Back in June 2023, an interview with me was posted on the village blog in Japanese. Given Visit Kochi recently posted about me and the website is seeing some traffic, I thought it might be a good time to post a translation of the article here.

Moved from Scotland and preparing to set up a brewery! Working towards his long-time dream in Hidaka village.

Now, in his second year (as of July 2023) with the Hidaka Village Community Development Cooperation Volunteers in Kochi Prefecture. Jon is originally from Scotland. He is married Sakino, from Hidaka Village, and they lived together in Scotland, but moved to Hidaka Village in June 2022 to raise her children in an environment rich in nature. He is working towards becoming a craft beer brewer.

Q: How did you become interested in Japan, Jon?

A: It all started with a TV series I saw as a child called SHOGUN.

My interest in Japan was sparked by a TV series I saw when I was eight years old called SHOGUN.

It is the story of an Englishman who is shipwrecked on a voyage to China and washes ashore in early Edo period Japan, where he bonds with the warring feudal lords and lives in Japan. I still remember the interesting sensation of learning about the Edo period customs, Japanese culture and the Shogun along with the main character.

When I was 29, I decided I wanted to learn more about the Japanese language and culture, so I quit my job and enrolled in university. Then, when I was in my third year of university, I went to Okayama University to study Japanese culture in Japan. That’s when I met my now wife Sakino.

Q: What made you decide to move from Scotland to Hidaka Village?

A: When my first daughter was born, I wanted to raise my child in a place with a lot of nature.

When I came back to Hidaka Village, Sakino’s family home with my daughter, I thought, ‘I want to raise my child here’.

It is surrounded by mountains, with a beautiful river nearby and rice field paths where you can take relaxing and quiet walks. I had always wanted to raise my children in an environment where there is a connection with nature, away from a life dependent on technology, and the environment in Hidaka Village was ideal for me.

I also thought I liked the way Christmas is spent in Japan. In Scotland, Christmas is a big event, the whole place is sparkling with lights and it is normal for children to receive many presents. Children even compete with each other to see how many presents they have received. Some parents even go into debt to buy presents so that their children aren’t ridiculed…

But the presents bought in this way soon become boring and aren’t played with, it is wasteful. I have always felt uncomfortable with Christmas being swallowed up by capitalism and deviating from the original purpose of Christmas.

In Hidaka Village, when you go for a walk at Christmas time, the whole village is not covered with Christmas decorations, and there is only one Christmas present for the children. Rather than being a stresfful event, we eat dinner as a family in a relaxed atmosphere. This way of spending Christmas suited me perfectly.

Q: Why did you decide to set up a craft beer brewery?

A: Since I was in my twenties, it was my dream to open a brewery.

I loved drinking alcohol so much that I actually dreamt of making my own since I was in my 20s. In Scotland, it’s not illegal to make alcohol at home, so I used to make beer at home with friends.

Whilst I knew that I wanted to make beer one day, I had a busy and varied career that involved bartending, working in retail, banking and starting my own IT company, among other jobs. Working like that, I was inevitably too busy to actually make the move to open a brewery…

Once I decided to live in Hidaka Village with my family and I began to refocus on my dream of opening a brewery at the timing of this big change of environment.

Q: How did you end up training at Mukai Craft Brewing as a cooperative?

A: After a discussoin with a friend, I wrote to Mukai-san from Scotland to express my feelings and was accepted as a trainee.

When I started preparing to move to Hidaka Village, I was introduced to Masa-san (Masahiro Tsuzuki) by Sakino’s brother who lives in Hidaka Village. Masa-san has long experience abroad and is an English-speaking Regional Development Cooperation Volunteer.

When I told Masa-san that I wanted to set up a craft brewery in Hidaka Village, he introduced me to Mukai Craft Brewing and said that there was a Japanese-American in Kochi who was preparing to set up a brewery.

I sent a hand-written letter to Mr Mukai in 2020, once MUKAI CRAFT BREWING had opened. I wrote to congratulate him on opening his brewery but included a lot about myself, my hopes and dreams, and why I wanted to open a brewery in Kochi… I ended up writing 8 pages in that letter. It was almost like a love letter (laughs).

That was the start of a long-lasting contact with Mukai-san. After I was officially appointed as a member of the Hidaka Village Regional Development Cooperation Volunteers, it was a natural progression that I was given the opportunity to train at Mukai’s brewery.

Q: Please tell us about your activities since coming to Hidaka Village.

A: I am learning about brewing online and on site.

I go to Mukai Craft Brewing two days a week to learn how to make beer and about the brewery.

Mukai-san is a good teacher, having originally been a high school teacher of chemistry and physics. It is very interesting and instructive to learn how to make beer from a chemistry and physics perspective! Mr Mukai has become my mentor and friend.

I also put a lot of effort into finding the ideal place to build the brewery. We want our brewery to be a place where people can come to enjoy good craft beer in a relaxed atmosphere.

Every day we go around the village looking for a place, but it’s not easy…

Even if we find a good place, it may be difficult to trace the owner(s), or there may be no running water… On the other hand, even if we are allowed to use the land, it may not have a great view of nature that we hope to find.

For us customer experience is ultimately important, and we can’t compromise on wanting a place in the mountains or next to the Niyodo River with a good view and clean water, so We continue to search more so that we can find a place that is close to my ideal.

Q: How is life in Hidaka Village?

A: Various people talk to me and I’m gradually learning to understand the Tosa dialect (laughs).

When I go shopping at the nearby village market in Hidaka, I stand out somewhat as a foreigner, so the ladies who work there often talk to me which is fun and helps me learn some Tosa dialect!

There are still many things I don’t understand because it’s difficult, but I’m gradually starting to understand things like ‘kojanto’ (a lot) and ‘ame furi yu’ (it’s raining) (laughs).

Hidaka village has many interesting people, it is quiet but lively and a great place to raise children.

Q: What kind of activities do you want to carry out in the future?

A: I would like to collaborate with local people in order to make different styles of beer.

I want to collaborate with various people in the community to create distinctive, local beers.

