. I love this place, so isolated and the water is crystal clear!

Unfortunately a rockslide closed the road to the brewery yesterday and is still not cleared so instead I’ve built my wife’s office desk, finished a book about IPA, updated my brewing database a bit, started a book on water (from a brewing perspective) and started giving the shadowing method of learning Japanese a go. Busy day.