This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese, something about booze, and a dash of いろいろ.
日本・日本語: Japan Pre-Departure and Mid-Trip Self-Evaluations
When I studied in Tokyo, I lived at Nishi-Kasai Station, which was exactly one “Nashville Skyline” from Takadanobaba Station. After a night out, I made my way back to ‘Baba and hopped on the Tozai Line. I could put on the Bob Dylan CD and wake up 28 minutes later as we came out from underground into Edogawa-ku on the eastern edge of the city.
The first trains left at around 5:00 a.m., and I usually picked up a Cup Noodle and an onigiri or a Bulgaria yogurt and a banana on the way to my dorm from the station, got a few hours of sleep, and then ate breakfast or lunch, whichever I was in the mood for, while watching torrented episodes of American television.
I was one of two exchange students in the private dorm. The rest of the students lived in homestays or closer to campus in two other dorms, but I didn’t have that option as I was unaffiliated with any of the consortiums tied to Waseda. This was both a blessing and a curse, although initially it felt like only a curse. I had long days and wasn’t able to stop home for a nap, which I’d gotten used to on my cozy college campus. I wasn’t close with anyone where I lived, and the dorm was filled with Japanese guys in vocational schools who weren’t interested in making friends, so I was lonely.
I wasn’t used to the food being served in the dorm, which was run by a lovely older couple who put up with my occasional late returns after the 10:00 p.m. curfew. (I later learned I was the only resident who got a card that could lock and unlock the front door.) I skipped breakfasts frequently during the week as well. I bought yogurt and fruit and kept them in the shared fridge on my floor.
I never even used two critical features of the dorm: The communal bath and the roof. I’m not even sure I knew where the bath was, come to think of it. There were private shower stalls that were perfect but often required a wait. The baths would have been faster and I had no problems with Japanese-style bathing by that point, so other than sheer inertia, I’m not sure why I never tried it. The roof had space for students to line dry their clothes. I never once went to the roof. I somehow survived nine months of life in Tokyo hang drying my clothes indoors.
It’s painfully apparent to me now that I was floundering and struggling to adapt to Japan despite the fact that it was my third time in the country and the first two trips had each been two-month visits. I was 22 and a good student, but I lacked the ability to overcome these micro-discomforts (many of which are very typical discomforts Americans face when spending time in Japan). Instead I engaged in retail therapy: I spent a lot of time at Tower Records, RecoFan, Tsutaya, and BookOFF. I rented CDs and went through Dylan, the Stones, and Tom Waits’ discographies before getting very into Deep Funk, which was having a moment in Tokyo at the time. I briefly entertained the idea of learning the harmonica and even bought one that I puffed on like twice.
What I really needed was to write it out. Write out some of my frustrations and challenges, and by doing so hopefully gain the perspective I needed to see that there were easy solutions to all of them and that by just trying something different or adjusting my expectations, life could be so much easier. So much of language study is knowing yourself (as noted by Jenn O’Donnell on the podcast earlier this season, which partially inspired my 自己分析 [jikobunseki, self-analysis] spiel in S02E02) and being able to adapt your study practice to your personal needs and environment.
We can’t go to Japan right now, so it’s the perfect time to prepare to go to Japan, and part of that preparation can be a self-evaluation—the kind I didn’t have, the kind I likely would have blown off even if someone had offered it to me, the kind that someone else out there may find useful.
The goal of this kind of self-evaluation should be to set yourself up for success on the trip and to check in with yourself during a trip to see how things are going. I’ve created a list of questions. Writing through these is a way to benchmark different aspects of yourself and your experience to make sure you’re getting what you want and need from a trip to Japan without too much mental strain. (I hope this is be obvious, but I am not a mental health professional, and this is not a substitute for mental health treatment. This is provided as a reference.)
Japan Pre-Departure Self-Evaluation
Language:
How much Japanese have you studied?
What level is your speaking? Reading? Writing? Listening?
Living Arrangements:
What’s your experience with cohabitation?
How well do you share space with others?
Have you lived on your own before?
Travel:
How long have you been away from home before?
What was that experience like?
How do you communicate with your family/friends back home when you’re traveling?
Personality:
Are you an introvert or extrovert? Does this affect your mood?
