Episode 85 – I’m Big in Japan

Scott: Friends with Brews.

Scott: I went in search of a sound clip of somebody saying, I’m big in Japan, and I could not find one.

Scott: I couldn’t find one.

Scott: I found there’s a bunch of band, at least one band called Big in Japan, and that’s all it came up with was those guys, and I didn’t want those guys.

Scott: I know there’s a movie or something where somebody said, I’m big in Japan.

Peter: About 20 years ago, there was a software company called Big in Japan, and they made, among other things, a website URL shortener called Elf URL, which was one character shorter than tiny URL, and that was pretty much the only thing that was different from them, if I recall correctly.

Scott: If they were called Big in Japan, I would have expected their URL shortener to be B-I-J, but then you got to be very careful when you tell people to go to bij.com.

Peter: Yep, but the whole point is you don’t want your URLs to be big.

Peter: No, no, no.

Peter: The whole point is to make them short.

Scott: Only in Japan.

Scott: Only in Japan.

Scott: Okay, I’m Scott, which people may not remember because we haven’t put out any episodes.

Scott: Well, I haven’t put out any episodes in a long time.

Peter: Glad you reminded me because I had forgotten who you were.

Scott: But who are you?

Peter: I remember who I am.

Peter: I’m Peter and I’m your co-host.

Scott: You are?

Scott: I thought, you’re just the host.

Scott: We’re hosts.

Scott: You’re not second.

Scott: You’re not first.

Scott: No, you’re the co-host too.

Scott: No, we’re equal ones.

Scott: We’re hosts.

Peter: Equal ones, equal two.

Peter: We’re still at the top on this.

Scott: Yeah, we’re at the top.

Peter: What are you drinking today, Scott?

Scott: Do you know how people know we’re at the top?

Scott: Because we end all our sentences and damn it.

Peter: What are you drinking today, Scott?

Peter: Damn it.

Scott: Hey.

Scott: And you will see why this is very appropriate.

Scott: Oh, by the way, this is one gripe I have about Riverside.fm, which is what we’re recording this podcast through.

Scott: It won’t see my continuity cam.

Scott: It’s using my terrible, as you can see from the video, blurry and washed out and very crappy studio display camera.

Peter: Anyway, that’s funny because I’m using my iPhone as my camera and it looked just fine for me.

Scott: Yeah, it doesn’t see mine.

Scott: I don’t know why.

Scott: Are you in Chrome or Safari?

Peter: Chrome.

Scott: Yeah, I’m in Chrome also and my Chrome will not see that camera.

Scott: I know that it’s supposed to work.

Scott: Yeah, Kirin Ichiban, damn it.

Scott: Kirin Ichiban, this is a…

Scott: So this is kind of what you would call an equivalent to like one of our domestics, a Japanese equivalent to like a Budweiser or a…

Scott: But it’s better.

Scott: I mean, these are good beers.

Peter: You don’t want to use the words, but you want to say that it’s like Budweiser, but it’s not in a bad way.

Scott: What I mean is it’s not a craft beer, it’s not a small brewer, it’s not anything like that.

Scott: It’s a big national company.

Scott: And this is the beer you get when you buy Kirin beers.

Scott: This beer, they don’t have other flavors.

Scott: Well, they have a few other grades, but anyway, whatever.

Scott: This is a Kirin Ichiban.

Scott: It’s very appropriate and I’ll tell you why.

Scott: And first of all, I will tell you that I’ve had these and I like these, and I will be happy to drink these.

Scott: And this is 1.9 fluid ounces.

Scott: And I will be quite blessed after I drink this, because I don’t drink a lot of beer anymore.

Peter: I thought you were going to say it was like 1.0% alcohol.

Peter: I was like, wait, what?

Peter: I don’t remember being that weird or that week.

Scott: Week and weird.

Scott: No, these are, I don’t know, five something.

Peter: Yeah, that’s what I figured.

Peter: It’s a lager, right?

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: Well, while you’re looking at that, we’ll be drinking.

Scott: I think it literally is five.

Scott: Yeah, go ahead.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: An athletic brewing company, upside Don Golden.

Scott: My God.

Scott: Wait, is this the alcohol-free beer?

Peter: This is not the same one that I have previously had on this podcast.

Scott: But it is a potentially terrible alcohol-free beer.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: First of all, describe that beer, because what’s the difference between that one and the other one that you had before?

Peter: This is a Golden where the other one that we had on the podcast was their non-alcoholic IPA.

Scott: Oh God.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Well, stay tuned.

Peter: I’m going to have a non-alcoholic IPA update on the, probably on our next episode.

Scott: Peter, what podcast was it?

Scott: Remember I sent you a clip a long time ago of somebody trying one of the athletic brewing IPAs and liking it?

Scott: We were like, what the bleep?

Peter: I don’t remember now.

Scott: Read?

Scott: First, before you review this one, please read your review of the last athletic brewing, non-alcoholic beer that you drink on this podcast.

Peter: Hold on.

Peter: I need to find it again.

Scott: That’s fine.

Peter: Athletic Brewing Company Runwild IPA.

Peter: When was this?

Peter: We don’t have dates.

Peter: Oh, it was episode 11.

Peter: Episode 11.

Peter: So this goes way back.

Peter: Athletic Brewing Company says, Runwild is the ultimate sessionable IPA for craft beer lovers.

Peter: Brewed with a blend of five northwest hops, it has an approachable bitterness to balance the specialty malt body.

Peter: Always refreshing at only 65 calories.

Peter: Peter says, all caps bold, thumbs down with a thumbs down emoji.

Peter: Then in italics, apparently Peter went on to say, Dear God, why?

Peter: Question mark, question mark, question mark.

Peter: Tastes like desperate regret.

Peter: This thing makes me want to spit it out like poison.

Scott: This was episode 11, recorded on July 26th of 2022.

Scott: Almost exactly three years ago from today.

Peter: Three years later, I am now regularly drinking non-alcoholic beers, whereas that was just a lark.

Scott: That was a triathlon.

Scott: What does athletics say?

Peter: Yeah, athletics says about in bold all caps.

Peter: Classic craft golden style with a capital G.

Peter: Refreshing, clean, balanced, and light bodied.

Peter: Subtle earthy and spicy notes are balanced with citrusy aromas.

Peter: Brewed with premium malts and American hops.

Peter: Crafted to remove gluten.

Peter: Asterisk.

Peter: New line.

Peter: Asterisk.

Peter: This product is fermented from grains containing gluten and crafted to remove gluten.

Peter: The gluten content of this product cannot be verified.

Peter: And this product may contain gluten.

Peter: Ingredients.

Peter: Water.

Peter: Malted barley.

Peter: Oats.

Peter: Hops.

Peter: Wheat.

Peter: Yeast.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: And are you about to drink it and prove your…

Peter: This tastes like a beer.

Scott: By the way, the name of that episode was…

Scott: What was it called?

Scott: Something Regret.

