Up until today (April 20, 2025) I’ve hosted this WordPress site using a variety of services and software. This site originally started out on Google Cloud Platform but then slowly transitioned to self-hosting via Raspberry Pi 4. For reasons that I do not remember, when migrating over to rpi4 I set up the site and all its components directly in the host server, without using any containerization software such as Docker. Retroactively speaking, I likely did it to brush up on my linux knowledge and make sure that I understood everything that was happening under the hood of my server and website. I’ve created and documented my journey through the various migrations in this site but finally realized recently that it is time to move on to using new tools and services. To “catch up with the times” or so people say. Now that I spent enough time building code repos from source, manually orchestrating the deployments and upgrades of WordPress and MariaDB, and manually updating PHP versions by hand, I will now leave that to the community and embrace the wonderfulness that is waiting for new software versions to arrive in docker containers 😉

About Caddy and FrankenPHP

Apache2 was (and likely still is) the go-to webserver for WordPress deployments. For WordPress users, transitioning from the traditional Apache2 setup to a more modern and efficient architecture can yield significant benefits. Caddy, with its V2 released in 2020, is a new webserver that, though young, promises high performance with an easier to use configuration. FrankenPHP is a cutting-edge PHP application server built on the Caddy web server. It consolidates the web server and PHP runtime into a single service, eliminating the need for separate PHP-FPM and Apache processes. This integration simplifies deployment and enhances performance. Notably, benchmarks have shown that FrankenPHP can process requests significantly faster than traditional setups .​

Current System Setup

• WordPress v6.7
• Apache/2.4.62
• FPM-PHP (PHP v8.2.28)
• MariaDB 10.5.26

Prerequisites

• Backup the site using your WP site migration tool of choice (I used UpdraftPlus’s Free Version)
• Backup your MySQL/MariaDB as well – if you decide to upgrade your DB version then you may potentially come across compatibility issues, and your database tables may need to be repaired in order for it to be useable
• Docker and Docker-Compose. Below is the version I’m using at the time of writing this post:
  Docker version 28.0.4, build b8034c0
Docker Compose version v2.34.0
• You will need to retrieve all of the username/passwords for the following
  • WordPress DB name
  • WordPress DB username/password
  • MariaDB root password

How to Migrate

Note: There will be site downtime while you perform this migration using this manual.

Creating the Docker Compose Configuration File

I will be using FrankenPHP’s officially (yet not official at the same time…) sponsored WordPress images created from the FrankenWP project. The list of latest images can be found here. For MySQL/MariaDB, choose the version that is closest if not equal to the version you are currently using – if you perform too big of a version jump the built-in upgrade feature may not work for your existing data. Lastly, if you use PHPMyAdmin, also grab and configure the details for that. Long story short, Caddy nor FrankenWP official pages had anything close to a work-able compose.yaml, and a lot of trial-and-error and extra configurations were necessary in order to at least properly serve the site in Production.

Below is the compose.yaml file I finally ended up with that made the whole thing work, though I’m still giving most credit to FrankenWP’s creator since I took the template from the project’s examples section. Note that the below example has sample data (denoted by ##) which will need to be replaced with info from your current WP site and DB info:

services:
  wordpress:
    image: wpeverywhere/frankenwp:latest-php8.3
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "80:80" # HTTP
      - "443:443" # HTTPS
    environment:
      SERVER_NAME: ${SERVER_NAME:-:80}
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: ${DB_HOST:-db}
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: ${DB_USER:-wordpress}
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD:-##YOUR_WP_DB_PASSWORD##}
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: ${DB_NAME:-wordpress}
      # Currently WP_DEBUG turns on even if below is set false. To turn debug off, remove it entirely.
      # See:  https://github.com/docker-library/wordpress/issues/496
      #WORDPRESS_DEBUG: false
      WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX: ${DB_TABLE_PREFIX:-wp_}
      CACHE_LOC: ${CACHE_LOC:-/var/www/html/wp-content/cache}
      TTL: ${TTL:-80000}
      PURGE_PATH: ${PURGE_PATH:-/__cache/purge}
      PURGE_KEY: ${PURGE_KEY:-}
      BYPASS_HOME: ${BYPASS_HOME:-false}
      BYPASS_PATH_PREFIXES: ${BYPASS_PATH_PREFIXES:-/wp-admin,/wp-content,/wp-includes,/wp-json,/feed}
      CACHE_RESPONSE_CODES: ${CACHE_RESPONSE_CODES:-000}
        # Enable debug to check for Caddy issues (Certificate renewal error, config error, etc)
      #CADDY_GLOBAL_OPTIONS: |
        #email ##EMAIL_ADDRESS##
        #auto_https disable_redirects
        #debug
      WORDPRESS_CONFIG_EXTRA: |
        # Add extra configs here as necessary
        define('WP_SITEURL', '##SITEURL##');
        define('WP_HOME', '##WP_HOME##');

    volumes:
      # Mount your WordPress content directory if needed
      - /var/www/html/wp-content:/var/www/html/wp-content
      # Load your own Caddyfile to configure site
      - ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
      # Store SSL Certs so that it can be reused when containers are recreated
      # (and do avoid exceeding cert issue rate limits when debugging containers)
      - ./caddy_data:/data
      # Other root files, such as ads.txt
      - /var/www/html/ads.txt:/var/www/html/ads.txt

    depends_on:
      - db
    tty: true
    networks:
      wpnet:
        ipv4_address: 172.28.0.3