For example, it might be interesting to make a beer that goes well with Masa’s tacos or a beer using tea from the Kiriyama Tea Farm. Or we could try using strawberries or foraged fruits, herbs and vegetables grown in or around the village…

Kochi is rich in ingredients, so I’m excited to come up with all sorts of ideas!

Photo credits: Aiko Kato, Hidaka Village Community Development Cooperation Volunteer

Interview by: Yuka Murakami, Hidaka Village Community Development Cooperation Volunteer

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

Towards the end of May this year we visited the 保育園 (hoikuen - nursery school) that my daughter would be starting the following week and boy were we in for a few surprises!

Compared to the nursery schools in Scotland there are so many rules and such a big list of mandatory purchases!

Rule examples:

• Long hair has to always be tied up.
• No skirts or dresses to be worn, also no jeans.
• Children have to have urine tests twice a year (at the nursery school).
• Children have to physical checkups twice a year (at the nursery school).
• She has to take a daily nap (she hadn’t done this for over two years).

When we mentioned to our dress loving aspirational princess that she could only wear trousers and t-shirts to nursery she was surprisingly OK with that, the following day when we mentioned about having to tie up her hair she was less than impressed.  Shortly afterwards she opted to have her hair cut into a bob.

We had to order a list of items (or rather pay for them, the nursery ordered them on our behalf) prior to the start of attendance, from a bento box for carrying crafting related items along with related paraphernalia through to PE kit, and received a further long list of items to buy before she started including a futon for naps, multiple towels, bags and changes of clothes as well as pajamas.  A not quite complete photo and list follows.

Photo contents from left top to right bottom:

• Futon bag (w)

• Futon (w)

• Futon towel (currently too hot for the futon blanket so towel used instead) (w)

• Nursery group hat (d)

• Indoor shoes (d)

• Indoor shoe bag (d)

• Swimming bag (d during pool season)

• Swimming towel (d)

• Swimming costume (d)

• PE Kit (thus far only required 1 day in 2 months)

• Hand towel (d)

• Backpack (d)

• Temperature, attendance and pool permission book (d)

• Pouch for nursery letters etc. (d)

• Bag for pajamas, changes of clothes etc. (d)

• Pajamas (they have their own bag too - not pictured) (d)

• Book (borrowed from nursery semi-frequently)

• Borrowed book card (with borrowed book)

• Two changes of clothes (d if required)

• Mask (d)

• Rice or bread bento box (d)

• Bag for bento box (d)

• Cutlery (d)

• Water flask (d)

• Toothbrush (d)

• Cup for rinsing after brushing teeth (d)

• Bag for toothbrush and cup (d)

• Pool shoes (w)

* d = daily, w = take at start of the week and pick up at end.

Food is provided except for rice or bread, the bento box we ordered can contain either plain rice (no pickles, furikake, salt etc.) or bread but not both.  We need to check the menu to know the food being served each day so that we send the correct implement for eating with, we cannot send a selection.

In relation to food, prior to coming to Japan our daughter was primarily raised on a vegan diet, though outside of the house we were more flexible.  This is not an option here, we have no input into the nursery menu and whilst there are always lots of fruits and vegetables there is also a lot of meat, poultry, fish and dairy etc.  No alternative menus are available and this proved to be a tricky sell to our daughter initially.

She also had to wear a mask in class (this requirement has since been dropped but may well appear again due to a local rise in coronavirus cases).

It was pretty daunting for us as parents, even though my wife attended the same nursery, so I can only imagine what it was like for our daughter.  Actually, I don’t have to imagine, it was tough but she proved to be a battler.

A few months in

Our daughter has now been attending nursery school for a couple of months and despite initial stumbling blocks, primarily relating to reticence to eating meat and fish, she has flourished.  She eats pretty much any food presented to her and she takes naps more often than not.. which makes trying to get her to sleep at night a.. delight!  The transition period took several weeks during which her permitted hours of attendance were slowly extended and though it felt very slow at the time, it was probably for the best in retrospect. 

My daughter’s Japanese has pretty much surpassed mine by this point and now we’re seeing the start of a future challenge to get her to speak any English!

Our second daughter has began her transition period and is having to adapt to powdered milk (formula) and being bottle fed from having previously been 100% breast fed.  The nursery do not have the capacity to store breast milk pouches or bottles and it would appear that we didn’t actually pack the breast pump anyway (probably due to different voltages rendering it useless). 

My wife starts her 地域おこし協力隊 (chiikiokoshikyouryokutai - regional revitalisation scheme) next week as well as a contract to teach at university but we are still struggling to transition our baby onto the bottle so hoping that the 役場 (yakuba - town hall) can be flexible until our baby can attend nursery full-time.

Thankfully, the list of items to take to nursery for the baby is pretty small at this point: nursery group hat, changes of clothes, nappies, a milk bottle, a daily update card, a futon and blanket etc. and a bag to carry everything.

Oh I almost forgot, we have to record and report on things such as when our kids went to sleep and when they woke up, did they have fun in the evening etc.  There is certainly a feeling that nursery school here is just as much about training parents on how to raise their kids as it is for teaching children to become citizens.

Edit: It is now 13th of June and we have a Kei car, which both of us are able to move, our house sale did complete but we are experiencing difficulties in transferring funds over. We have yet to purchase a second car due to the issues with transferring money but are looking at e-power (an EV basically but with fossil fuel charging the battery) hybrid of some description.

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

Originally written on 2nd of June 2022 and published over a month later!

I vehemently dislike cars, or rather I dislike their contribution to fossil fuel utilisation and destabilisation of our planet. I had to obtain a driving licence in order to be offered a contract on the 地域おこし協力隊 (chiikiokoshikyouryokutai - rural community rejuvenation) programme and I took lessons and passed my test very reluctantly. I’ve been in some very swish (and some not so swish) cars since passing my test and when asked afterwards for my opinion on the cars, it has generally been along the lines of “well, it got us from where we left to where we wanted to go”.

Perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that I have an absolute disinterest in cars. I have an overwhelming disregard for the unnecessary burning of fossil fuels and I would be delighted to not contribute to the rapid escalation of the climate crisis.