Peter: It was Desperate Regret, wasn’t it?

Scott: Desperate Regret.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Now, does this particular…

Scott: Does this beer taste like Desperate Regret?

Scott: Or does it just taste like regret?

Peter: This tastes like a beer.

Scott: Oh, so that wasn’t a slag.

Peter: No.

Scott: You’re saying that’s an improvement over what happened last time.

Peter: This is totally an improvement.

Peter: This tastes like a beer.

Peter: Now, it does kind of taste like an IPA or a Pale Ale anyway.

Peter: There is definitely…

Scott: But Byser and Coors tastes like beer.

Peter: It’s hops forward.

Peter: This is hoppier than I normally drink.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: But it’s not like super bitter.

Peter: I don’t taste Northwest, you know, four types of Northwest hops dancing around, struggling to get out of my mouth.

Scott: Wow.

Scott: I am going to pretend you never said struggling to get out of your mouth.

Peter: Well, on the previous review, I said it tastes like poison and I want to spit it out, you know.

Peter: So, yeah, I know this is way better than upside down or that the other thing was there.

Scott: So I will, my review of my beer is…

Peter: This is upside down.

Scott: Keating does not talk about their beers.

Scott: They don’t talk about on their website what they think it tastes like.

Scott: All they say is…

Scott: All they say is that it is a premium 100% malt beer, brewed with the first press method.

Scott: I was really hoping that, because I hate the second and third presses.

Scott: Offering smooth and rich flavor.

Scott: And it’s 5% and it’s a lager and it’s Japanese beer.

Scott: And it’s Kirin Ichiban.

Scott: And when you buy Kirin, this is what you get.

Scott: But I like this.

Scott: Again, I would call this a Japanese domestic beer, mainstream, similar to what we would call Budweiser Coors.

Scott: Name your strand of beer here.

Scott: But it’s not a strand of beer.

Scott: It’s a good beer.

Scott: And I like it.

Scott: And I would happily drink this any time.

Scott: I mean, as often as I feel like drinking beer, let’s be clear.

Scott: But yes, you should have this with your ramen, your tonkatsu, whatever else you may.

Peter: You’re going to enlighten the non-Japanese culinary aficionados as to what those are?

Scott: Well, you would say ramen, not you, Peter, but you, an American, might say ramen instead of ramen.

Scott: But that’s because Japanese trill, they’re R’s.

Scott: They don’t say R.

Scott: They say Rari-durero.

Scott: You got to learn the Rari-durero.

Scott: So ramen, tonkatsu is basically breaded pork or breaded chicken sometimes, but breaded pork.

Scott: And usually it’s on rice and it’s delicious and it’s amazing.

Peter: So it’s a schnitzel.

Scott: I call it a schnitzel.

Scott: It’s a different thing.

Scott: It’s its own thing.

Peter: Anyway, it’s Japanese version of schnitzel.

Peter: The Germans would call it schnitzel.

Scott: They might.

Scott: I’m sure they would.

Scott: But it wouldn’t taste the same.

Scott: It wouldn’t taste the same.

Scott: It’d be like, that would be like saying that saying something is curry and not knowing the difference between is it a Thai curry, is it an Indian curry, is it a Japanese curry, which tastes different?

Scott: Yeah, usually.

Scott: So anyway, whatever.

Scott: Anyway, the reason I’m drinking this, Peter, is because as you know, you may know, you may not know, but I spent a lovely two weeks in Japan recently with my daughter.

Peter: And I did know that.

Scott: For the listeners who don’t know anything about me and are happy, I’m now going to give you some information about me and make you unhappy.

Scott: But when I was a kid, I lived in Japan for eight years and it wasn’t a consecutive eight years, but it was basically four years ish, followed by about a year and a half in the States, followed by about four more years in Japan.

Scott: I came back to the United States for my senior year of high school, and that was the last time I was in Japan until now.

Scott: And then we had fun and it was great.

Scott: Anyway, it was a homecoming and I got to say, in addition to the other things that I will talk about about Japan, by the time we left, I was getting super comfortable.

Scott: I didn’t have unrealistic expectations of how amazing my Japanese was or anything like that, but it was really coming back.

Scott: I could do whatever I wanted.

Scott: I could get us around Japan.

Scott: I could talk to whoever I needed to.

Scott: I could speak to them 100% in Japanese, which is, you know, that’s not abnormal for me, but there were times early on when like when I was really stressed trying to get us onto a train on time.

Scott: All of a sudden my Japanese words just disappeared.

Scott: I knew what I wanted to say, but I was just like, ugh.

Scott: But after we’d been there a couple weeks, that was not the case at all.

Scott: I really felt like, you know, this is home because you got to remember, I lived there as a child.

Scott: My formative years were there.

Scott: I became a teenager there.

Scott: I grew up.

Scott: So to me, it felt like home.

Scott: When we first got to Japan, I was wondering, is it going to feel like that?

Scott: Or am I just going to realize I don’t have a home?

Scott: I don’t have any place that feels 100% like home, but it started really feeling like home again by the time we left.

Scott: So it was really cool.

Peter: I just muted myself and I said, that’s cool.

Peter: So to you, I probably just mouthed, that’s cool.

Scott: You did, but I appreciate it anyway.

Scott: You can mouth, that’s cool, at me anytime and I’ll just say, Peter means me well.

Scott: Yeah, see.

Scott: But anyway, so yeah, we were in Japan.

Scott: We had a lot of fun.

Scott: My daughter has taken three years of Japanese in high school.

Scott: She’s not to the point where she really feels comfortable speaking it to people, but she can understand quite a bit of what’s thrown at her, which is pretty cool.

Scott: If we go up, and I’m speaking to the people in Japanese, and I’m ordering stuff or doing whatever, and then they turn to her, and because we’re speaking Japanese, then they say something to her or ask her a question in Japanese.

Scott: She knows what they’re talking about.

Scott: Anyway, we had a lot of fun.

Scott: I mean, it’s Japan.

Scott: There was one day when I wasn’t feeling great, so I laid down for a little while.

Scott: She just went off and wandered around Tokyo by herself, and you can do that there.

Scott: It’s great.

Scott: You don’t have to worry about it.

Scott: It’s amazing.

Scott: And English support also.

Scott: There are a lot more people that speak really good English in Japan than there were last time I was there, which I’m not going to discuss specifics of my age, but let’s just say when I left Japan for the last time, it was in the 80s still, and now it’s not the 80s anymore.

Scott: And there’s a lot of people even in little Karuizawa we went to, which is northwest of Tokyo, and it’s like a little ski resort.

Scott: Even that little town had some pretty good English speakers in it, and it was a lot of fun.

Scott: It was great.

Scott: So, I lived in two different cities in Japan.

Scott: Karuizawa was our first place.

Scott: It’s because they had a language school there, and my parents went and learned Japanese there.

Scott: So we lived there for one year.

Scott: Beautiful, beautiful place, by the way.