    # Below only if necessary
    #extra_hosts:
    #  - ##TLD##:172.28.0.3
    #  - www.##TLD##:172.28.0.3

  db:
    # Be careful of making too big of a version jump...
    # Slowly update db version to reduce chance of data corruption
    image: mariadb:11.7.2
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: ${DB_NAME:-wordpress}
      MYSQL_USER: ${DB_USER:-wordpress}
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD:-##YOUR_WP_DB_PASSWORD##}
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${DB_ROOT_PASSWORD:-##YOUR_ROOT_PASSWORD##}
    volumes:
      - /var/lib/mysql:/var/lib/mysql
      - /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d:/etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d
    networks:
      wpnet:
        ipv4_address: 172.28.0.4

  phpmyadmin:
    # using arm64 version since I am on raspberry pi
    image: arm64v8/phpmyadmin:latest
    restart: always
    ports:
      - ${LOCAL_PHPMYADMIN_PORT:-8086}:80
    environment:
      PMA_HOST: db
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${DB_ROOT_PASSWORD:-##YOUR_ROOT_PASSWORD##}
    depends_on:
      - db
    networks:
      wpnet:
        ipv4_address: 172.28.0.5
    volumes:
      # Use existing phpmyadmin data
      - /var/www/html/phpmyadmin:/var/www/html/phpmyadmin

networks:
  wpnet:
    driver: bridge
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 172.28.0.0/16
          gateway: 172.28.0.1

Mix and match whatever you need from the above to get your own site working. Below is a list of some configurations which can be made differently based on your unique situation:

• Remove PHPMyAdmin if you don’t use it.
• Above config uses a bridge network. This allows for multiple sites to be hosted on the same host device via reverse proxy. Also, as you will see later, if your PHPMyAdmin also uses standard HTTP/S ports then it is not possible to run both your site (WordPress) and PHPMyAdmin on the same port in the host network configuration.
• Static addresses can be used to grant read/write privileges for the DB which is hosted in another instance and by default only allows for localhost connection. Static IP addresses can be omitted if you configure your MySQL/MariaDB to allow connections from the entire IP address range in your bridge network (example further below). It can also be omitted if you decide to host your containers using the host network configuration.
• Static IP address of PHPMyAdmin is also used in the below Caddyfile to set up reverse proxy. There’s probably a better way to do this without static IP addresses… will update later…

Creating the Caddyfile

Now that our docker configurations are set up, we need to configure Caddyfile. This Caddyfile should be placed in the same folder as your compose.yaml:

{
        # Uncomment below when experiencing redirect loops from reverse proxy/cloud load balancer/etc
        #auto_https disable_redirects
        {$CADDY_GLOBAL_OPTIONS}

        frankenphp {
                #worker /path/to/your/worker.php
                {$FRANKENPHP_CONFIG}
        }

        # https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives#sorting-algorithm
        order php_server before file_server
        order php before file_server
        order wp_cache before rewrite
        order request_header before wp_cache
}

{$CADDY_EXTRA_CONFIG}

##WWW_DOMAIN## {

        tls ##EMAIL_ADDRESS##

        @phpmyadmin path /phpmyadmin*
        reverse_proxy @phpmyadmin 172.28.0.5:80

        @static {
                file
                path *.ico *.css *.js *.gif *.jpg *.jpeg *.png *.svg *.woff *.txt
        }

        root * /var/www/html/
        encode br zstd gzip

        wp_cache {
                loc {$CACHE_LOC:/var/www/html/wp-content/cache}
                cache_response_codes {$CACHE_RESPONSE_CODES:2XX,404,405}
                ttl {$TTL:6000}
                purge_path {$PURGE_PATH:/__cache/purge}
                purge_key {$PURGE_KEY}
                bypass_home {$BYPASS_HOME:false}
                bypass_path_prefixes {$BYPASS_PATH_PREFIXES:/wp-admin,/wp-json}
        }

        {$CADDY_SERVER_EXTRA_DIRECTIVES}
        php_server
}

# For www redirects
###DOMAIN## {
#        redir https://www.{host}{uri} permanent
#}

Replace the ##ITEM## with configurations for your own site. At the very bottom is a redirection bit in case you want www to be redirected to your TLD+1, or vice versa. The PHPMyAdmin reverse proxy is also configured inside this Caddyfile.

