We recently had a nomikai (food and drink gathering) with some ex-colleagues of my sister-in-law. They work and/or worked in quality control for our prefecture’s biggest saké brewery Suigei.

My sister-in-law worked there part-time for a while and said that her colleagues were keen to meet us. So we met with the former head of quality control and his wife (who we had met before) and the current head of quality control. Another friend joined us and quite unusually, out of the 7 of us gathered, 6 had some sort of academic qualification in biochemistry and/or microbiology.. it was a fascinating evening.

The ex-head of quality control retired and wants to start a new brewery creating a new category of alcoholic beverage (which I will not go into) and I love his idea. I think his plan is very exciting indeed.

He and his wife visited us this morning to ask advice on setting up a company and the various administrative paths we have traversed to get to this point.

I can see a very fun and collaborative relationship developing between us.