Scott: And it’s away from the humidity.

Scott: Most of it, it’s way more temperate than like the stuff on the East Coast, like Tokyo and even Kagoshima down south, and places like that that we went later.

Scott: Great place to go if you want to get away from the humidity and the heat in the summer.

Scott: So we lived there for one year, my first year of my time in Japan, and then we lived for roughly seven years in Kagoshima City, which is way down south in Japan, and it’s very hot and humid in the summer, and it was very hot and humid again this time.

Scott: So my daughter and I, we started off in Tokyo in Asakusa, which is a lot of fun, I would highly recommend to people.

Scott: It’s a good location for just staying and moving around Tokyo and seeing stuff.

Scott: Then we went to Karuizawa, and then we went to Kyoto, and then we went to Kagoshima, and then we went back up to Tokyo for a couple of days, and then came back to the States.

Peter: Cool.

Peter: Yeah, it was fun.

Peter: Overall, thumbs up.

Scott: It was amazing.

Scott: It was like a reset for me because it had been many years since I felt like I was genuinely just completely relaxed and enjoying life and having fun.

Scott: I haven’t felt that in a long, long time.

Scott: Like I said, it felt like a homecoming.

Scott: It brought back parts of me that I haven’t been able to really think about our access in the United States of America.

Scott: It’s just part of who I am.

Scott: Like I said, it’s deeply ingrained in me.

Scott: And then the other part of it was just hanging out with my daughter and having a blast and eating lots of good food.

Scott: And it was a lot of fun.

Scott: But yeah, and also this time, it was me as the parent, my job to plan everything, get us around Japan, get our trains on time, get everything organized and stuff like that.

Scott: Just the ease with which I was able to do that was really nice.

Scott: So it was great.

Peter: That’s cool, man.

Scott: Now, you have been to Japan before, right?

Peter: I have.

Peter: Tell me about your experience.

Scott: Yeah, but I don’t remember when that was or what the circumstances were.

Scott: Okay.

Scott: Was this Martial Arts related?

Peter: No, this was Rotary International related.

Peter: So, it seems most people are familiar with the concept of the Rotary International’s exchange program, like where high school juniors will often go and do their senior year abroad.

Peter: But they also have a group study exchange program for adults and professionals working in, you know, who have full-time jobs.

Peter: So, that’s how I went.

Peter: And again, this was 2002.

Peter: They sent me over there as part of a group of five people.

Peter: And, I mean, okay, it’s 23 years ago right now, so a lot of my memory is blurry.

Peter: That was, no, it was amazing.

Peter: Everybody was very, you know, very kind, very nice.

Peter: But our hosts, I guess, apparently in most other countries, the Rotary, you know, represents like the upper crust of society, whereas here in the States, pretty much anybody can join, right?

Peter: They let the riffraff in.

Scott: So they were deeply disappointed when they saw you guys.

Peter: Well, we were not Rotary members, though.

Peter: That’s the thing is people who go are not supposed to actually be members of the Rotary.

Peter: Like the group leader is supposed to be a Rotarian, but the others are not.

Scott: They were deeply disappointed in your hosts.

Peter: I was disappointed in my leader, frankly.

Peter: You were disappointed.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: So anyway.

Scott: Can you without would it be remiss for you to explain a little bit about why?

Scott: I mean, you’re not giving any names.

Scott: You’re not.

Scott: Or is it a personal friend of yours?

Scott: You’re afraid.

Peter: No, they were just kind of they epitomized the typical gaijin and tromping all over Japan.

Peter: Oh my God.

Peter: And and you know, like it wasn’t their fault that they were completely like tone deaf, could not, you know, sumimasen, you know, like I can’t even think of a stupid, you know, thing to say, but like trying to sort of making a half hearted effort to speak the language and just botching it completely.

Scott: Failing miserably.

Peter: Failing miserably.

Peter: You know, and also just like really not reading the room on a lot of things is just like there wasn’t really any leadership going on.

Peter: Let’s just put it that way.

Peter: Right.

Scott: So you would think that if the Rotary Club was going to select individuals, now they may not have a lot of choice, but if they were going to select individuals, they would say, look, at least you need to.

Scott: And by that time, the Internet was a thing.

Scott: They could have said, look, at least you need to do some research on the culture.

Scott: Maybe listen to some stuff in Japanese.

Scott: Here’s these CDs for you to listen to, or whatever.

Peter: Well, they did.

Peter: They did put us through.

Peter: We had to, everyone had to do a research project and we all had to take Japanese lessons.

Scott: Yeah, but your leader, your non-leader should have been more on the ball.

Peter: I totally agree.

Peter: And hence my complaint.

Peter: So there you go.

Scott: I guess what I’m saying is there’s really no excuse for them not to.

Scott: And you would think that the Rotary Club would actively encourage that from leaders going to specific countries.

Scott: It’s like, be culturally aware, know what is going to be a big thunderous guy jane tromping the room as opposed to fitting into the culture and respecting the customs and stuff.

Peter: You’d think, but you’d be wrong.

Peter: So anyway, the Upper Crust of Society hosted us and surprisingly, I spent a lot of time eating in fancy non-Japanese restaurants.

Scott: God, why?

Scott: You could do that in the United States of America.

Peter: Because they were taking us all around.

Peter: And we had to follow their itineraries that they had set for us.

Scott: Well, because you were in non-Japanese restaurants, surely you had a fork and knife available to you.

Scott: You could have ended that situation right then and there and just struck out on your own.

Peter: And caused an international incident?

Scott: Well, you probably don’t want to be a gaijin convicted of murder in Japan.

Scott: That’s probably true.

Peter: That could go over badly.

Scott: It could, yeah.

Peter: Anyway, so yeah, overall, though, you know, we spent a lot of time, you know, we attended a lot of rotary meetings.

Peter: I remember the Sunday brunch meeting that we went to, which was at 10 a.m.

Peter: when there was whiskey on the table.

Peter: I thought it was iced tea until I had a sip and I was like, whoa.

Scott: Was it at least Japanese whiskey?

Scott: Please tell me that.

Peter: Oh, I’m sure.

Peter: Yeah, so.

Peter: But yeah, I mean, it was it was fun, though.

Peter: You know, we were definitely, you know, we went to, what, Hiratsuka, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo.

Peter: And there were definitely, you know, in some of the cities, like one of the cities we went, there was definitely it was like a lower class, you know, economically speaking.

Peter: And they were more down to earth.

Peter: Like, you know, they asked, where do you want to go?

Peter: And I’m like, can we just go get tempura or something?

Peter: You know, sure.

Peter: You know, something simple.

Peter: One night when I went there, there was a rotary.

Peter: He had been, it was a kid, another guy who had been an exchange student, who had come to America and he practiced Aikido under the same umbrella school that I had been training.

Peter: So he took me to train with his sensei over there for a while.

Peter: And that was fun.