However, since moving to rural Kochi, we have come to the sullen realisation that if we don’t procure and subsequently drive a car then we’re essentially going to die of starvation in an empty rented house.

The village that we are in has 3 train stations, all on the same line, but only one train an hour, two in evening peak hours. There is no bus service here. The village has a drug store, a Daiso (a 100 yen shop), some convenience stores, a few farmer’s markets and a few small supermarkets.

Whilst the options for prepared foods for this vegan are next to non-existent we are surrounded by a wealth of fruits and vegetables, many of which are offered to us for free.

The 100 yen store sells a lot of kitchen implements, cutlery and crockery but much of it is plastic, which we’re not buying.

Japan, even rural Japan, is pretty good for buying refills for household supplies rather than purchasing plastic containers each time one empties so in this regard the village shops are sufficient.

We’re only buying used furniture for the rental house we are due to move into, but we can’t buy that in this village, we have to go further afield and we can’t transport that on the train.

The heat is already too much for our baby on the walks to drop her older sister off at nursery school and the heat is only going to rise over the coming months.

The burgeoning craft beer industry here is dispersed in very rural places with excellent water but no public transport.

We have zero choice but to purchase a mobile air-conditioned chariot that can get us to where we need to be from where we are. Sadly, my wife and I need generally to be in different directions at the same time so we frustratingly are going to need two cars. One of which will need to be sufficiently big to fit our family of 4 and our not so small dog in.

Currently, the electric vehicle charging infrastructure is lacking around these parts though we suspect this will improve over the coming years, and we’re going to be renting a house for at least a year or two so can’t install a proper charging point there. We can’t buy EVs, despite this being the only acceptable solution in our collective eyes.

So, we’re buying a Kei car (small boxy car) and a larger … car (I’ve no idea about different types etc. not interested).. second hand of course and I’m insisting that they are both hybrids.

This however takes time, time to find acceptable options and time to transfer the funds over here to buy them. Our house sale should settle in 11 days time, so hopefully for the sake of our kids, we’ll manage to get some sort of X to Y transportation vessel before the sun reaches its blazing potential.

Of course I haven’t driven since passing my test in December last year and my wife is the same but from January, and neither of us have driven automatic so who knows if we’ll even be able to make them move.

Edit: It is now 13th of June and we have a Kei car, which both of us are able to move, our house sale did complete but we are experiencing difficulties in transferring funds over. We have yet to purchase a second car due to the issues with transferring money but are looking at e-power (an EV basically but with fossil fuel charging the battery) hybrid of some description.

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

Originally written on 1st of June 2022 and published over a month later!

Today was one that two of my household were eagerly awaiting, it was the day that my 4 year old daughter started 保育園 (houikuen - nursery/kindergarten) and the day that I started my 地域おこし協力隊　(chiikiokoshikyouryokutai - which deepl translates as Regional Development Cooperation Volunteers) contract!

There were numerous mandatory items to be purchased in advance of my girl starting her new life (which will be the topic of an upcoming post)and equally numerous forms to be filled out and processes to be completed in advance of my contract starting.

My wife and mother-in-law took our excited lass to her classroom in the morning and due to the small size of kei cars, I walked to the 役場　(yakuba - town hall) where my wife was now feeding our baby girl, post dropping off her older sister. It was only an introduction day at the 保育園 so we expected to have our meeting with my new employers then walk to pick up nursery girl once done.

However, anyone reading this has probably already taken more time to get this far than the entire length of our 役場 visit :D. We arrived, the most senior person from the relevant department and two subordinates took us to the mayor’s office (he and the deputy were out of town) where I was officially entered into the employ of the village council. This involved the senior chap reading a sparse text from my official acceptance letter and me saying thank you etc.

We filled the rest of our time walking to a convenience store and enjoying some chilled coffee (my enjoyment of this beverage has taken me quite by surprise - its a long distance from the experience of once hot coffee which has been forgotten and subsequently consumed at room temperature) then as we were a few minutes early to pick up our daughter, we spied on her from behind a sign to see if she was enjoying herself and fitting in. She had a mixed day but is looking forward to going back tomorrow!

My brother-in-law and myself then picked up a number of second hand furniture and appliance items that we had purchased at the weekend and delivered them to our new house. We still have a number of essential items to procure before we can move in but we are on our way, at long last!

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

As I write this, I’m sat in a dark room full of boxes, typing as quietly as I can on a mechanical keyboard so as not to wake up our 9 day old baby daughter.  

Our house is sold (but for the legal agreements), our flights are booked (despite KLM cancelling on us with little notice) and we’re trying to sell or donate anything that we aren’t taking with us to Japan.  

The last stress (hopefully), is the race against time to try and get our new daughter’s Japanese passport in place before the flights, and also a few minor loose ends to tie up with regards to our dog (who is coming with us).

We have just 12 days until we move out of the house and live like nomads for two further weeks, then all going well, we will be in Japan, in my wife’s parents house and trying to shake off jet lag.  Shortly afterwards, we will be checking out the new rental house we have lined up and then going shopping for a bed, probably other things too but for this insomniac, the bed is the single most important piece of furniture before we move into our home for the next few years.

This is the void between our recent past lives and our future.

This blog post is the first of a (hopefully frequently updated) journal of our new lives in rural Japan, and our experiences in the 地域おこし協力隊 (Rural Rejuvenation Cooperation) programme in Hidaka-mura (日本語), Kochi prefecture in beautiful Shikoku.  My wife and I both successfully applied to the programme and I start my contract on the 1st of June.  

Though I hope the focus of this blog will be fairly generalist and not solely focussed on my attempts to create a business (not in depth anyway), I intend to establish a small craft beer brewery in the next 2-3 years and it was on this basis that my contract was offered.  

I am quite interested too in perhaps having a writing side gig so this journal also is an attempt to get back into writing regularly and to establish somewhat of a portfolio!

Emotionally, I am a bit of a mixed bag at the moment!  Raising a new born baby as well as a 3 year old excited big sister is somewhat tiring, as you might expect, and we’ve had numerous setbacks and obstacles to overcome and it has been the most stressful period of my life but aside from this I am exceptionally excited to start our inaka life, though I will miss Scotland hugely and so for that reason I am slightly apprehensive.