Execute the Migration

Now it’s time to make the transition. Bring your webserver and DB down from your host server and start your docker configurations. If at any point in this step something goes wrong, you can revert to your existing host server setup by reversing the commands below (and in the reverse execution order):

# FYI if you do not stop Apache, you will get the following error:
#Error response from daemon: failed to set up container networking: driver failed programming external
#connectivity on endpoint frankenphp-wordpress-1
#(931a4e79170c448d3aca76617cc7be9847f227138f70a4ef085efea09e19eeb3): failed to bind host port for
#0.0.0.0:80:172.18.0.2:80/tcp: address already in use

# Also need to stop MariaDB, or else you may get corrupt data from multiple live services at the same time.
sudo systemctl stop apache2
sudo systemctl stop mariadb
docker compose up

Once the instances have started up fully, let’s go and make the change in MariaDB to allow both wordpress and phpmyadmin instance access. Below settings incorporate some wildcards in the docker network which can set both wp and phpmyadmin at the same time, but if you don’t use phpmyadmin you can just limit to the WP ip address only:

docker exec -it ##DIR##-db-1 bash
mariadb -u root -p
# enter your root password

# replace each of the data with the items you configured in the compose.yaml
# 172.28.%.% is a wildcard match to all IP addresses in your docker bridge network.
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ##WORDPRESS_DB##.* TO '##WORDPRESS_USER##'@'172.28.%.%' IDENTIFIED BY '##WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD##';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Now your WordPress and PHPMyAdmin should be able to access your DB normally. However, you may need to wait a few minutes for Caddy to use LetsEncrypt to fetch a new certificate for you. You can use docker logs ##DIR##-db-1 -f to live tail your wordpress log to check on SSH certification creation/renewal progress. After a while you should be able to access your site from the public as normal.

Other Notes

Under the above setup, if you use Site Kit by Google, it will need to be reconfigured every time you create a new docker container for wp. This means there’s data used by Site Kit which resides outside of the wp-content directory which we bind to. Will update this guide once I figure out what else is necessary to bind to the docker containers.

Additional Troubleshooting

PHPMyAdmin – mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2002): No such file or directory

Change $cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] value to 127.0.0.1

Unable to Access MySQL or MariaDB

In /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf, change bind-address to 0.0.0.0

Edit (August 4, 2021) : I have received my PR card. Updating documents required and all sections after and including “During Processing”.

Edit (April 14, 2021) : Added additional documents required for PR submission (self, proxy/agent). Filled in “Submitting Your Documents” section. Fixed typos. My PR application is currently still being processed.

Legal Disclaimer : The contents of this article do not constitute legal advice, are not intended to be a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. You should seek legal advice or other professional advice in relation to any particular matters you or your organization may have.

This guide outlines my experiences transitioning from an HSP (HSFP) Visa to Japan’s permanent residency. I have lived in Tokyo, Japan since March 2014, starting out with an Engineer Working Visa before transitioning to HSP Visa (90+ points) in April 2019. One who maintains their 80+ points after a year of holding the HSP visa will be given the opportunity to apply for Japan’s permanent residency.

The permanent residence application process may vary from individual to individual, so please do go through the “Before You Read Further” section to understand my situation and background before going through the prepared documents and process. However, one thing you should know before this is that I worked with Deloitte to process my application, and there may be documents which may NOT actually be necessary but were provided for the sake of fortifying my application or just as a just-in-case. The permanent residency application requires so much of your personal information it will be like taking off all your clothes and showing them your bare naked body… the government will give a VERY thorough screening of your situation and background so it is best to provide them with as much transparency and info as possible to reduce delays to your application.

That’s it for the disclaimer… so let’s get right into it!

Before You Read Further

Below are some additional information and assumptions I am making for the sake of letting the reader understand my situation. Like I mentioned in the preface, my situation may not be applicable to everyone.

• I consulted Deloitte for my PR application.
• I am an American citizen.
• I took the HSP -> PR route instead of the normal method of 10+ years living in Japan.
• I had 80+ points the year I obtained my HSP plus the year afterwards, qualifying me to apply for PR status.
• My Reason Letter (more details below) was translated with Deloitte’s help.
• My guarantor is a close friend and is Japanese (FYI you may choose to have another PR individual be your guarantor).

Please refer to this article plus others around the web for a more complete grasp of the PR process for your specific situation.

Preparation

Required Documents (Self)

For the sake of being concise, this will be in list-form with additional points underneath each for clarification purposes. If I have time I will do my best to elaborate further.