How have you usually responded to challenges?
Food:
What are your eating habits?
How comfortable are you trying new foods?
What can you cook?
Have you cooked for yourself for an extended period of time?
Will you need to cook for yourself while in Japan?
Alcohol:
How do you respond in situations where people drink a lot?
Do you have trouble moderating your consumption of alcohol?
Goals:
What are your goals for your time in Japan?
How will you know if you’ve accomplished those goals?
What’s your plan to reach those goals?
Japan Mid-Trip Check-in:
Language:
How are your classes going?
Have you made progress with speaking the language? Reading? Writing? Listening?
If any area is lacking, how might you address that gap?
Living Arrangements:
How are your accommodations?
Are you sleeping enough? If not, how might you improve your sleep hygiene?
Do you need to change your accommodations to make it through the trip?
Travel:
Are you regularly in touch with friends and family back home?
If you’re having trouble staying in touch because of the time difference, are there different communication methods you could use to account for this?
Personality:
For introverts: Are you getting enough alone time? If not, how might you build some in to your schedule?
For extroverts: Are you getting enough social time? If not, how might you build some in to your schedule?
How do you think you’ve responded to the trip so far? Where might you improve?
Food:
How’s your diet in Japan?
How is your diet different from what you expected?
If you’re struggling, what accommodations can you make to get through?
Would it help to cook for yourself more? Would it help to eat pre-prepared food or from restaurants more?
Alcohol:
How have you responded to social situations?
Have you been able to moderate your consumption of alcohol, if necessary?
Goals:
Which of your goals have you made progress with?
Which do you need to focus on?
Break In Case of Emergency:
Do you need to leave Japan and return home?
I can’t beat myself up too much. In many ways, I adapted well to my circumstances. I swapped my addiction to Coca-Cola for an interest in tea. I’d tried to give up my daily Coke during my sophomore or junior year in college, but it made me miserable (like almost physically ill from caffeine withdrawals) and I wasn’t a coffee drinker. Coke made me crash in the early afternoons of my long days in Tokyo, and I had the wherewithal to start experimenting with my caffeine intake. I bought a thermos at Don Quijote and started dosing myself up slowly so that by noon I felt normal and didn’t need that burst of sugar and caffeine.
I also realized that I wasn’t hitting my study goals. My speaking abilities had hit a plateau and I wasn’t yet reading the material I wanted to be reading. So during the second semester I made an effort to improve both of these. Surprisingly both involved afternoon coffee at Cafe Veloce, the cheapest cup in town at the time. After classes finished, I sat myself at Cafe Veloce and either read or had a friend meet me there to talk.
The location of my dorm also was a blessing. I did have fun on occasional weekends all-nighters, but I retreated to Edogawa-ku for most evenings and was able to recharge and study. I read the entire “Tale of Genji.” I finished reading two Japanese novels, a collection of Murakami stories, and part of “Kafka on the Shore” in Japanese. It was a pivotal period of time for my experience with Japan and the language.
However, the real goal is to be comfortable, healthy, and to enjoy your time in Japan. All of these questions are really just a means to help you do that. If any of them are causing you trouble rather than making things easier, you should absolutely disregard them strategically.
If they end up helping, let me know!
ビール: Building A Brew System from the Mash Up (for Free)
My sink has been injured. Not grievously. But I did make it worse today.
The supply line to my faucet has been leaking for a while. I patched it up temporarily with some duct tape, which has allowed me to accomplish most kitchen tasks, but I cannot brew with it like this, which means that I haven’t brewed since September 2020. This isn’t a bad thing: It means that I’ve been able to drink down my stash of sour beer before adding any freshies to it.
Yesterday I was able to access the supply line (my kitchen is kind of a unique setup, so this is harder than it sounds), and today I made the terrible decision to try and fix it myself. Thus, I am currently not able to use my kitchen sink. Fortunately a professional will be coming soon (hopefully) to undo what I did and fix the supply line, fingers crossed.