Peter: You know, so yeah, like we went all around, spent a lot of time, like here’s, you know, today you’re going to do this, you’re going to see the sights.

Peter: And then it’s this rotary meeting.

Peter: And it was often like a day might have been, we spent like a few days in this town, a few days in that town.

Peter: So we’d go to maybe a rotary meeting in the morning, some free time or see the sights during the day, and then a dinner in our honor at night or something like that.

Peter: They treated us like rock stars.

Peter: And I mean, that took like a, took a little bit of getting used to because the second night we arrived, maybe it was even the first night, I don’t remember now, we arrived and they’re like, are you ready?

Peter: You know, like you got to dress up, you know, your blazers and your khaki pants and your chinos or whatever.

Peter: And they’re like, yeah, we’re ready for you for the dinner.

Peter: And we walk out and we get this standing ovation from this auditorium full of people at this giant fancy banquet.

Scott: Oh my god.

Peter: And I was just like, whoa.

Scott: You weren’t expecting that.

Scott: Heads up would have been cool.

Peter: I was not, you know.

Peter: So we walked out and you know, some of my teammates were, you know, a little bit dumbstruck there.

Peter: And I was like, well, I guess we’re rock stars now, folks.

Peter: Let’s do it.

Peter: So I think I thought I had told the story, though, I’m pretty sure at least maybe not on this podcast, but on a podcast, I’ve told the story about putting my Japanese to the test when I developed a kiwi allergy.

Peter: I’m sure I’ve told you that story before.

Scott: I don’t remember that.

Peter: Well, it was about, I think it was about two or three weeks in, I had had some kiwi fruit and realized, you know, later that evening, you know, like as time progressed, my breathing was getting difficult and my throat was getting scratchy and it just kept getting worse through the night.

Peter: So eventually after I explained to them like multiple times what was going on, the hosts, like they did everything by committee.

Peter: So, you know, I contacted like the first emergency contact and then he brought in someone else and he brought in someone else and the three of them are all sitting around and then they finally decided, oh, we should get a doctor.

Peter: They got a doctor and then he gave me Allegra and everything got better very quickly.

Peter: So it’s like, hey, guess what, Peter, you’re allergic to kiwi.

Peter: Okay, good to know.

Peter: And it was later that weekend, we were at a Sunday brunch and fruit salad was being served on the table.

Peter: Now, yours truly being red green color blind, sliced kiwi and sliced strawberries look the same.

Peter: And I thought I was eating a fruit salad with sliced strawberries.

Scott: You might have…

Scott: No, I was thinking of the lemon lime story.

Scott: I thought you did tell me the story and I was going to say, but the size, but the size…

Peter: But it’s sliced and chopped up into bits.

Scott: Yeah, right, right.

Peter: So I ate a bit and then a few minutes later, I felt my lips got itchy and then my tongue and my throat got itchy and then my voice got raspy.

Peter: So, armed with my advanced knowledge of what was going on, I went to the front desk and I explained to him, you know, what did I say?

Peter: I’m sort of like, you know, watashi no kokyu wa muzukashii desu.

Peter: And, you know, allergy, how do you say it?

Peter: Arerugi?

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: Arerugi, yeah.

Scott: Yeah.

Peter: You know, and then I explained I needed a pharmacist and the guy, you know, in back then anyway, in typical Japanese fashion, just kind of like looked at me, you know, kind of like squinted and turned his head at about a 45 degree angle.

Peter: I was like, okay, this is not the time to ask why the round guy, you know, the round eyed dog man is speaking, right?

Peter: It’s like, you know, just listen to the words coming out of his mouth.

Peter: And I repeated it.

Peter: And after the third time he understood, and he gave me directions, all in Japanese, to a pharmacy.

Peter: And so I set out, it was like 85 degrees, 100% humidity, sun beating down.

Peter: I went several blocks, turned here, turned there, found the pharmacist, explained all over again to the pharmacist what was going on.

Peter: Allergic reaction, breathing difficult, kiwi fruit.

Peter: He writes me a prescription for Allegra on the spot, and then hands it to me, because in Japan, like apparently many other countries, pharmacists can prescribe.

Peter: You don’t need to get a doctor to prescribe for you.

Peter: Gives me the stuff.

Peter: And within, you know, several to a few minutes or whatever, my breathing starts getting better.

Peter: And it was at that point where he turns to me and says, in flawless English, your Japanese is very good.

Peter: So he waited.

Peter: Like he was watching me like rasping and struggle and explaining this whole time.

Peter: But he spoke English the whole time, which I thought was pretty hilarious.

Scott: Honestly, to me, my experience is different.

Scott: Japanese will, if they’re good at English or they know English, they want to speak English.

Scott: Even if you’re talking to them in Japanese.

Scott: Now in places like Kagoshima, when I was talking Japanese to people, they were just like, oh, let’s talk Japanese.

Scott: And especially the people in the hotel there, they were just delighted with the fact that I knew Japanese.

Scott: And they were like, man, you speak great Japanese.

Scott: I can’t believe I tried to speak English to you.

Scott: I’m so embarrassed.

Scott: I’m like, no, don’t be embarrassed.

Scott: Your English is great.

Scott: I said, granted, it was 40 years ago, but when I lived in Kagoshima, no one spoke English and certainly not this well.

Peter: So that was one of my main Japan stories.

Peter: And then the other one was on the second to last night there, my host wanted to take me out to dinner.

Peter: And he asked me, you know, Peter-san, sushi no hou ga tsuki desu ka?

Peter: I was like, hi, you know, ii desu.

Peter: I was like, yes, because I hadn’t really gone out for sushi for almost a month in Japan, of all places.

Peter: So I was like, yes, I definitely want to go get sushi.

Peter: That sounds great.

Peter: And so he took me to this hole in the wall place where, you know, we walked in and they yelled out his name, Watanabe-Sama, you know, so like, they know this guy.

Peter: And so I was like, okay, great.

Peter: This is going to be great.

Peter: I’m so excited.

Peter: And he orders all these cuts that I have never had before.

Scott: That’s awesome.

Peter: No, it was terrible.

Peter: They were nasty.

Peter: It was like, I was like, what is this?

Peter: Like shark fin or something.

Peter: And just like all the really gamey, fishy, tough, leather, chewy stuff.

Peter: It was just like, man, this is wow.

Peter: Like I had to actually chew some and hide some in my napkin and walk away and dispose of it in the bathroom kind of thing.

Peter: I couldn’t eat this.

Scott: Later, he’s like, huh, I wonder why there’s shark fin in the plant over here.

Peter: So I’m struggling to get through dinner.

Peter: And in the end, we’re sitting at the bar, right in front, and you see all the fish arrayed.

Peter: So we’re right at the sushi bar and you see all the cuts.

Peter: And he has a vat of shrimp in there as well, right?

Peter: So my host points to a couple in the sushi shift.

Peter: Height nods.

Peter: Reaches in, pulls out big shrimp, probably like about this big, like four inches or so.

