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.