• Passport (Copy)
• Residence Card (Copy)
• Portrait Photo – Picture Booths
  • Taken within three months against white background. Other requirements same as Residence Card photo.
• Point Calculation Table for Highly Skilled Professional Status (Previous Year + Current Year)
  • One table for each year (so two tables in total)
  • Remember to sign both documents
• Certificate of Residence (住民票 / Juminhyo) – Ward Office
  • Taken within three months. Must NOT contain personal numbers (MyNumber, Residence Card Number, etc)
  • Nationality, Visa status, etc can be included
• Employment Certificate
  • Should contain company name, start of employment date, current salary + bonus, and position.
• Tax Withholding Statement (源泉徴収書 / Gensen Choshu Sho)
  • Previous year’s. This was an additional document Immigration requested after my PR application was submitted.
• Residence Tax Certificate (納税証明書 / Nozei Shomeisho) – Ward Office
  • Request for the most recent document on file
• Residence Tax Certificate (課税納税証明書 / Kazei Nozei Shomeisho) – Ward Office
  • Request for the most recent document on file
  • Note that this will look similar to Nozei Shomeisho except with a few unmasked numbers.
• Certificate of Income Tax Payment (国税納税証明書 その他３ – Kokuzei Nozei Shomeisho Type 03) – Tax Office
  • Note that you will need to specify WHICH categories to show. In the request form, fill in the following (manually write it if not included as an option):
    • 源泉所得税及び復興特別所得税
    • 申告所得税及び復興特別所得税
    • 消費税及び地方消費税
    • 相続税
    • 贈与税
  • This document is proof that you don’t have any missing/unpaid taxes. If there is a section where it states you have unpaid taxes, you would have a problem 😐
• Monthly Pension Record (各月の年金記録 / Kakutsuki no Nenkin Kiroku) – Pension Office
  • Apparently Deloitte wanted me to retrieve this information from the online “Nenkin Net” site. You may need to visit the Pension Office in your ward to obtain a registration number to make your online account process smoother.
• Bank Statement(s)
  • Bank name, account holder name, current balance, and timestamp needs to be visible. Apparently online screenshots containing all the info is OK.
• Other documents indicating financial assets, properties in Japan
• Letter of Reason
  • This needs to be in JAPANESE. Legal services can help with translation (for a fee)
  • Remember to sign the document. I’ve signed mine after the header and before the introduction.
  • Essentially, should contain your life before Japan, experiences in Japan, future plans, and why you want PR.
  • Wanting to purchase and own property in Japan is a VALID reason for applying for PR status.

Required Documents (Guarantor)

Please reach out to your potential guarantor and have him/her prepare the documents while you prepare your’s. Both your’s and guarantor’s documents are to be submitted together.

• [If Necessary] Guarantor – Permanent Residence card (Copy)
  • Only if your guarantor is also PR.
• Guarantor – Certificate of Residence (住民票 / Juminhyo)
  • Taken within three months. Must NOT contain personal numbers (MyNumber, Residence Card Number, etc)
• Guarantor – Employment Certificate
  • Should contain company name, start of employment date, current salary + bonus, and position.
• Guarantor – Residence Tax Certificate (納税証明書 / Nozei Shomeisho)
  • Request for the most recent document on file.
• Guarantor – Residence Tax Certificate (課税納税証明書 / Kazei Nozei Shomeisho)
  • Request for the most recent document on file.
  • Note that this will look similar to Nozei Shomeisho except with a few unmasked numbers.
• Guarantor – Letter of Guarantee (身元保証書)
  • Affix seal if Japanese, or sign if PR holder.

Required Documents (Proxy/Agent)

The following are required when using a proxy/agent who will submit the application in your stead. Of course, the proxy or agent should provide these documents for you to sign:

• Proxy/Agent Request Form (依頼書)
• Letter of Power (委任状)

Submitting Your Documents

If you are applying for PR by yourself without using a proxy, once you’ve collected everything from the above it’s time to prepare for submitting the document. You’ll need to fill out additional forms outlined below.

• Application for Permanent Residence (永住許可申請書)
  • Remember to glue your portrait photo to top-left of page 1 and sign on page 2.
  • This should be filled out in JAPANESE, so if you have trouble contact your friendly Japanese-fluent friend for assistance.
• Certificate For Payment of Fee (手数料納付書)
  • 8000JPY

Bring all of the above and your actual passport and residence card (NOT copies) with you to the Immigration Services Agency or Foreign Resident Information Center for submission. Your passport and residence card should be returned to you immediately after verification.

During Processing

Once your documents have been submitted it is just a matter of waiting. However, there may be cases where Immigration will ask for additional documents. In my particular case, Immigration asked for my previous year’s tax withholding statement.

Obtaining Your PR Card

You will receive a notification from your proxy/agency or directly from Immigration if you are approved/rejected the PR.

If using a proxy/agency, mail your passport and current residence card to them and they will retrieve and mail it back to you along with your new permanent residence card. If you are applying by yourself, you may go to Immigration with your passport and current residence card to retrieve your new PR card.

Final Thoughts

Below is the complete timeline of my PR application:

Excluding the time it takes to prepare the PR application, it only took about five months from submission to approval. From other sources it normally takes longer, but I heard from another coworker that they also obtained their PR approval within the same amount of time. Note that many factors (individual qualifications, Covid, etc) may be factored in how long it takes for your own PR to be approved, but expect anywhere between 5 – 12 months for processing.

When you have PR, new options become available for you. Below are some potential perks you are now able to enjoy:

• While your visa is active indefinitely (no time limit), you do need to renew your card every seven years. More info here.
• Without PR banks will likely require you to pay a down payment for housing loans (approximately 10-30%). This becomes 0 if you have PR. In some cases you may negotiate 0% down payment with an HSP visa.
• You may start your own business. It may be in any form (sole proprietorship, company, etc).
• You may continue to reside in Japan even without a job.
• As a disadvantage, you will now be taxed on your worldwide income. More info here.

