Happy 2016!

Happy New Year EVERYONE!

Nishi Arai Daichi

If you haven’t read my year in review post yesterday, please read it before coming here.  I just wanted to tell you about all of my plans for this year and how things are shaping up.

2015 Hatsumode

This blog will continue to operate and I have enough posts that I am not worried about it.  I should be able to have enough posts to last until next year, so you will still be seeing a lot about Onomichi and Ehime.  I will also start posting about Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver from my trip there last summer.

Onomichi Station

Personally, I have a big announcement.  Last year I started up my own company.  I have a lot of ambitions to do things in Japan so I started a Kabushiki Kaisha (incorporated company in Japan).  I had a lot of headaches and a lot of stress after I opened it up and while I had been keeping really quiet about it here, I feel confident that things are moving forward.

Daruma at Nishiarai Daiji

Coming later this year, I plan to make my biggest gamble ever; I will open a bar in Tokyo!  I am both excited and scared beyond belief.  I do plan to blog about it in the future but until things are open I don’t want to give away too much.  I have told a lot of my close friends and a lot of people who I have met that I will open a bar but I haven’t gone public here.

Raku Beer

The new bar will be in eastern Tokyo and I really hope you will all come.  I will be there to get it off the ground but I will leave it to the future employees who will do the day to day operations.  I am also looking forward to selling a few of the other wares that we are producing.

Minoh Stout

If you don’t know about it, I produced a T-shirt with a friend of mine.  My friend created “Hanamizu Taro” after her husband and she was gracious enough to license the image to us so we could make shirts.  You may have seen me wearing it from time to time and you can buy it too!  Right now we are only selling it in Japan as we can’t afford overseas shipping.  If you do want to buy one, and you are in Tokyo, leave me a message and I’ll meet up with you.  If you are outside Japan, I can always mail it but I will have to ask for bank transfers.

2015 Craft Beer Festival in Matsumoto

We will also be producing other T-shirts, glasses, wallets, or whatever we can image in the future so keep an eye on this too.  We hope to have an online shop in the future but with the bar coming soon, that won’t be a priority.  We don’t have time to get it running smoothly and it wouldn’t be fair to others.

No Beer, No Life! (T-shirt)

So that is my plan for 2016.  I hope that my bar will be running smoothly so that I can go to the Setouchi Triennale for the autumn session but so far that looks like a long shot.  For now, keep an eye here and to my other forms of social media to see how things are going!