The long-awaited, long-ass update.
I've been laying low for a while, waiting for the heat to blow over, ya dig? Cuz here's what happened at my house the other month:
Loyal followers of this blog will remember the proud story of HERMS, the brewing system that could. He sat on my balcony. He wanted nothing more than to brew up some beer in peace. Well, that little trooper put out about two batches before the fuzz showed up.
Toward the end of the brew day one day in March, a local beat cop rang the door bell saying he was responding to a complaint about a "foreign" smell. (He used the word for foreign as in foreigner, not as in strange.) 'Well hell, you came to the right place!' says I, 'Come on in and make yerse'f ta home!' And he did.
After checking out the system he said it looked OK to him, 'daijoubu', no problem, etc. Even smells kinda good, said he. Have a super-duper day! And he was off.
I thought it was all good in the 'hood, but my wife suggested that we try to appease the neighbors a bit. So we drafted a really nice neighborly note and dropped it into everybody's door slot mailboxes on all sides of us, up, down and side-to-side. Couldn't hurt right? Like: 'Heyyyyy, neighbor. We are homebrewers, and totally normal, hetero, no diseases...If the smell is obnoxious just let us know, and we'll knock it off, and also, come on down/over/up/whatever and drink some of our yummy beer!' That's about the gist of what it said. I cannot emphasize enough how sweetly suburban this note was.
Cut to the following week. The wife was still a bit concerned, so she stuck around for the brew day--we took a pretty swell little video that you may have seen, demonstrating how a HERMS brewery works. Anyway. Right after the boil finished--ding-dong! Well JP doorbells actually go 'pin-pon' not 'ding-dong' but, whatever, the point is: BACON! Again!
Another Omawari-san (= "guy who walks around") cop shows up. 'Hey um, somebody called in. Foreign smells. Need to check it out.' Aight. Look-look. OK. No probs. BUT... Just need to let the higher-ups in on this to make sure. (cartoon sound of baloon deflating). 'OK, later. Looks good to me, but some boss level dicks are coming your way, see ya!' Slam, goes the door behind him.
'Pin-pon'! Goes our JP front door five seconds later. But it sounds like ding-dong.
'Uhhh...municipal polizei, uh...can we come in?'
I sicked my wife on them because I couldn't come up with the Japanese word for 'Ayup'. She went to the door and said it in Japanese.
These were two plain-clothes law men. They left their gum-shoes at the door, per custom, and came into our place, piggy toes a-wiggle, and nostrils a-flare. One of them had an iPad. That was the one that looked like Mel Brooks. The other one, the leader, was the JP version of Mr. Smith from the Matrix, but with worse teeth.
They poked around and checked out the HERMS, but it didn't really seem like they were seeing anything they hadn't seen before. They completely ignored the stir plate spinning on the kitchen table, which, if that doesn't look like suspicious paraphernalia, I don't know what does.
'Okay Neo. Here's how it is.' Mr. Sumisu started. 'You're going to stop brewing this beer.' Tap-tap as Mel Brooks brings up some JP law on his iPad. 'The tax law in this country allows you to brew beer only up to one percent alcohol, did you know that?' Shocker. Atsuko translated.
-Break for education-
I may have let some of my frustration through on that, but my amazing wife skillfully translated to smooth over any difficulties. Nevertheless, I braced myself for the tazer's cruel bite.
Surprisingly though, Mr. Smith and his side-kick dropped their guard, a little at least, and looked at us for an instant as humanoids, as if to say, 'Let me let you in on a little secret.'
Actually they said a whole bunch of stuff which I didn't catch. But my wife explained it to me pretty faithfully, like this:
They don't actually care about your brewing, and don't want to bust you, because it's a huge PITA for them. But if a neighbor complains, they have to respond. And if their response turns up something that blatantly is breaking a law, no matter how insanely retarded that law is (which even they seem to think it is), they have to act on it. What that means is that they can and will fine you $10,000; confiscate your equipment (worth $2-3000); jail you; get you fired from your job (and you'll never work again here if that happens); deport you. So uh...you pretty much have to stop brewing unless you want any-slash-all of that to happen. Ya dig?
Sucks being an adult sometimes.
They proceeded to snap a bunch of pics of my system and then went on their way, apologizing for the intrusion. Blammo.
Well, that was a shock that knocked me out, to be sure. And it's taken me about three months to come out of it. Fortunately though I remembered that I am brewing completely within the law, producing 1% beers, and therefore have nothing to fear.
Hear that? The 1% have nothing to fear!
But good people, another thing that comes from this is, thanks to the hilariously peasant-like mentality of the brewing laws here, it is much, much more interesting to be a home brewer in Japan than in the States. There's really something at stake, making you constantly ask if it's worth it. When the answer is an instant and unequivocable "YES" then you know you have the righteous bug.
PS: No, I won't tell you what became of my brewery. Let's just say, it's "gone". M'kay? But stay tuned.
I've been laying low for a while, waiting for the heat to blow over, ya dig? Cuz here's what happened at my house the other month:
 |
| Dramatization; actual cops did not have guns, helmets, or awesome wheelz |
Toward the end of the brew day one day in March, a local beat cop rang the door bell saying he was responding to a complaint about a "foreign" smell. (He used the word for foreign as in foreigner, not as in strange.) 'Well hell, you came to the right place!' says I, 'Come on in and make yerse'f ta home!' And he did.
After checking out the system he said it looked OK to him, 'daijoubu', no problem, etc. Even smells kinda good, said he. Have a super-duper day! And he was off.