Peter: At least it seemed like it was like four feet long.

Peter: Pulls out massive shrimp, picks it up, cracks the neck, grabs the exoskeleton by the tail, rips it off and sets it on my tray.

Scott: Nice!

Peter: And like the eyes are still wriggling and lolling off to one side.

Scott: Wow, you got balloons for that.

Peter: I got balloons for that.

Peter: And I said, as diplomatically as I could, Watanabe-sama, mou kekkou desu.

Peter: Douzo yoroshiku onegashimasu.

Peter: So for those of you who don’t speak Japanese, what I told my, you know, Mr.

Peter: Watanabe was, sir, this is too good for me.

Peter: Please, you must eat this.

Scott: That’s hilarious.

Scott: And I think at that point, he got it.

Peter: He laughed.

Peter: He clapped me on the shoulder and picked it up and chomped down on it.

Scott: That’s funny.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: So I guess I survived the test.

Peter: So there you go.

Scott: I don’t, yeah, anyway, I think it would be great if we could go to Japan together.

Scott: You know, where the best food was, was in Kagoshima City, believe it or not.

Scott: Not all the food was better than all the food everywhere else, but the best tonkatsu we had and the best ramen we had with the buta bare, the pig belly, was so crisp and juicy.

Scott: It was just amazing.

Scott: You can’t believe it.

Scott: It just makes my mouth water thinking about it.

Scott: It was the best.

Scott: So literally, the places that Olivia and I both agreed were a little hole in the wall, sit at the bar, and there’s only room for like seven or eight customers at a time, places in Kagoshima City, and they were amazing.

Scott: And the tonkatsu place there was run by one guy.

Scott: And there was literally room for like, I think there were six to eight of us in the restaurant.

Scott: And he literally was running around, cleaning up tables, the two tables that existed, the rest was all sitting at the bar, cleaning up the tables and taking orders and cooking it all himself.

Scott: There was no one else there.

Scott: And I don’t know if that’s normal for him, or if he just didn’t have any staff on hand, or what, but the food was just amazing.

Scott: It was so good.

Scott: But yeah, in general, I really liked Kyoto.

Scott: I had been to Kyoto before as a kid, but I couldn’t remember a lot about it.

Scott: And I certainly didn’t spend a lot of time wandering around Kyoto freely, looking at stuff, and eating in the restaurants there, which I really enjoyed.

Scott: But one thing, Kyoto has a different vibe.

Scott: Everything was old school.

Scott: I saw taxis that looked like the cabs from like the 80s when I was there.

Scott: The motorcycles.

Scott: People were seriously riding 80s motorcycles, like old school Hondas, old school.

Scott: Like there was so many people with retro cars and trucks and clothes and stuff in Kyoto.

Scott: So it was so cool.

Scott: I don’t know why.

Scott: I don’t know if I just happened to see them all and it’s not normally like that, or if that’s Kyoto.

Scott: I would have expected that maybe in Osaka, although we didn’t go to…

Scott: We went through Osaka on the Shinkansen and we transferred in Osaka, in the Shin-Osaka station.

Scott: But we didn’t go into Osaka and walk around and look around.

Scott: So I don’t know what Osaka is like now.

Scott: I know it’s more of an interesting place.

Scott: There’s a lot of characters in Osaka and there’s an amazing food scene.

Scott: But Kyoto, I really liked.

Scott: I could see myself spending a lot of time in Kyoto and being perfectly happy there.

Peter: So talk to me about the Shinkansen.

Peter: What was your experience like this time around?

Scott: The Shinkansen were amazing because when we lived there, Shinkansen did not go further south than Osaka.

Scott: There was no Shinkansen down to Kagoshima or any place south of Osaka.

Scott: So we had to literally take local trains up to Osaka to catch a Shinkansen.

Scott: So this time it was completely different.

Scott: There’s the whole Southern Japan Shinkansen line.

Scott: And that we’d hopped on at Osaka, Shin-Osaka station and went all the way down to Kagoshima on that.

Scott: And when we went down, no, we were on blue train, blue cars both times.

Scott: I was going to say we got the…

Scott: I pounded up for the green cars one time.

Scott: And I think that was…

Scott: That might have been from Tokyo to Osaka.

Scott: I had to pay for the green cars or I couldn’t get seats together.

Scott: And they’re nice.

Scott: The green cars are more luxurious.

Scott: They all green cars have two seats on each side.

Scott: You never have three.

Scott: Whereas most Shinkansen, the blue cars, if you get on the blue cars, most of them have two seats on one side and three on the other.

Scott: So depending on your family arrangement, who you’re with, you have a higher probability of sitting next to strangers, especially in my daughter and I case when it was just the two of us.

Scott: But for some reason, the Shinkansen that went from Osaka down to Kagoshima, even though those were blue cars, they only had two by two.

Scott: And so really, there wasn’t quite as much leg room as the green car.

Scott: There was no reason to pay for a green car on that one.

Scott: Honestly, for most people, I would say don’t pay for a green car unless you are two people traveling together and you don’t want to sit by strangers and you’re on a Shinkansen line where you would be on a three by two if you didn’t pay for the green car.

Scott: But it was great.

Scott: Yeah, the Shinkansen was nice.

Scott: I mean, it’s the Shinkansen.

Scott: They’re not the fastest bullet trains in the world anymore, but they are plenty fast.

Scott: We got some of the quicker ones and some of the ones that make the fewest stops.

Scott: And so we blazed right through and yeah, it was great.

Scott: We did.

Scott: It’s expensive.

Scott: You can’t, it’s not something you would normally do.

Scott: We spent several hundred dollars on Shinkansen in our time in Japan.

Scott: And I did the math.

Scott: They have a JR Pass that you can use to, let’s say you buy two weeks of JR Pass and then you can ride as many Shinkansen as you want during that pass, during that time.

Scott: I calculated, I did the math and I might have saved $7 or something like that.

Scott: It didn’t seem worth it.

Scott: I didn’t, so I didn’t buy a JR Pass, I guess what I’m saying, because I wanted more flexibility.

Scott: I wanted to decide when and where we were going to ride Shinkansen.

Scott: As it turned out, I did ride Shinkansen everywhere I thought I was going to.

Scott: But I could have gone either way.

Scott: The JR Pass would have made it super easy and convenient.

Scott: I wouldn’t have spent times in the stations at the ticket machines or whatever, but it was fine.

Scott: Like I said, it was all super easy to navigate.

Scott: They do have English support and I started finding my Kanji, my reading skills coming back and it was great.

Scott: It was fine.

Scott: Even with the English support and how many people speak really good English, I will say that it absolutely does make your life easier, just like it would anywhere to speak the language.

Scott: But you can get around, I think you can get around especially in northern Japan, I think you can get around really well without really knowing Japanese.

Peter: Pretty cool.

Peter: I mean, I think that’s true anywhere.

Peter: That’s why I always try to learn at least the essentials of the language whenever I try to travel, given enough time.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: So it was fun.

