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.


Categories:

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.