I thought it was all good in the 'hood, but my wife suggested that we try to appease the neighbors a bit. So we drafted a really nice neighborly note and dropped it into everybody's door slot mailboxes on all sides of us, up, down and side-to-side. Couldn't hurt right? Like: 'Heyyyyy, neighbor. We are homebrewers, and totally normal, hetero, no diseases...If the smell is obnoxious just let us know, and we'll knock it off, and also, come on down/over/up/whatever and drink some of our yummy beer!' That's about the gist of what it said. I cannot emphasize enough how sweetly suburban this note was.
Cut to the following week. The wife was still a bit concerned, so she stuck around for the brew day--we took a pretty swell little video that you may have seen, demonstrating how a HERMS brewery works. Anyway. Right after the boil finished--ding-dong! Well JP doorbells actually go 'pin-pon' not 'ding-dong' but, whatever, the point is: BACON! Again!
Another Omawari-san (= "guy who walks around") cop shows up. 'Hey um, somebody called in. Foreign smells. Need to check it out.' Aight. Look-look. OK. No probs. BUT... Just need to let the higher-ups in on this to make sure. (cartoon sound of baloon deflating). 'OK, later. Looks good to me, but some boss level dicks are coming your way, see ya!' Slam, goes the door behind him.
'Pin-pon'! Goes our JP front door five seconds later. But it sounds like ding-dong.
'Uhhh...municipal polizei, uh...can we come in?'
I sicked my wife on them because I couldn't come up with the Japanese word for 'Ayup'. She went to the door and said it in Japanese.
These were two plain-clothes law men. They left their gum-shoes at the door, per custom, and came into our place, piggy toes a-wiggle, and nostrils a-flare. One of them had an iPad. That was the one that looked like Mel Brooks. The other one, the leader, was the JP version of Mr. Smith from the Matrix, but with worse teeth.
They poked around and checked out the HERMS, but it didn't really seem like they were seeing anything they hadn't seen before. They completely ignored the stir plate spinning on the kitchen table, which, if that doesn't look like suspicious paraphernalia, I don't know what does.
'Okay Neo. Here's how it is.' Mr. Sumisu started. 'You're going to stop brewing this beer.' Tap-tap as Mel Brooks brings up some JP law on his iPad. 'The tax law in this country allows you to brew beer only up to one percent alcohol, did you know that?' Shocker. Atsuko translated.
-Break for education-
In Japan, beer brewing is governed principally by tax law, based on the amount of malted barley that is used, rather than the alcohol content per se. This creates immense revenues for the government from the major breweries; or would anyway. Big breweries respond in kind by replacing part of the barley content in their products with adjuncts like sugar, corn, rice, peas, and other non-grain sources which are untaxed, or taxed at a lower rate. This has the knock-on effect of producing products which SUCK, and as a tertiary effect, stifling an otherwise burgeoning craft beer scene in Japan. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog story thingy.'Sorry for my ignorance, sir,' says I. 'Where I am from brewing beer is a given right, and I just took that right for granted. I should have known better. But officer. How come I can make eighty gallons of 13% plum wine at home with no trouble, but I have to get a kajillion-yen license (roughly a squadrillion dollars) which requires me to produce a fluptillion hectoliters (about a googol-plex times infinity's worth) of beer just to be legit in this god-forsaken fucked up backwards-ass shit-hole of a wonderful awesome country that I love so much?'
I may have let some of my frustration through on that, but my amazing wife skillfully translated to smooth over any difficulties. Nevertheless, I braced myself for the tazer's cruel bite.
Surprisingly though, Mr. Smith and his side-kick dropped their guard, a little at least, and looked at us for an instant as humanoids, as if to say, 'Let me let you in on a little secret.'
Actually they said a whole bunch of stuff which I didn't catch. But my wife explained it to me pretty faithfully, like this:
They don't actually care about your brewing, and don't want to bust you, because it's a huge PITA for them. But if a neighbor complains, they have to respond. And if their response turns up something that blatantly is breaking a law, no matter how insanely retarded that law is (which even they seem to think it is), they have to act on it. What that means is that they can and will fine you $10,000; confiscate your equipment (worth $2-3000); jail you; get you fired from your job (and you'll never work again here if that happens); deport you. So uh...you pretty much have to stop brewing unless you want any-slash-all of that to happen. Ya dig?
Sucks being an adult sometimes.
They proceeded to snap a bunch of pics of my system and then went on their way, apologizing for the intrusion. Blammo.
Well, that was a shock that knocked me out, to be sure. And it's taken me about three months to come out of it. Fortunately though I remembered that I am brewing completely within the law, producing 1% beers, and therefore have nothing to fear.
Hear that? The 1% have nothing to fear!
But good people, another thing that comes from this is, thanks to the hilariously peasant-like mentality of the brewing laws here, it is much, much more interesting to be a home brewer in Japan than in the States. There's really something at stake, making you constantly ask if it's worth it. When the answer is an instant and unequivocable "YES" then you know you have the righteous bug.
 |
| Righteous. |
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So there is a downside to all that benevolent social engineering. I suspect that you have just experienced the tip of the iceberg. Should you sideline your brewing, and venture into any other endeavor worthy of note, like chainsaw carving, yodeling or hog-raisin, you could-ought find yourself staring down the benevolent barrel of big brother's slap-down stick. Just mind your place, cog on, then die honorably to make room for the next pod-thrall. And keep your feet on the nature-path to minimize erosion and don't make eye contact with the squirrels.
ReplyDeleteWe have a deal with the squirrels.
ReplyDeleteYakuza squirrels, I bet.
ReplyDeleteAnd staying tuned. But I'm a magician and know all the secrets to disappearing tricks.
Watch this...