Scott: It was a trip of a lifetime in a way, because I always said I need to get back there before I die, just because I want to go back to Japan.

Scott: Now, financially speaking, I don’t know when or if my next trip would be, but I certainly would love to go back at some point.

Scott: So I need to kill somebody with some money or what did I say?

Scott: Oh, win the lottery is what I think I just said right now.

Scott: I need to win the lottery and so that I can go back to Japan anytime I want to.

Scott: We actually, believe it or not, Peter, we actually were having a conversation about that this week and I was telling my wife about the experience and I was like, man, I could live there and we were looking at different ways and we were even talking about, could Olivia go to university there?

Scott: They have programs that people can go, that wouldn’t get us a visa, but we could at least visit her.

Scott: It is hard to get visa, if you want to go to Japan, it’s hard to get long-term visas.

Scott: Very, very difficult.

Scott: It’s usually tied to specific work situations and your Japanese has to be extremely good.

Scott: Otherwise, you can get like 6-month digital nomad visas, but then you have to wait 6 months before you can apply again.

Scott: So basically, you have to leave for 6 months and then apply again.

Scott: And there are a couple other visa types.

Scott: Basically, they’re not interested in people being there long-term, unless they hold very specific types of jobs.

Scott: And usually with what I would call quite good language skills, like a beginner in Japanese isn’t going to qualify for those.

Peter: Yep, and I just checked because I’m curious, but apparently a German going to Japan can stay up to 90 days without a visa.

Scott: Really?

Peter: Yep.

Scott: But an American can’t.

Peter: Because relationships with countries other than America are often very different.

Scott: Right, but I would suspect that that is long-term, because it’s not like Japan’s constantly changing its visa rules.

Scott: As a whole, Japan is not interested in people overcoming their country by number.

Scott: You know what I mean?

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: No, no.

Peter: Yeah, that’s why I was curious to see.

Peter: But I’m right.

Peter: This is not this is not this doesn’t surprise me, though, because like Brazil, you need visas for I forget what what you know, for Americans need visas.

Peter: I don’t remember.

Peter: I think maybe just to enter the country, I think.

Peter: But German, I could just go to Brazil anytime I feel like it.

Scott: See, now, if you’re a US citizen, you do not need a visa to go into Japan as a tourist.

Scott: But I don’t think you can stay.

Scott: Right.

Scott: Exactly.

Scott: Actually, I think it is up to a month.

Scott: I think as an American, I can go be a tourist for up to a month without a visa.

Scott: It was longer than the period of time that we were there, which was two weeks, I think.

Scott: But yeah, so that was nice not having to apply for a visa.

Peter: Google says it’s the same.

Peter: It says that you don’t need to visit a visa for up to 90 days.

Scott: Is it exactly the same?

Peter: Well, it does.

Peter: It is the same.

Peter: Exactly the same.

Peter: But please keep in mind, this is also the AI that told us you can put…

Scott: The AI summary…

Peter: .

Peter: glue on pizzas and stuff.

Scott: Right, yeah, well, I mean…

Peter: Speaking of AI, anything you want to talk about in that vein?

Scott: It’s a little bit too long to go into details for this episode since we’ve already been recording for 41 minutes.

Scott: But yeah, so listeners to this podcast will know that I have been a user of Raycast and I was using the Raycast AI add-on.

Scott: And when Apple announced Tahoe and they announced the new spotlight capabilities, I thought, well, it looks kind of limited, but I wonder if for some people that could replace the functionality of like a Raycast.

Scott: And I installed Tahoe on my Mac after verifying that certain applications that I need would indeed function.

Scott: And I said, I’m going to start using spotlight.

Scott: And so what I did is I started using a combination of shortcuts and the Raycast script extensions that I’d already written because Raycast script extensions, sorry, I don’t know why I’m having trouble saying that other than I’m drinking this giant ketene.

Scott: They’re basically just scripts, but they have comments at the top in a certain way that allow Raycast to process them and handle them in a certain way, like provide menus and stuff like that, drop downs and so forth, and know what they’re about and so on.

Scott: But they’re just scripts.

Scott: They’re written in bash, they’re written in Python, they’re written in, I don’t remember what all they support.

Scott: So I can call those scripts from anything.

Scott: And it turns out Apple Shortcuts has pretty good support for calling terminal commands.

Scott: And guess what terminal commands can do?

Scott: They can call a script.

Peter: Amazing.

Scott: Yeah, so basically, I have been able to, and I’ve with the addition of a couple other apps that I can talk about at some other point, but I’ve been able to replace Raycast completely and not use it.

Scott: And it’s nice because not only can I save $98 a year, whatever it is on Raycast, I can save $98 a year or whatever it is on the Raycast AI.

Scott: Now, I do have to pay for my cloud account, and it is $20 a month, but it’s more flexible because even though you can integrate MCP into the Raycast, so you can use AI to call little MCP servers and integrate with some of your apps and integrate with your data source and stuff like that, it’s a little kludgy compared to just doing it directly in Cloud.

Scott: And the other thing with Cloud is you get Cloud code, which can be helpful.

Scott: It’s like any AI.

Scott: Sometimes it goes down rabbit holes that are wholly unproductive.

Scott: But sometimes it does things that are pretty neat.

Scott: So yeah, so basically the long story short, and I can talk about details more in the future, but in using Mac OS Tahoe and using the new features built into Spotlight, I have stopped using Raycast completely and I’m no longer, and I’m also using Cloud as my main AI because I’m paying for an account, a $20 a month account with Cloud.

Scott: Now, some of the things that surprised me in shortcuts are, when you hit Command Space and you get the shortcuts thing, you can hit Command 1 to narrow your queries to, what is Command 1?

Scott: Command 1 is Applications.

Scott: So if you want it to be an app launcher, you can say, just focus on apps, don’t do anything else.

Scott: Command 2 is Files.

Scott: So if you want a folder to come up real quick, you just do Command 2 and then you can do, type a folder name and it’ll focus on a folder.

Scott: It won’t bring up an app, it won’t bring up anything else.

Scott: You can do Command 3 for Shortcuts and Shortcut Actions.

Scott: Now, this is interesting.

Scott: First of all, you can say, run this shortcut.

Scott: I hear that too.

Peter: I couldn’t tell if it was my heat pumps, my HVAC unit going crazy.

Peter: No, it’s just a massive rainstorm.

Scott: It must be downpouring because I can hear it.

Scott: So, you can-

Peter: I thought I’m going to just, I need to just go look at my car and make sure that I have the sunroof closed.

Scott: You can still hear me, right?

Peter: Yeah.

Scott: Okay, so I’ll keep talking.

Scott: You can run shortcuts and you can assign little quick keys to shortcuts so that when you hit Command Space and you type SS for example, that’s your sleep screen shortcut.

Scott: I am actually surprised that Apple added that.

Scott: That is something that is in Raycast, where you can assign little keyword phrases to things to quickly filter them in your search results.