I wrote a Japanese article on note.com (日本語) called シンプルライフ (A simple life) which summarised my hopes for the next chapter of our lives, and the essence was that I hope to focus on three core facets of life:

1. Family - More time and focus on my wee, growing family. This also extends to community, both our village and the Shikoku craft brewing community.

2. Food - Both my wife and I love cooking and our 3 year old daughter is also very interested in cooking, so we want to cook more often together and to support that desire we are going to grow our own fruits, herbs and vegetables.  I also want to promote vegan food options and possible even do some pop up vegan kitchens on occasion.

3. Drink - The primary conduit for this will be my brewery, but its not just about making and selling beer, its about education and collaboration.  I, of course want to make delicious beers, but in addition to that I want to enjoy drinking with friends and family.

As well as these core fundamentals driving our new lives, I want to write about it!  I think rural rejuvenation is an awesome idea, and I am excited by the opportunities to contribute to our village’s future successes, and those of neighbouring villages of course.  I’d like to encourage others to give such schemes a try.  I had no idea I qualified for such a programme, and so hadn’t given it much thought until a friend (who I met through my mother-in-law) from the programme encouraged us to go for it.. and well, Caledonia-exit apprehension aside I think that following through on the inkling of an idea, might be the best decision I’ll ever make!

PS: The blog title The KyōryokuTimes is a play on kyōryokutai which is pronunciation of the final part of the programme name, the full name being chiikiokoshikyōryokutai or 地域おこし協力隊.  Hey, I like it, OK :P

For the last few years, I’ve written a blog post at the start of the year and a summary post at the end of the year.  I’ve found it a very satisfying process and I think that doing so has actually encouraged me to achieve some of the stated goals.  That’s not to say everything I’ve planned has worked out, we all know how the global events of the past few years have caused many disruptions.  However, it seems to be a new tradition for me and one that I am happy to continue with, as such, the following are my initial thoughts for what I would like to achieve in 2022.

Prep house for sale, sell it and offload stuff

Several years ago we decided to have a double-garage renovated into a large livable space.. the contractors we engaged for this work did a half-assed job (at best) then vanished into the ether before completion.  Shortly afterwards we became parents and the renovation work was parked for a while.  I tried on numerous occasions to engage tradesmen to complete the job and almost all were devoid of any interest in finishing someone else’s job.. but we did find someone and finally in the second half of last year progress towards completion started.. the handymen involved have done some great work but the lead chap’s baby boy had emergency brain surgery a few months ago and (very understandably) this caused delays to the completion of the work.  We had hoped to be in a position to put our house on the market this month but realistically it will likely be closer to the end of February, if we are lucky! If we don’t acquire a completion certificate from the council then this project is likely to end up costing us chunk when we sell the house.

After receiving a quote from a Japanese removal company for shifting the little amount of our possessions we wanted to take to Japan, we have realised that we really need to cut back even further!  Already I was only really taking clothes, a few computers, books and brewing equipment so there isn’t a huge amount of scope for cutting back further.  Either way, we’ll have a large house full of stuff to either sell (big ticket stuff only), donate or recycle.  In an ideal world we’d donate everything but realistically finances are going to be tight for a few years in Japan so we need to try and make some pennies by selling some of our possessions.  Particularly, as the UK pound is likely to be comically weak against the yen.

Our current house is the first we bought so we have no experience of selling a house and as such haven’t the slightest clue about timescales etc.  I know that this is a highly desirable area and houses sell quickly but I am not sure about the administrative and legal timescales so I’ll need to look into that tout de suite!

Practice driving

Despite my reticence, I acquired a driving license towards the end of last year and have hence satisfied the contract prerequisite.  Whilst I still lack enthusiasm in this sphere, it is a practical reality that since we’ll be living in rural Japan, I will have to drive.  It is our strong desire not to add to the global fossil fuel consumption levels and hugely favour electric vehicles over internal combustion engine options, however we need to do a reality assessment when we move over to see how likely this is given our location.  It is also our preference to use public transport wherever possible and plausible and to walk or cycle for very local stuff. 

Regardless of what type of vehicle we end up with and how we use it, I need to get some practice in before we leave Scotland as I’ve only driven a manual car thus far.  To this end, we’ll sign up to enterprise car club which is the only real option for a new driver, and hopefully hire electric or at least manual cars somewhat infrequently so as to gain some basic level of competence.

Deepen my growing brewing knowledge

This aim is two-fold, on the one hand, I will continue with my postgraduate programe in Brewing and Distilling and complete the final (of four) courses in December this year.  However, up until now I have been studying whilst working full-time and satisfying many requirements for moving to Japan so I have mainly been studying only to pass assignments, and whilst I have learned a great deal from the courses, I intend to properly study and research many aspects of brewing once I have a lot more time on my hands.

On the other hand, I hope to gain industry experience during the few years that it will take to establish our own brewery.  As I’ve written about on this site a number of times, I have been in contact with a brewer in our future prefecture and he is happy for me to spend some time with him at his brewery!  The details are still to be discussed (in person over some of his delicious sounding beers!) but this is very positive and my hope is that I can similarly spend some time assisting other brewers in the same vein.

Move to Japan

This is obviously an easy one to achieve but there are still some prerequisites to be satisfied and stresses to overcome before we take flight and then we need to get services hooked up (superfast broadband) and furniture purchased for our new rental house, only after which will I consider the move complete.  Hopefully further down the road we’ll be in a position where we can build our own house but that will almost certainly not start in 2022.

Continue sustainability drive

For the past few years we’ve been trying to do our bit to lessen our impact on the global climate emergency, moving to rural Japan gives us a renewed opportunity to go even further.  I plan to write a dedicated blog post on our current and future efforts, we’re not experts but are doing our best and will continue to make improvements as we go forward.

