Drinking culture is quite different here than it is in my experience in Scotland.

I don’t think it is necessarily unique but it is different to my experience.

Food is very important in drinking culture here whereas ordinarily in my experience in Scotland (yep, repeated 3 times, intentionally).. food was generally before or after drinking.. with the rare exception of dinner parties or going out for a meal (as the main event of the evening).

As such the topic of food pairing with beer often comes up and I am entirely useless in this regard.

We bought an Irish red ale for someone as a souvenir and thanks for recent help and I was pushed into suggesting a food pairing.. all I could say was stew.. then in a Japanese context hasashi rice (rice in a sort of tomato demi-glaze meat sauce).

Not necessarily a bad pairing but lucky if it is a good one.. I probably need to study this topic more.

For the first time, I have been invited by some brewers on our Island (Shikoku) to a wee gathering to drink, eat and be merry. Should be fun!

There is a small group of non-Japanese brewers on the island who are very active in their group chats etc. but I am not yet a peer so haven’t previously been invited to participate.

However, we are on the verge of joining them in the industry and this feels like an acknowledgement, which is nice.

I still can’t ✔️ the “become a brewer” box on my site but it shouldn’t be the case for too much longer.

Lego mornings are good mornings!

Other child-friendly small-scale construction block brands are probably good too.

About to head to a hearing about the proposed bypass through our village. Have rehearsed my contribution and should be fine.

Not convinced that the views of 8 people are going to trigger any changes though, particularly as 4 of them are our family.

I’ve been to an unfortunately large number of funerals since moving to Japan but today’s has been the most difficult.

Having to drive our deceased dog to the crematorium was tough.

His ashes will be scattered in the Pacific Ocean this evening, which is fitting as he loves water.. so long as he didn’t suspect you were using it to clean him!

We woke very early in the morning to discover that our dog had passed away.

He had been suffering for a while, and held on way longer than expected but now finally his suffering is over.

He was with us for 13.5 years and will be sorely missed.

Up at 3:30 after maybe 3 hours of sleep to drive 300km to Osaka for an all-day seminar in Japanese on off-flavours. So glad convenience stores are 24/7 here as energy drinks/coffee will be required!

Rainy season officially ended yesterday making it the shortest rainy season on record.

Now the onslaught of Summer begins.. going to be around 39°C real feel in a few hours.. currently 34°C.. I wonder if there is anyway to tell the AccuWeather app that I am a peely-wally Scot.. I feel like that’ll bump the real feel temps up by 5°C or so.

At least it will only feel like 32°C in the shade because that’s not oppressively hot or anything..

Humidity is currently 62% and rising. 🥵

My former and my wife’s current boss called us into the office for a meeting this morning.

He is the chief of the planning department at our village hall and formerly worked in the construction department

He had heard that we were concerned about the planned bypass and interchange which on the current plans cuts into our brewery land.

The meeting was to reassure us, the road to the interchange is a village road and it is this which cuts through our land but he assured us the village would reroute it so that it didn’t impact us.

It wasn’t a necessary meeting but it’s nice that he went out of his way to reassure us!

We have submitted our response to the feedback from our subsidy application.

We had a very positive meeting with our team at the village hall yesterday and they offered some more suggested responses too.

I feel like our case is solid now.

Next and final review is next week.

Each committee member, of which there were 4, marked us on business concept and extent to which our project helps solve a local problem.

The marks are out of 5 and most were 4s and 3s, just the one 2 which we have addressed fully in our response.

Excited and a bit nervous for the next review.

However, we have a seminar to attend on Sunday in Osaka followed by beers so that will help take our mind off of this for a day or two.