Scott: The other thing it does, besides letting you run shortcuts that way, which is very convenient all by itself, is it will let you search for shortcut actions.

Scott: I am talking about the actions that are available in shortcuts for you to build a shortcut with.

Scott: That means if you want to perform an action on something, but not build an entire shortcut for it, it’ll let you use the actions and shortcuts that way, right from Spotlight and is super cool.

Scott: Again, I’m surprised Apple did it.

Scott: They really built quite a bit more functionality into this that allows you to automate things than I expected from Apple, because they usually do the dumb guy case.

Scott: I would have thought, okay, fine, they gave you the ability to run shortcuts from Spotlight, but they went a little bit further and they made it more powerful.

Scott: Those little additions, those little features, those are what really let me replace Raycast with it.

Scott: I’m liking it.

Scott: It’s fast.

Scott: It’s not slow like Spotlight used to be.

Scott: And again, you can filter by, I’m looking for an app, I’m looking for a document or a folder, I’m looking for a shortcut.

Scott: What is Command 4?

Scott: Command 4 is Clipboard.

Scott: Clipboard history is too limited.

Scott: It only goes back eight days or something like that.

Scott: It’s not very good.

Scott: So I used an app called Paste instead.

Scott: But yeah, they built some really good functionality into Spotlight that actually surprised me coming from Apple.

Scott: It really did.

Peter: That’s cool.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: So for you, especially, I think you’ll like it.

Scott: I think you can forget about learning the ins and outs of Raycast.

Scott: Forget about me always harping you to learn more about Raycast.

Scott: You can just wipe it completely from your computer and move on with your life.

Peter: Well, as it happens on Prime Day, I did buy a, I want to say new, but I bought a refurbished Mac Mini M1.

Peter: And so I was thinking about it.

Peter: I should just slap the data on that.

Scott: I know someone else that did that.

Scott: I wonder who that was.

Peter: Yeah, I don’t know.

Peter: Someone who listens to me because I give such good advice, I’m sure.

Scott: Yeah, I’m sure it was.

Scott: It was probably somebody that learns a lot from you and looks up to you and calls you a mentor.

Peter: Calls me something.

Scott: Not mental, mentor.

Scott: But yeah, so I got one of those to use as a tailscale exit node because the exit nodes I had in my house were an Apple TV and my Raspberry Pi.

Scott: And I found my Raspberry Pi to be unacceptably slow.

Scott: It really was slower than anything else I used as an exit node quite a bit.

Scott: And one thing about Japan that really worked out well for me was the…

Scott: God, I can’t even say its name.

Scott: What is it?

Scott: The GLINet?

Scott: The GLINet routers?

Peter: Is that what they’re called?

Scott: And we have the Slate AX or whatever it’s called.

Scott: That travel route, the combination of that plus tailscale, wow, that worked out great for me.

Scott: What a difference that makes in traveling.

Scott: Because you can say, you can tell it, what’s your internet source?

Scott: Oh, it’s the hotel Wi-Fi.

Scott: You log that into the Wi-Fi and then all your devices are just automatically connecting to your travel router.

Scott: You don’t have to worry about it.

Scott: You’re done and when you plug, we got them and you go back to the same hotel again, like when we went up to Tokyo, we stayed in the exact same hotel.

Scott: In fact, we stayed in the exact same room.

Scott: It was hilarious.

Scott: I was like, same, exactly the same.

Scott: It was exactly the same and I was like, was this room empty for two weeks waiting for us?

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: And so anyway, it just connected to the Wi-Fi again and we were on the network.

Scott: As soon as we walked in there and I plugged the travel router on, we were back on.

Scott: So it was great.

Scott: And yeah, I highly recommend that it’s too late to recommend that refurbished IMAX.

Scott: I’m sure I don’t know if Amazon is still selling them, but it’s basically a refurbished M1 Mac Mini, sorry, not IMAX, Mac Mini with 256 gig SSD, which is plenty for just using his little home server slash tailscale router slash whatever.

Peter: Yep.

Peter: So it’s great.

Peter: And I put the reason I bought it was yes, to be an upgraded tailscale router, but also to be my Foundry Virtual Tabletop server.

Peter: And the thing is though that I’m a little disappointed because I mean, this thing, the power of the M1, this thing should be leaps and bounds over what…

Peter: Dude, how much did we pay for it?

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: It was like $200 or $300.

Scott: It was cheap.

Peter: Okay.

Peter: It’s still, it’s there.

Peter: It’s $257.

Peter: Yeah, it’s the same.

Peter: I just…

Peter: Okay.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Typical price, $267.

Peter: When we bought it, it was $200, apparently.

Scott: Let me see if I can find my order.

Scott: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to tell you about everything I’ve ever purchased on…

Scott: It was $259.

Scott: Yeah, it was $260, what we paid for an M1 Mac Mini with 8GB of RAM and 256 SSD.

Peter: It’s still there.

Peter: Same price right now.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: The reason that I’m curious, though, is I look at it, it says, in my order history, it says that I last purchased on July 8th, minus 25%, $199.99.

Scott: Did you actually only pay $199.99?

Scott: $199.99?

Scott: I’m just going to go with nines for a while.

Peter: Amazon is telling me I paid $199.99.

Peter: No, just two nines, $99.99.

Scott: What can that be?

Peter: What did you have?

Scott: Do you have something on Jeff Bezos?

Peter: I just added it to my cart and it says $199.99, and now I’m going to go to my cart.

Peter: It’s available now for $199.99.

Scott: How come I paid an extra $60?

Peter: I paid an extra $60 too on Prime Day.

Peter: What the hell?

Scott: We didn’t know something about Jeff Bezos.

Scott: We didn’t, you know, if we could have blackmailed him with the fact that he cheated on his wife and everyone already knew that.

Scott: Never mind.

Scott: I guess we’ll have to find something else.

Scott: Oh, he’s a bald steroid junkie.

Scott: No, everyone knows that too.

Peter: Bastard.

Scott: Both bastard.

Scott: Oh my god.

Scott: And by the way, for the listeners who can’t see me, I’m fairly bald.

Scott: I’ve got, you know, some stubble on my head, but don’t get all outraged and send me emails.

Scott: How dare you not think of the follicly challenged white man.

Scott: Damn it.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Think of yourself, Scott.

Scott: We’re everywhere.

Scott: Yeah, I will think of myself.

Peter: Think of yourself.

Scott: Okay.

Peter: All right.

Scott: So what else?

Scott: Can you just explain briefly what this tabletop thing is for the listener?

Scott: Because I didn’t remember what it was when you told me.

Peter: Yeah, we got totally distracted.

Peter: So the thing is, Foundry Virtual Tabletop is a virtual tabletop for tabletop role playing games.

Peter: So when you play a game like Dungeons and Dragons role playing games, you usually have character sheets written on pencil and paper.

Peter: You have books.

Peter: You often have maps and you have dice.