Find brewery location and start the ball rolling

Once we get to Japan, we need to find a suitable location to build a brewery and lease or buy the plot.  Whilst it is possible that there may be a building in the area that might be suitable for our purposes, it is our preference to build our own place from the ground up so that sustainability is a guiding principle in the design and resource provisioning.  In addition to finding a suitable location and starting to build the brewery, we need to build a business case and do a considerable amount of paperwork to acquire licenses to brew and sell beer.  How much of this is viable in our first year especially given it’ll probably be in year three that our brewery opens is unclear, but efforts will certainly be made to make progress in this regard.

Collaborate with others for the benefit of the community

When I refer to community I really mean communities as there are distinct groups of people that I want to help, there is the local village community, the prefectural brewing community, the island-wide brewing community, sustainability-related communities and under-represented communities (women, LGBTQIA+, minorities, charities etc.).  In each case, I want to volunteer my skills (or lack thereof) to help these communities with their particular challenges however I can.

Spend more time with family

Work-life balance is key for this next year and all subsequent years!  We have another baby on the way and I want to be as much a part of raising her as I have been already (and will of course continue to do) with our first daughter.  Despite the work required to achieve all that we wish to achieve, this will be done via a framework that guarantees dedicated family time.  Our future life is going to be a simpler one, built around three very basic needs - family, food and drink.

In some regards this aim equates to normality and perhaps not something that necessarily requires specifying in plans for the year, I don’t think it is exceptional for a father to want to spend time with and share the responsibility of raising his family, but for me, I feel like it is of paramount importance that I reaffirm my commitment to family time at the start of each year as it will be a guide in the many decisions I will have to make in the coming year.

Spend more time cooking

Throughout the past year, whilst I have still been cooking a fair amount, I haven’t spent as much time planning and making delicious food, rather I’ve been cooking in order to share the load in the provision of household meals.  This is because I have spent so much of the time that I previously spent cooking, brewing instead.  This had to happen and I have no regrets but I love cooking and when we move to Japan, I’ll have a whole new selection of ingredients to learn about, which excites me. 

As our daughter Islay has developed she has, perhaps unsurprisingly, gained an interest in growing food and cooking and some of my favourite times in the kitchen of the past year have been spent teaching her how to cook and enjoying eating these dishes together.  I look forward to spending much more time in the kitchen with my wife and kids this year!

Become a forager

Since becoming vegan almost 4 years ago my love for mushrooms has exploded, to the extent that my daughter’s nickname for me is now mushroom.. Over the past year or so, thanks largely to a small number of people on the fediverse and to the accelerating climate emergency, my interest in foraging has also exploded.  I have already bought a number of excellent books and have started tentatively collecting small amounts of fungi from nearby woods just to start working on my identification skills, but time is currently a limiting factor.  When we move to Japan, I really want to hone this skill, I’m not just interested in foraging for mushrooms but the wide range of locally available wild produce (always gathering sustainably) and am developing thoughts around how I might use these in some experimental beers in the future.

Get fit(ter)!

I generally steer clear of this new years’ resolution trap, but I’m including it this time as I’m going to need to improve my fitness to be successful in my move from a desk-bound IT consulting hermit to a far more physical career in brewing.  So, once I’ve finally hung my IT boots up (for the second and last time!), I’ll don my trainers and start getting fit again.  Probably the most likely ways I’ll achieve this are through walking, cycling and yoga, though once we’re settled in Japan, I’d really like to add kayaking to this repertoire.

So there we have it, my initial list of aims for the next year, I will keep checking back on this throughout the year and do my best to adhere to them.  I wish you all luck in your own endeavours throughout the coming year.

頑張ります!

After a slow start to my series of six single hop and single malt (SMaSH) beers and a small departure from the series, I returned to complete a very satisfying three brew days using some very popular hops. In order of appearance, I used Amarillo, Centennial and Mosaic.

Aside from having a strangely enticing name, the Amarillo hop is one which I’ve seen appear in a number of beers and recipes and is one which is described by hop book author Stan Heironymus as “intensely fruity (citrus, melon and stonefruits)”. It was a very drinkable beer but due to the timing of the hop additions I missed the intensity, as such was my first choice hop in a short series of dry-hopped SMaSH IPAs.

Centennial seems largely to be a ‘support’ hop and I’ve not often seen it as a headliner, which is likely more a reflection of my novice stature rather than indicative of its actual commercial use, however I see it frequently and wanted to see how it faired by itself. It was described by Mr Heironymus in “For The love of Hops” as uniquely floral so I have an eye on it for a potential green tea ally in future creations. The aroma is certainly less fruity than my previous SMaSH beers and the taste is somewhat floral, not quite piney but definitely a hint of a plant.. quite dry to taste as well. I’m not sure that the hop necessarily shines by itself but can see how it could positively influence a beer in combination with other hops.

The final hop in this series is Mosaic, and I’ve noticed that A LOT of brewers like to add this hop in the latter stages to really enhance the aroma of the beers, and though I have not yet tapped the beer, the aroma from the keg on transfer post fermentation was awesome, so I cannot wait to crack this one open. S H says “Rich in mango, lemon, citrus, pine and, notably, blueberry” so I have plans for this one rounding out a future stout idea that I have.

Impressions on mosaic: the aroma isn’t particularly strong, but I suspect that mosaic does most of its magic in the dry hopping stage(s), I picked up notes of fruits but not the sharpness of citrus, this was more of a soft fruit aroma, not stone fruits but maybe faintly berry-ish. The flavour of the beer sort of reinforces this, the (blue)berry hints are subtle and you could be forgiven for missing them completely but in direct comparison to the centennial SMaSH it is fruitier, also the hop flavour itself whilst just as pronounced as the centennial beer is a little lighter and more refreshing in comparison.

Note: The centennial and subsequently the mosaic beers were the first to be kegged since I replaced the O-rings in my kegs for the first time and there isn’t the slightest hint of oxidation in either so I’ll definitely need to make it a common practice to replace the rings reasonably frequently to avoid spoiling good beers with uninvited oxygen!

Normally, I’d write a little about the brew days here but they were very uneventful and efficient so not much to say.

The grain bill for each of the beers was 4kg of Maris Otter (Low Colour from Simpsons) and the yeast was White Labs WLP01 California Ale which I opted for because I wanted light, crisp IPAs for this series of beers.