Legal Disclaimer : The contents of this article do not constitute legal advice, are not intended to be a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. You should seek legal advice or other professional advice in relation to any particular matters you or your organisation may have.

This is the beginning guide to a trilogy of Taiwanese Mahjong, going into statistics and numbers before delving into player behavior and playing scenarios. I don’t think other places in the internet has quite as detailed analyses (in English), and I will continue to add to it for, as I have always mentioned in other of my posts here, personal learning and memorandum.

Differences With Other Forms of Mahjong

• 16-tile hand instead of 13. Players need an additional set and goes out with 17 tiles.
• A player can win with a “chicken scratch” hand (0 tai).
• A “moving” dead wall in which 16 tiles are maintained at all times (Replacement tiles are taken from this dead wall, in which an equal amount should be added from the end of the live wall). Kongs add an additional 2 tiles to this dead wall.
• The dealer, starting out, gains or loses 1 tai if they win or lose, respectively. On wins or cases where nobody wins, the dealer retains their dealer status and wins/loses 2 additional tai per streak count. For instance, a dealer who won twice but loses afterwards will need to pay 1 + (2*2) = 5 tai to the winner.
• When a player goes out on a self-draw, every loser pays the winner equal to the amount of tai of the winner’s hand. If the dealer is not east, that dealer will need to pay additional tai equal to dealership (1 tai) plus any consecutive streaks they have.
• In cases where a discard results in multiple players going out, the closest person (counter-clockwise from the person who discarded the winning tile) is awarded with the win.
• Concealed Kongs – a player may choose to conceal their kong if they have all four tiles in their hand.
• One cannot meld a Kong from their left player – Pung should be declared and the last tile added to form a Kong on the player’s next draw.
• One may choose not to pick the last tile. The match will still end with nobody winning, and dealer retains their seat and +1 consecutive “streak”.

Probabilities and Statistics

Average number of cycles per round

There are 144 tiles total (136 + 8 flowers) in Taiwanese Mahjong. 16 tiles are reserved for the dead wall at all times. Each player also begins the game with 16 tiles (the dealer begins by drawing the first tile so we consider the dealer having 17 tiles starting out). On average, 4-5 flower tiles are revealed before the dealer makes their first discard.

With all of the above added together (16 dead wall + 65 combined tiles in 4 hands + 4-5 flower tiles revealed), only 58-60 tiles remain to be picked. 4 tiles are picked each cycle which means that there are effectively 14-15 cycles in a single round. This is important when going into detail about strategies in early/mid/end game.

Average rounds per game (4 winds)

A single game (一將/一雀) normally consists of 4 winds, which means that there are a total of 16 dealers (4 per person). Assuming that every player is equivalent in skill, the odds of going out is assumed to be 25%, which means that the amount of times +1 consecutive dealership is achieved is 16 * 0.25 = 4 times. Within those four times there’s another 25% chance that the dealer wins yet again, which brings our average total rounds per game to 21, but is widely known to be 20-22. This means that, statistically, a single player, on average, wins about 5-6 hands per game, with 1-2 hands within that being a self-draw win (everyone pays the winner). Unfortunately, this also means that a single player will be on the losing side of a self-draw 4-6 times.

Why is this important?? Because if a player wins 4 games (with around 1 of which being self-draw to earn more points) to cover up for the times of losing to a self-draw, that player will not lose the game and will finish positive. However, this is valid only if you do not lose by discard. The point is, if ones goal is to finish positive, one can attack to win 4 times (provided their starting hand is quite favorable) while playing more defensively for the remainder of the 16-18 rounds.

There is a method for finding out which starting hands are favorable and which are not, which will be left for a later guide.

Picking tiles

With 3 suits, 4 winds, and 3 honor types in mahjong, the chance of picking a desired tile stands at 1/34 (2.9%). Additionally, although there is not enough evidence to back this claim, it is believed that you will, on average, pick a tile you need to complete a set every two picks. Because there are 4 of the same tile, the probability decreases by -0.75% for each desired tile seen (to 0% if all 4 tiles are accounted for). There’s no need to remember this particular probability, but it does somewhat play into the next point:

Starting hand composition

Taiwanese Mahjong is played using 144 tiles with a 16-tile hand. On average, when a round begins one should expect to see 4.2 tiles of a single suit and 3.4 tiles of wind/honors. This means that an ordinary hand will have roughly 4-5 man tiles, 4-5 bam tiles, 4-5 circle tiles, and 3-4 wind/honor tiles. Likewise, there is a 9/34 (26.47%) chance to pick one of bamboo, circle, or man tiles, and 7/34 (20.58%) chance to pick a word tile.

This is an interesting and important concept to understand when going into detail about play strategy; for instance, a player with many non-pair winds/honor tiles will likely start the first few cycles of the round discarding them, whereas those who start discarding suit tiles very early may have a higher amount of “gates” and be closer to going out.