Peter: And between all of those, and you also might have little markers like figurines or something to mark characters and stuff on the maps.

Peter: Virtual Tabletops digitize all that, bring it all online.

Peter: And Foundry is hands down my favorite out of all the ones that I’ve played on.

Peter: So it pretty much puts all of it on the internet and you can play with your friends.

Peter: One of the things that’s a little different from Foundry, from the other big contender that I’ve seen, Roll20, is that for Foundry, you host yourself.

Peter: You host your own Foundry instance or you can pay someone to host it.

Peter: But like Roll20 is like software as a service.

Peter: So you just subscribe and they host it all.

Scott: They want 20 bucks a month for you to play your board game.

Peter: Something like that, right?

Peter: So me, I had a bunch back from when I sold backup hardware to small businesses, I had a bunch of little leftover Intel NUCs that used to be the on-prem backup devices.

Peter: And so I turned those into my Foundry servers.

Peter: And it was kind of funny, one by one, they stopped booting up, but I had one that was a new generation and that’s still running, my own, my Foundry server.

Peter: Now, I don’t know what the processor is in this thing.

Peter: It can’t be that impressive.

Scott: It can’t be that impressive.

Peter: Right.

Scott: And it’s got to throw out severely any time it tries to do anything exciting.

Peter: You’d think.

Peter: Now that said, compared to the M1 Mac Mini that I got, it feels a lot faster than the M1.

Peter: And so I’m not really certain what’s going on, but I will say…

Scott: That sounds like a fairly task intensive application.

Scott: And the M1, I believe, is less impressive logarithmically as you move down the M1 line.

Scott: Like, it’s not an M1 Pro, it’s not an M1…

Scott: I don’t know what the M1 equivalents were.

Scott: I don’t remember if they were called Macs and Pro or whatever, but I don’t think the base M1 is a stellar chip compared to the upper M1s.

Scott: And the M, for example, from people that have tried other games, the M3 is noticeably better with games, for example, and things like that, than the M1 series or even the M2 series.

Scott: So I think while it was very impressive for its time, I don’t think the M1 is an outstanding performing chip now.

Scott: But I still agree with you.

Peter: Yeah, comparing it to a multi-year-old thing.

Peter: This thing is running an underpowered chip from before the Mac, the M1 came out, I’m sure.

Scott: How much memory does the NUC have?

Peter: I don’t remember.

Peter: I have to double check.

Scott: But surely it’s not more than eight gigabytes.

Peter: I was just going to say, I think it’s probably eight gigs.

Peter: Probably.

Scott: I don’t know.

Scott: I don’t know why that would be, other than, is this a multi-platform?

Scott: The Foundry VTT?

Scott: Is that what it’s called?

Scott: Is that a multi-platform?

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: That’s what I’m saying is I’m thinking maybe it’s just a port.

Peter: They just recompiled it.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: Maybe it runs a lot better on Windows.

Peter: Well, that’s it.

Peter: You can run it on Windows.

Peter: You can run it on Linux.

Peter: You can run it on Mac.

Peter: You can run it as a Node.js deployment versus an Apache deployment.

Peter: There’s a lot of different options.

Peter: So I’ve got to think that it’s got different code bases, but maybe they just threw in a Java-based web server to spin up Node.js on the Mac or something like that.

Peter: I don’t know.

Peter: But I’m disappointed if that’s the case.

Peter: Wow, I’m better off running this thing on a slow-ass old Linux box.

Peter: Maybe I should just wipe the M1 and throw a Linux distribution on it or something.

Scott: Boy, did your nook have Linux or Windows?

Peter: I put Linux.

Peter: Oh, okay.

Peter: Absolutely Linux.

Scott: Linus.

Scott: You were Linus, boy.

Scott: Did you see that Linux supposedly, I don’t know who conducted the study or where this figure came from, but supposedly Linux hit 5 percent of desktop in the United States.

Scott: This seems high.

Scott: Look, I like Linux.

Scott: I will run it as servers all day long.

Scott: It’s amazing.

Scott: I will never use it as my desktop because there’s just so many apps and utilities and stuff like that, that just don’t exist for Linux.

Scott: I mean, come on.

Scott: Or the equivalents are some open source thing like, can’t piss better than.

Scott: No, it’s not.

Scott: I’m sorry.

Scott: It’s just not.

Scott: Get rid of your stupid.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: So anyway, rant over.

Scott: But let me just say it does surprise me that it’s up to 5 percent.

Scott: But then again, Microsoft has been pissing people off with some of their things like, what is it?

Scott: Replay?

Scott: What’s the feature that watches your every move?

Scott: Recall.

Scott: Recall, yeah.

Peter: Microsoft pisses off everybody with every major release though.

Peter: This is, you know.

Scott: I know, but they’re doing some privacy invading things.

Scott: Like they’re getting GitHub, not GitHub, but they’re getting copilot into everything.

Scott: They’re getting recall, trying to watch your every move and people are getting annoyed.

Scott: Those are people that for some reason will never use a Mac, because I guess they believe it’s the same thing.

Scott: So they’re going to use Linux.

Scott: Anyway, it’s, I’m sure, cheaper to convert to Linux because basically you just format your hard drive and install Linux and move on.

Scott: So I get it.

Scott: It does surprise me that it’s up to 5% on the desktop.

Scott: These are people that, well, I can write a list of things they’re not doing in their daily lives on their computers, but I don’t want to offend anyone.

Peter: No, a lot of people though, again, you and I are probably not the typical use case, right?

Peter: I think there are plenty of folks.

Peter: I mean, my dad did everything in a browser other than scan.

Peter: Yeah, he did.

Peter: That is for the last several years.

Peter: I just gave him Ubuntu Budgie and he didn’t know the difference.

Scott: Hope you didn’t.

Scott: I don’t remember.

Scott: There was a joke about a budgie and some speedos, but I don’t want to go there.

Scott: Peter, is it time for us to tell our listeners goodbye?

Scott: Look at this.

Scott: It’s 59.19.

Scott: We’re coming right up on the hour.

Peter: I think it’s exactly time for us to tell folks if you want to find us.

Peter: You already have, but I’ll tell you again.

Peter: You can find us at friendswithbrews.com.

Peter: You can find me on blueskyatpeternikolaidis.com.

Peter: Coincidentally, I have a website at peternikolaidis.com.

Peter: You can find me there, too.

Scott: That is crazy.

Peter: Wow.

Peter: It’s weird, isn’t it?

Peter: And where can people find you, Scott?

Scott: They can find me at scottwilsey.com, W-I-L-L-S-E-Y.

Scott: And if you noticed, I changed my name to match the URL of my website so that it wouldn’t be confusing for anybody.

Peter: It’s awfully considerate of you.

Scott: Yeah.

Scott: And you can find my social links on that website or on Friends with Brews.

Peter: On that note, it’s time to push the big red riverside.fm button.

Scott: Tell your friends.

Peter: I just did.