As a way to virtually practice a brew day, I wanted to write out my normal procedure and provide a few thoughts about brewing and brewing equipment. Here’s my brew day process, which usually takes around 6-7 hours from start to finish, including cleaning up:
1. Heat 10 gallons of water in kettle and add Campden tablet to eliminate dissolved chlorine and chloramines.
2. Pump water from kettle to mash tun for a thick mash.
3. Add grain and stir until the mash settles at target temperature. Sit for 30 minutes.
4. Pump additional hot water to top off mash to full volume. Sit for 30 minutes.
5. Pump wort back to kettle and start boil.
6. Add hops as necessary while boiling for one hour.
7. Cool wort. Transfer to fermentor. Pitch yeast.
This method combines two brewing strategies: a traditional, three-vessel brew and brew-in-a-bag (BIAB).
Which leads me to my first thought: the mash is the determining factor in your brew day. This is the step when crushed barley is soaked in hot water, allowing enzymes to break down starches into simple sugars. Traditionally this happens in a thick mash, which is either then slowly rinsed of sugars (fly sparge) or drained and rinsed with a new batch of water (batch sparge).
Fly sparging means you’ll need at the very least two vessels for your brew day (one for the mash itself, and one to drain the wort into into). Batch sparging traditionally requires two vessels as well, but some genius realized that if you have just a single batch and you are able to lift the grain out of the wort rather than drain the wort out of the grain, then you only need one vessel. This is why BIAB has gotten so popular recently.
I like my method. It improves on my initial more frugal brewing method; I’m able to pump liquid rather than transferring it by hand, and I minimize both space and vessels to clean while still letting myself use a thick mash, which potentially has some benefits.
But if I was starting from scratch and I had the space, I’d probably go with an all-in-one system. These are brewing machines that do everything in a single vessel and plug in to your home’s power, eliminating the need for a gas or electric range. There are more and more of these lately, and they’re becoming more affordable, reliable, and easier to use.
But the real lesson, I think, is that you shouldn’t be buying equipment at all. Or at the very least you shouldn’t be paying full price. Join a Facebook group in your area and just wait. Someone will be thinking through these same variables and upgrading, while others will be getting out of the game altogether. You should be able to try brewing for a very low cost.
I downsized over the course of the pandemic. I gave away two carboys for free and sold three others; got out of the glass game completely, so I’m all HDPE fermentors moving forward. I had a medical-grade oxygen machine I got for free from a friend several years ago, and it (like the carboys) was just taking up space that became more noticeable as I spent more time at home. I’d given a friend a few bottles of beer for it when he gave it to me, and when I gave it away to another club member, he gave me a couple sixers from Wisconsin. The circle was complete.
It’s been pretty widely reported that homebrewing boomed last year. I think it’s only a matter of time until many of these equipment sets start getting posted on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and then eventually Facebook brewing groups when there are no takers from other places. There’s been a steady stream of people selling or giving away equipment on the group I’m a part of, but I haven’t noticed it pick up just yet, so if you’re thinking about getting into the game, now is a decent time to start looking.
Just know what you’re looking for, and keep in mind your mash: How much space do you have? How much time do you want to spend on it? How many vessels do you want to clean? Answering these questions will pinpoint a system for you.
いろいろ
I was in The Japan Times with a couple of fun articles: one about the best Japanese TikTok creators to study Japanese and another about いい歳, which I expanded from last month’s newsletter. I have more fun TikTok recs up on the blog.
Reader Joanna notes that the phrase いい歳して (see the May 2021 newsletter and my JT article linked above for more on the phrase) appeared in the 2020 Kurodahan Press Translation Prize text. Check out the post-contest package (PDF) to see nine different variations on the phrase 「まだセミなかつかまえてるのか、いい歳をして」
This critical dissection of Malcom Gladwell’s “The Bomber Mafia” is a must read.
This piece in The Atlantic nicely captures the reason why blogs have died: “Trump's Failed Blog Proves He Was Just Howling Into the Void.” The internet has shifted from a “pull media” to a “push media.” I would argue, however, that if you build it, they will come. Obviously you have to get out there and interact with people to get your content in front of readers, but I’ll always believe consistency is king. Show up, and readers will show up.
I biked up to the Devon neighborhood and brought home 8lbs of lentils to cook a ton of recipes from @rootedinspice. If you have access to the lentils in the recipes, everything else is pretty easy to adapt. Highly recommended.
Save this TikTok for when you need a wholesome pick-me-up. Just trust me.