[Early Game] Discarding Word tiles vs 1, 9 tiles

This part may be controversial and not everybody may agree with the reasoning, but in the discarding phase it is better to discard word tiles over an “orphan” or . This is because to create a set using , for instance, any of the potential three remaining , four , and four may be drawn from the live wall. Compared to an orphaned word tile such as (only three remaining), the probability of making a meld-able set (any of the following , , or ) is three times higher than picking a second word tile .

This is a controversial concept because some players may take the chance to pick into a paired word tile provided one hadn’t already been discarded, and that the chance another player has a pair of the same word tile you have is minute, and thus if such opponents aim to go out then they will have no choice but to discard it somewhere down the line. That said, however, the following negative possibilities exist which diminishes the chance of one picking and melding word tiles in mid/late game:

• Opponent(s) want to discard the tile but found out they shouldn’t due to fear of discarding the winning tile.
• One or more of the tile resides within the dead wall.
• Another opponent also has a pair of the same word tile.

The above does not include the simple fact that any player can go out with a 0-tai “chicken scratch” hand, so the aim for nearly all ordinary hands is to reach tenpai status as early as possible while waiting for a suitable set of tiles.

Thus, the most optimal discard order for the early game is as follows:

1. Wind tiles that are not the prevalent wind nor your position’s wind. This is to account for the chance you may pick a wind or honor tile while still in the early game which has potential to earn you an additional tai.
2. Remainder of orphan wind/honor tiles.
3. Orphan ‘s and ‘s.
4. Other separated tiles depending on situation.
   

Characteristics of Suit (Number) Tiles

The Principle of Symmetry (對稱性)

The first thing to understand about number tiles is that the set of 1-9 tiles is symmetric. This means that 1 to 5 is the same as 5 – 9 but “flipped” – every characteristic of 1 can be applied to 9, every characteristic of 2 can be applied to 8, and so on. For instance, discussions revolving probabilities of can be exactly applied to .

This principle is very convenient when discussing probabilities and tile logic because one need only look at half (i.e. tile numbers 1 through 5) of the number tiles. From henceforth, barring some side notes, I will use tile numbers 1 through 5 for discussion around number tile logic and probabilities.

The Principle of Suppression (向下壓/向上壓)

The principle of suppression states that, especially in the beginning cycles, a player who discards a numbered tile will likely not want any numbers smaller than it (bigger if talking about 5 through 9). For example, a player who discards a is likely to not want a , and likewise discarding a shows they likely don’t want or . This is true because players want to discard all tiles not suitable for melds in the early game – starting with those numbered tiles furthest away. Of courses, there are cases such as in which a player may discard but normally one chooses to keep it early game in case the left player discards a which can be used complete a meld. One can learn a lot about their opponents’ hands when they discard tiles using this principle.

The “1-4-7” Rule (一路性)

1-4-7:

2-5-8:

3-6-9:

Because mahjong incorporates the Chow mechanic, there is an observation which states that discarding a or is somewhat safe to an opponent who discards a because by discarding the opponent shows they do not have the tiles necessary to meld or to complete a Chow. The same rule can be applied to 2-5-8 and 3-6-9. However, this does not mean that when an opponent discards a that they won’t want a . It is possible the opponent can chow or win with this tile, but the probability that they want this tile is roughly halved. Obviously, throwing a does not have any significant impact on the chances the opponent wants .

The 1-4-7 rule has another interesting characteristic in that it can be leveraged to perform a 3-gated wait. Assuming one already has 3 sets and a pair of eyes (not shown):

One can wait for , , or to win, increasing the amount of wait-able tiles to 11 instead of 8 for a 2-sided wait. Sometimes for higher than 2-gated waits I may choose to not win on a first discard but instead go for a self-draw victory due to the increased chance of success.

D-A-D (Develop – Attack – Defend)

After noting the above sections, we can know go into the philosophy many professionals refer to as the D-A-D strategy. While many online sources go over each section and how it is beneficial to follow the strategy, I haven’t found any which goes into the fine details and reasoning behind why it is so. I will do my best to explain the logics behind this strategy here.

Let’s dive straight into the first “D”, which is:

Cycle 1-6 : Develop (序盤)

The first six cycles is referred to as “D” which stands for Develop, otherwise known in other sources as “Opening” or “Early Game”. Earlier in the “Starting hand composition” section we know that on average a player’s starting hand consists of 4-5 tiles of each suit and 3-4 word tiles. Accounting for the probability of picking an additional 1-2 word (remember there is a roughly 20% chance – 1 in 5 picks – in which a word tile is drawn) tiles plus discarding un-needed orphan tiles, cleaning out your hand to a point where one can begin to attack averages at around 6 rounds. In other words, if one still has orphaned cards after the Develop phase then they may consider giving up for this round, skip the attack phase and go straight into defense.

Cycle 6-12 : Attack (中盤)

The Attack phase (mid-game) can be further split into two:

Cycle 6-9

Players with a good starting hand or has had favorable melds will reach tenpai within the early mid-game. Other opponents who see that they have many melds should watch this player’s discards carefully as it can give clues on what they are waiting on. If one is not tenpai and does not have a safe tile to discard then they can consider folding and playing defense for the rest of the round.