For each of the 6 brews in this and my earlier post a single hop as used and the measurements and timings are as follows:

• 20g start of boil (60m)
• 40g 15m from end of boil
• 40g after boil once temperature of the wort was cooled to 79 degrees C.

I used protofloc (carageenan/irish moss) to assist with fining.. and that’s it, very straightforward recipes for very straightforward beers in order to focus attention on individual hops. I learned a fair amount with these 6 brew days and have already embarked upon a short series of 3 dry-hopped beers using 3 of the hops from this series. At the time of writing this (way back in August!), I had just that morning kegged the first of these beers, using the amarillo hop and the aroma filled my kitchen, it was gorgeous! I was brewing a Citra version and I opted for Mosaic for the third.

Onwards!

In January last year, I wrote a blog post about my provisional plans for 2021 , this seems as good a time as any to review the plans and assess how well I managed to move towards achieving them.

With the global challenges of 2020 bleeding through to much of 2021, there were certain goals that were either not legally achievable or I simply didn’t feel that the risk of infection was low enough to pursue the goal in question. Protecting my family from covid-19 was a constant consideration and at times perhaps I was more cautious than I strictly had to be but in this regard I have absolutely no regrets.

So “excuses” given, let’s review the plans in order of their placement within the previous post:

Japanese Local Government’s Rural Rejuvenation Initiative (kyouryokutai programme - 協力隊)

Whilst not explicitly highlighted as a goal for the year, my year start blog post mentioned that pretty much everything I planned for the year was done so in order to enable us to apply to this scheme. Both my wife and I successfully applied and were accepted into the kyouryokutai programme for Hidaka village in Kōchi prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan. My contract is due to start on June 1st 2022 and my wife will start a few months later once our second baby is old enough to attend kindergarten. I was pretty nervous during the interview with the town mayor, deputy mayor and various village people but they were very lenient on me with their questioning and I held my nerve and responded appropriately in reasonably acceptable Japanese. There is an implicit requirement for a driving license, but as long as we were trying to obtain licenses, the village officials seemed to be content and if we need or needed to learn in Japan, I don’t think this would have been a particularly big deal.

Brew more regularly

In January I set the target at completing 15 brew days by the end of 2021 and in order to enable this to happen we invested in an additional conical fermenter, allowing me to be able to brew more frequently (approximately every two weeks). I am delighted to say that at the time of writing, I have managed 18 brew days with 1 more planned before the year ends!

Thanks in part to teachings from my part-time MSc in Brewing and Distilling course, in big part to great advice from my friend Ken from Mukai Craft Brewing and in part due to my diligence and experimentation, I’ve progressed quite well this year. I decided to put my tech skills to use and developed a beer recipe database and front end web site (which still needs to be more populated) which also helped me lean on the knowledge of other brewers in order to get to the point where I am developing my own recipes. I’ve still much to learn and much recipe development to do but I have been reaching out to family who are experts in tea in order to help me think about flavour combinations that will make for unique and interesting beers featuring their delicious products.

My brewing will hit somewhat of a wall early next year as I’ll need to pack up my equipment for transit to Japan where it is currently illegal to brew anything over 1% ABV (alcohol by volume) at home. I’m not overly concerned by this as I have always planned to brew low alcohol beers as part of my beer line up and this will give me adequate opportunity for experimentation with different techniques for doing so.

Establish brewing network in Japan

I reached out to a number of breweries during the first half of the year and established contact with some cool brewers, I look forward to future in-person meetings with these brewers and more. I had plans to contact every brewer in Shikoku but there are so many new breweries popping up so it was becoming less viable. Instead I accepted an invitation into a facebook group offer to a group for Shikoku craft brewers. I had to create a new account because I don’t have a personal one, nor do I have any intention of creating one, but access to this group of brewers has already proven invaluable and so putting my principles aside in order to be part of this community seemed to be a worthwhile idea.

Once I’m in Japan, I have the opportunity to work with Ken Mukai from Mukai Craft Brewing for a while, which I am very excited about. The details are yet to be discussed and I certainly don’t want to be a burden or outstay my welcome but with our own brewery being 2 to 3 years down the road, I’ll be happy to help Ken out for as long as he can use me. Aside from this, I hope to experience brewing at other breweries around the prefecture or island in order to strengthen community relationships and glean industry knowledge from the brewers who have come before me.

Experience breweries in Scotland

This has unfortunately been the main challenge affected by covid-19’s continuing prevalence. It has been a difficult time for breweries (as it has for everyone) and whilst many of them have adapted well, it just wasn’t feasible to visit them during the year. I did manage a few brief chats during the Edinburgh beer festival but otherwise I’ve not pushed this as a priority due covid concerns, and lack of time really, learning to drive, studying my course, working full-time, preparing for interviews, looking after my daughter and preparing for our second daughter, as well as trying to brew as often as possible has meant that I’ve had almost no free time to allocate to this.

I did contact a brewery, one of the creators of which is a friend of a friend, and whilst they seemed happy for me to visit at some point the timing wasn’t ideal as a new head brewer was about to start and get used to operations etc. Trying to find a good time to even meet for a beer proved to be a challenge and so, unfortunately the visit didn’t happen.

Whilst I am a little disappointed not to have managed a single visit, I’m not going to let it bother me, if I can fit a visit in during 2022 before me move to Japan then cool, but with a new daughter incoming, my priorities are likely to shift.

Continue studying the science of brewing

Very happy with progress in this regard. I’ve completed two courses now and am on the verge of completing my third of four. Indeed, at the time of writing this I am somewhat procrastinating when I should be studying for the final assignment which is due in 5 days time.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that I have enjoyed each of the courses equally but regardless they have all been invaluable and helped me greatly develop my understanding of brewing. Due to the fact that I have been so busy with everything else in the year, I have primarily been studying to pass the assignments and not been able to really deep-dive into the bones of what I am interested in, however, I have been gathering lots of resources so that once I am in Japan and have more time on my hands, I can really settle in and study everything I want to study.

