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Showing posts from November, 2018

The Secrets of Sake: Part 1, SAKAMAI

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Part 1 Sakamai Our heroes' journey began in a small, agrarian village called Tanbo. All of Tanbo's residents were known as Sakamai, and they enjoyed abundance, growing happy and plump as if divine intervention had chosen them for a life of comfort, ease, and opulence. Until one day in late fall. A day like any other... Suddenly, horrifically, alien beings of unstoppable power and size laid waste to the village. Uprooting homes mechanically and devoid of remorse, whole families of Sakamai were ripped apart and bound - seemingly at random, and in defiance of the laws of gravity. A quiet behemoth works methodically. For weeks they hung motionless, quietly suspended midair above the only land they knew. Devoid of life nourishing resources, most importantly water, the Sakamai became so parched from the sun's dull rays, even cool autumn breezes were abrasive and withering. While each of them prayed for an end to this misery, and a return to the land that taunted t

Adulting 101: Part 7 - Career

Welcome back, class. This is part 7 of "Why Did No One Tell Me?!?" Normally I would link you to the 1st lesson, but instead, ( Part **5** is here. ) That is because today's lesson correlates so closely  to personal, romantic relationships, the parallels are almost creepy! Today's lesson is:  Choose Your Career Like You Choose a Lover  Again: Understanding lesson 5, " Relationships: By the Numbers " should help this lesson click easily. First. everything in K-12 education is designed with two messages: (1) " Go to college! ", and (2) " Fit in! "  FORGET THAT. As soon as you finish high school, you are tossed into a world with countless trades and entrepreneurial routes that already exist and require zero college education, and the highest echelons of society are filled with outliers who refused to conform to a previously existing model. For examples, look at the founders of Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, Netflix, or Amazon. No m

Dry Sake or Sweet?

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You spot a small Sake section while shopping for wine. You know enough about wine styles to tell a Riesling is sweet, a Merlot dry, but what about Sake? Can Sake even be sweet or dry? Do you know your preference? When shopping for Sake, you might look for something you tasted at a restaurant. If you can't find that, you grab whatever is cheapest, or something priced in the middle with an appealing label. Sound like you? Everyone, myself included, has shopped this way for some kind  of specialty item. For Sake, this means consideration of sweet and dry becomes an afterthought, and you may end up with something terrible  - or worse: something great that just wasn't for you! To help you judge dry and sweet, Japan developed a Sake Meter Value, or "SMV" ( Nihon Shudo , in Japanese). The scale is simple: any positive (+) number would mean dry, zero neutral, and negative (-) numbers sweet. Turns out, that scale was too simple... Japanese importer and distributor JFC, c