Cycle 9-12

Most players with an ordinary starting hand and luck will likely reach tenpai in this stage. At this point one should weigh the risks of going for the win vs how strong opponents’ hands are. Waiting on a single tile or a blocked 2-gated wait is not ideal at this stage.

Cycle 13-15 : Defend (末盤)

If one is not tenpai at this end-game then give up, because no matter what it is not appetizing to discard a dangerous tile when one is not close to winning. Give that chance to others who are perhaps not as experienced at you are, or believe that the opponent(s) will not win on self-draw due to being stuck or merely waiting on bad tiles.

Good vs Bad Starting Hand

Like with other types of mahjong, the most convenient method is to check how many cards you are away from tenpai. More experienced players are able to adjust the formula to further calculate how easy/hard it is to acquire the remaining tiles necessary – some pointers and advice is left for a future guide on advanced gameplay. For now we will just go over the simple formula, which is how many tiles you are away from tenpai.

• 2-3 to tenpai (Good)
  Assuming from above that on average it takes two draws to bring one’s hand a tile closer to tenpai. Thus, 2-3 away from tenpai means one will reach tenpai before mid-game, in which case you should forcibly attack and play to win.
• 3-4 to tenpai (Normal)
  With this hand you should expect to have either 1 set and 1 pair, or 0 sets and 1 pair but with easy to meld combinations. Expect for everyone to reach tenpai 8-10 cycles into the round. Obviously, because this type of hand is the most often to occur, one should consider the situation and decide whether to continue attacking or to switch to defense during mid-game.
• 5+ to tenpai (Bad)
  One should seriously consider defending for this round for any hand above five tiles needed to tenpai. Unless the player has amazing luck drawing tiles with their left player feeding them, one would already be at the last three cycles before reaching tenpai, which also means one would need to take 2-3 rounds discarding risky tiles mid-game to get to that point. Withdrawing like this for even a few rounds out of 20-22 rounds is not going to hurt the overall game. There is a saying amongst professional players which goes along the lines of: “Anyone who discards the winning tile (lose) during the end-game (末盤) without tenpai does not know how to play mahjong“.
  

Disclaimer (2020-06-03): The first half of the guide (first page of registration) has now been updated to the latest version. The second section about Credit Card information has been left as-is since its UI has been left nearly the same since two years ago. Ignore the sudden jump in numbering as I have only updated the first half of the guide. That said, if there are any discrepancies please do let me know in the comments section!

Introduction

Rakuten Bank is an online service that aims to provide various banking services to customers. Those who use or subscribe to various Rakuten services will often enjoy additional benefits for their banking needs. Just like with Rakuten Card, there are no physical offices you can go to so everything is managed online instead. Having an account with Rakuten is recommended if you heavily use things such as Card, Securities, Edy, or Super Points. In any case, you can read about a non-exhaustive list of advantages and disadvantages below:

Advantages

• All services available over the internet
• Enjoy additional benefits when linking bank to many other Rakuten services.
• Deposits can be done at Yuucho, and withdrawals from Yuucho and many popular convenience stores.
• It’s possible to have up to 5 transfers and 5 withdrawals free per month based on your “Happy Program” ranking.

Disadvantages

• If you ran out of free transfers and withdrawals, the fee can be pretty high (especially weekends/holidays)
• Extra work may be necessary to link other company’s services to Rakuten Bank (for billing/transfer purposes)
• Interest returns on your balance are lower compared to other companies.

Prerequisites

You, obviously, need to reside in Japan and also have at least one of:

• Japanese Driver’s License
• Health Insurance Card
• Residence Card

After you submit the application you will be asked to submit proof of document for one of the above. This can be done via mobile application or via snail mail. For obvious reason I recommend using the Rakuten Bank mobile app to upload images of your formal document of choice.

In addition, if you haven’t registered for a Rakuten group account yet, then I strongly advise you do so as the below guide is tailored for those who already have an account. Don’t worry, the registration should be very straightforward (Last/First Name, username, password, e-mail address).

Before You Start…

Don’t stay too long on a screen or else it will TIMEOUT and you will have to do it All. Over. Again. If you are slow in filling out Japanese forms then I recommend you look over this guide first and prepare in however way you wish before proceeding.

Application Process

Getting to the Application Form

Click here to support me (thank you!) and start the process of signing up for Rakuten Bank. Click on the red button in the middle of the page.

If you have not logged into your Rakuten account yet, do so. If you do not yet own an account, go ahead and create one by clicking on the right-side button.

You will be transitioned to a temporary page stating you have successfully entered into the campaign, and will be redirected to the signup form in about five seconds.

Form Part A: Bank Account Info

Refer to the notes below the images for additional information:

名前：漢字) Your name should be input, in FULL-WIDTH ALPHABET, your name as shown on your residence card. If you’re like me who has strange characters in your name (such as a hyphen in first name), then omit it completely.
(eg “SMITH, ANNA-MARIE” should be “SMITH, ANNAMARIE”)
名前：フリガナ) If you registered your Rakuten group account using English name then this should be autofilled with “ー　ー”. You can choose to leave as is or replace with Katakana reading.
性別) Left for Male, right for female. Nothing confusing here.
生年月日) Birthday. Nothing special here.
電話番号) Enter your phone number.
メールアドレス) This should be autofilled for you if you logged into your Rakuten group account. Just re-enter e-mail in confirmation box.
住所：郵便番号) Input your residence’s zip code and click button to the right.
住所：都道府県市区町村) Enter the rest of your address as printed on the back of your residence card.