After this current course is done, I have a final course which due to scheduling won’t start until September 2022, it will be focussed on cereals, malting and mashing processes and I look forward to learning more about this from an academic perspective.

Get house in order

After much searching we found some very good tradesmen to work on finishing our garage conversion, unfortunately due to their personal circumstances the work which is almost complete has been on hold for a few months so we’ve not achieved the progress that I hoped but they have done an excellent job and I’m hopeful that they can complete the work soon and we’ll be ready to put the house on the market early in 2022.

We were very lucky with regards to our future living situation and have a rental house being held for us until we move over to Japan. We will need to live with my in-laws for a short while in order to furnish the rental house but I’m very happy that we’ll be able to move into a space of our own shortly after arriving in the village.

Groundwork for future brewery

Nothing much has changed in this regard since the post at the start of the year, which said:

Most of the work required towards our future brewery, can’t really start until we are in Japan. Also, as the intention isn’t to establish the brewery immediately, but rather continue my studies and gain some industry experience, the majority of the groundwork is really just research and clarification into licensing requirements and laws, and understanding the hoops that we need to jump through when the time comes, the more we can line up in advance the better.

At this moment in time, I’m thinking that we may build a taproom before we work on the brewery. The thinking is that a) we’ll need one, b) it will help with networking with other craft brewers if I’m selling their beers, c) will potentially open up collaboration opportunities for exclusive small batch limited edition brews to be sold in our taproom and, d) it exploits my almost two decades of experience in working in pubs in Scotland.

The intention would be to have uniform branding between the taproom and brewery, and so we can do work on reserving web domains, logo design, and as above, reaching out to brewers etc. before moving over.

However, I have reached out to a graphical designer friend who has agreed to turn my logo design draft into something of a more professional quality! I’ll be working on the website and reserving domains etc. soon after moving to Japan.

Obtain a driving license

After paying an agency who were sure they would be able to sort out driving lessons with an automatic car in our area with no issues, they failed to do so, the result being they charged me £150 for booking a £62 driving test. Dicks.. So, in somewhat of a panic I sent out emails to each and every driving instructor or agency that covered our area and was very lucky to get a response from Kate at Fastrackpass .. but we had to go with manual as there was no automatic availability. With an incoming test I had little choice but to go for this option. Kate hooked me up with a local driving instructor Duncan and set about finding a better test date and location as the one I had booked wasn’t at our local test centre (due to covid-19 related backlogs it was a take what you are given scenario). Within days of my first driving lesson, Kate had managed to secure a test a few weeks later than the initial one but at my local test centre. Many lessons were taken before the date but I felt that we had only just finished learning right before the test, so my nerves were a jangly bag of spanners on the day and I failed within the first 10 minutes of the test.

However, I needed to get a license and ideally one with a date of issue that is more than 90 days before our exit from Scotland as this is a requirement for the conversion of UK to Japanese driving lesson to be a relatively straight-forward process. As such, we lined up a few more lessons which were more focussed on practice and confidence building, and tried to find another test date, which was actually yesterday.

My wife who had an issue with a BSM (British School of Motoring) instructor just not turn up for her first lesson, also switched to Duncan, and Kate was lucky enough to find her a test at our local centre (rather than in Stirling which is too far for the instructor to lend his car), her driving test is soon - fingers crossed! BSM were somewhat difficult to get a refund out of but after several months of following their processes, I found an email address in their terms and conditions and we sent an email demanding a refund on the threat of invoking trading standards and solicitors. Refund was issue within the hour!

.. oh yeah, I passed.

Continue to find family time

2021 has been a fantastic year in regards to witnessing the development of my daughter, she is awesome! Frustrating as hell at times, but I am so happy to spend time with her and miss her terribly when she spends time away at her granny’s house.

As also alluded to a few times above, thanks to a last roll of the dice kind of situation, we have a new baby on the way due in mid-March! Opinions were split in the household and wider family over preferences for the baby’s sex (obviously not really important, health being the only real property we care about) with my daughter and I being in the minority with a preference for another little girl. The 20 week scan was inconclusive in identifying sex but the sonographer was leaning heavily in the female prediction camp, a second scan at a local ultrasound centre reinforced this opinion but again couldn’t be certain, so whilst we may still be surprised when they arrive, it seems like baby number two will be devoid of an Y chromosome, packing instead, double Xs.

2021 brought some unexpected, awesome news out of the blue. One Sunday during our weekly Papa & Daughter movie and popcorn session, I heard someone pop something through our mailbox but didn’t get up to investigate immediately as I was enjoying cosy time with my daughter. When I checked later there was a hand-written, hand-delivered letter to me which was a pretty unusual event. Whilst the letter contained some potentially concerning health news (which is in hand and not currently a concern) it also contained the phenomenal news that I have a sister whose existence I knew nothing about until that point. The letter was from her mum, the wife of my biological father (whom I’ve had no relationship with since I was an infant - a pattern which will continue) and it introduced my sister to me as a 20 year old who has “always” known of my existence. The letter rocked me but tentatively I reached out and we finally made contact by email in June, we then agreed to communicate using online chat via matrix and met in person for the first time in November. We have briefly caught up again just a few days ago and we’re looking forward to our next meet up. So whilst not in my original thoughts for the year, this definitely qualifies for inclusion under family time!

-–

This may have been the most stressful year of my entire life, and we’re not out of the woods yet, there is still a lot to get done before we move to Japan (hopefully in late April), but I have to be pretty happy with the goals that I did achieve, yes it would have been great to visit some Scottish breweries but I can become a brewer without having done so and perhaps there will be an opportunity or two in 2022, though I’m not investing much hope in that being the case with Omicron cases on the rise.

We’ll have to see if our plans are affected by covid-19’s resilience, but those are considerations for another post in the new year covering my plans and goals for 2022.

Onwards!

Since some time in 2018 (maybe 2017), I have been tinkering with self-hosting decentralised, distributed services thinking, as many like me have thought, that once I’d configured, secured and tested the application then I would be able to convince friends and family to move over to it from the big bad centralised alternatives.  I’ve written some blog posts in the past in relation to this (linked at the bottom of the page).

Over time, I came to realise that most people aren’t going to move, and that’s fine but the primary reason that there wasn’t much effort from me to “onboard” *shudder* friends and family to these services is because they were all in varying levels of pre-release development and lacked functionality or reliability that those (largely) non-techy people are used to.. So I simply didn’t really invite anyone to the majority of them, with the exception of my xmpp and matrix servers.  I’m in the process of **hopefully** moving my last friend from xmpp over to matrix and I’ve got double-figures (just) of my people on my synapse instance.

However, that didn’t deter me, I’ve had a great time experimenting with and trying out LOTS of different decentralised apps, mainly activitypub cognisant, over the past few years and regularly raise bug reports, feature requests or generally just try to help the developers of those apps as much as I can along the way.  My whole outlook on software development has changed positively due to these interactions. 

If I remember correctly, over the past few years, I have hosted:

• Friendica
• Diaspora*
• Mastodon
• Pleroma
• Pixelfed
• Osada
• Zap
• Peertube
• Funkwhale
• Plume
• Nextcloud
• Mumble
• GoToSocial
• Prosody (XMMP)
• Synapse (Matrix)
• Dendrite (Matrix)
• Cactus Comments
• Gitea
• Email

My initial hosting efforts were on a chunky x86 server with lots of RAM etc. but for the past few years I’ve moved my sites and apps onto lower energy consumption single board computers (SBC) and rarely have I experienced any issues (though building early versions of plume on one was somewhat of a nightmare!).  I’m not going to go into the various reasons for ditching or keeping the apps that I host currently, but happy to discuss in comments or my contact links, should you be curious.

Whilst I still think that my friends and family should move over to decentralised alternative services, I’ve decided that (with a few exceptions) I’ll not be their host or admin going forward nor will my endless experimentation with the newest distributed app on the scene continue.

The primary reason for this not actually social media or technology-related, but I am on a path to a major lifestyle change and I will simply not have the time or inclination to be sat in front of a computer for as much time as I currently am.  Next year, we are moving from Scotland to rural Japan, I am (again, and this time finally) hanging my IT boots up and will become a craft beer brewer.

I’m in the process of moving those apps that I want to keep and use within my household over to subdomains of this one and ditching the others, again with a couple of exceptions:

• GoToSocial - I love this (under development) app and was the first person to host it on an SBC! I raise bug reports etc. whenever they come up.  I am in the process of integrating it into this website and already, when I post here, the post is also sent to my account on GoToSocial.  I still have to engineer the scripts for two-way synchronising but its not urgent, I’ll get to it.

• Pixelfed - I have a link below to a relatively dated post on why I stick with pixelfed, I see a lot of potential here and as such it is one of the two apps which will remain under my nipponalba.scot domain tree.  I think once bugs are sorted and the groups feature is released this offers the most likely portal for friends & family to move to should they wish (I know this contradicts what I said above but that’s just the way it is).  Also I like the dev and he has been very approachable and grateful for my contributions to the project, which is nice.

• Nextcloud - Currently used by my household and my mum, but as soon as the [Quartz64]https://pine64.com/product/quartz64-model-a-8gb-single-board-computer/ is production ready, I’ll be giving it a beefier SBC and will configure a spare SBC for my parents to have their own instance (backing up all data from Scotland to Japan is not going to be a great experience).

• Synapse (x2) - As mentioned above I now have multiple friends and family with accounts here and I hope to add more - so it is the second of two services to remain under the nipponalba domain.  I also just created a second instance (as dendrite development is glacial) for this domain, primarily to bridge to cactus comments, obviously should any of my close family who happen to share my surname prefer an account on this instance then they can have one.

• Gitea - I’ve conjured a really fast and light website publishing process thanks to gitea and so it remains as long as my websites do.

• Email (maybe) - Currently and until we move to Japan at least, we are using tutanota for our email.  I self-hosted the email before (on a VPS) but the IP address range wasn’t trusted by google or microsoft so emails to people I needed to contact weren’t being delivered, or were sent directly to spam.  If we can get a static IP address from our internet provider in Japan then hopefully I can self-host email again without trust concerns.

That’s it, aside from my static websites and various convenient apps such as bitwarden_rs (password manager) and beehive (automation tool) .

Going forward, rather than wanting to host everything for everyone, I’m more interested in trying to help my family and friends host their own services or sites - should they wish to.

Previous related posts:

Distributed or Federated Social Network

The Fediverse

Why Pixelfed?

I like to break up the slight monotony of a series of the same type of brews with a guest beer brew day, where instead of focussing on a technique or ingredient influence, I can just chill out and make a nice beer. For my 17th brew day, I opted for Siren’s Undercurrent Oatmeal Pale Ale as something about the recipe resonated with me and I love oats in a beer. I don’t remember ever sampling this beer before and perhaps if I had, I may have opted for something a little more interesting (for my taste), my attempt at Siren’s Undercurrent was disappointingly underwhelming.

The brew day was pretty straight-forward with the only real difference to my normal routine being a slightly longer boil which, and I may be mistaken here, lends itself to a slightly sweeter finish.

I wasn’t able to get one of the hops (Palisade) so switched it out for Williamette.

I was tired the night before so had decided to clean and sanitise the brewing kit in the morning before the brew, this is always a mistake but sometimes unavoidable and basically always leads to me struggling to get my head in the game. What should have been a very easy brew day turned out to be a series of micro-errors.

• I had issues with recirculation during the mash stage which led to higher than desired temperatures for part of the process.
• Once again the poorly designed additional filter around the grainfather inlet valve was swept to the side and rendered useless, leading to a little more grist getting into the wort.
• The hop spider got blocked and so required intervention post whirlpooling and cooling,
• And there were a disappointing lack of bubbles when transferred into the fermenter. Even after giving the wort a vigourous shake, the bubbles dissipated quickly leading to what I expected to be a fairly lacklustre fermentation.

I did however, hit close to both original and final gravity targets but the resulting beer lacked a little character and as this was before I replaced the o-rings in my cornelius kegs it was ever so slightly oxidated.

That said, every brew adds to my experience and knowledge and this one was no exception.

Onwards.