Note the checkbox, which translates to”Please check this box if you do not have Japanese citizenship. Those with Japanese citizenship need not check this box.”
Hint: you should check this box.
「米国人」…) Check right box if you are American. Otherwise, check left one.
居住地国の確認) Check the above box if you only reside in Japan. In other words, unless you have tax responsibilities from staying in other countries, check the top box.
職業) Below is a formatted table of the selections:

(Depending on what you chose in #7 above, you may have to fill out the below. Otherwise just move on.)

Basically follow the notes directly on the image and fill in your company’s information as best you can.

Pick the kind of card you want. The types of cards go from debit cards to credit cards to simple bank (cash) cards. Keep in mind that you may need to provide additional information if you choose to get a cash card with credit option. Refer to the other link for how to register for Rakuten Card here for some additional references.

講座の利用目的) Must check one of the options above. Some common ones are:
生活費の払い: Personal expenses
給与/年金の受取: Salary Transfer
楽天サービスの利用: Use Rakuten Services

Select the type of document you will provide as personal verification, in the form of the following:

楽天銀行toto) Rakuten Toto is the lottery business of Rakuten. It is not a required service so uncheck it if you do not need it.
楽天証券講座) Left box if you want to also create a stock brokerage account with Rakuten, otherwise check right box.

Check this required box to agree to the T&C. Afterwards click the “次へ” button on the bottom right.

Form Part B: Credit Card Info

Refer to the notes below the images for additional information:
Fill out #25-#27 as noted in image above.
28) Name in ROMAJI (Again)
29) Phone number
30) Maybe can leave blank

34) Here’s another table, in the same ordering:

35) Put yourself in the count (so if you’re single with no dependents, put “一人世帯”)
36) Tables are fun!

42) From left to right: working, student, unemployed, earning retirement benefits
43) If you earn your own income, check left. If you don’t, choose right.
44) Your yearly income (before tax!)
45 – 50) Same as the company information you may have filled out earlier on page 1.
51) Job Role:

52) Type of Employee:

The text below selection reads: If you are a student doing part-time work, fill in “Part-time”.
53) Industry:

Confirm the following two points and click red button on bottom of page.

You have now reached the confirmation page (you are almost done!!)

Form Part C: Confirm + Submit

Make sure to check the box as shown (you can leave the others as-is – they’re not subscriptions to anything or whatever that will spam you)

Aaaand, you are done! You should receive an e-mail with the confirmation receipt number. Now it’s just a matter of waiting!

What To Do After

You are required to submit proof that you reside and work in Japan. You have the choice between multiple documents you can submit. The two most commonly used documents are your Residence Card or your Health Insurance Card. Choose one you prefer, download the Rakuten Bank App, and submit front/back images of your document through it. (Unfortunately I don’t have a test account so I cannot create a tutorial for this, but there’s no rush so please ask a trusted Japanese friend to help you!)

Search “Rakuten Bank” or “楽天銀行” on your phone, or scan the QR code on the receipt screen (OR, you can even scan the QR code in the above image!)

Trivia/Nice-To-Knows

Will add as I think of them.

Visiting Taiwan and want to drive but forgot to apply for an International Driver’s Permit? If you have a Japanese driver’s license then it is possible for you to drive in Taiwan without having to transfer your license to Taiwan D/L or needing an International Driver’s Permit (IDP). On top of that, unlike IDPs which requires one to process before embarkation, those who are too late (already in Taiwan) are still able to process the necessary documents to drive – and it will be available to use immediately.

Read on for details, procedures, precautions, and other important information regarding driving in Taiwan with a Japanese D/L.

Before You Begin

Since September 21, 1996 Taiwan and Japan have entered into a reciprocal agreement (TW) which enables license holders from one country to drive in the other withOUT transferring of license. While there are some restrictions regarding vehicle types you can drive depending on the license type (I will go more into detail about these restrictions below), it is pretty reasonable and you should expect to be able to drive the same kind of vehicle as you would in Japan.

However, this article only applies to you if you do not plan to apply for an IDP or if you are visiting Taiwan under a Visitor’s Visa – this is because it is better to just translate your Japanese D/L to Taiwan D/L if you are a resident of Taiwan or otherwise have a work permit (ARC).

In addition, note that the period of validity is limited as follows:

• Usage period is 365 days from date of arrival to Taiwan. This 365 days is refreshed when you depart and revisit Taiwan.
• Your driving eligibility is revoked after the expiry date on your Japan D/L.
• If your Japanese D/L is expired, you must apply for a new translation after renewal.

Remember to bring your Japanese Driver’s License with you to Taiwan. Additional required documents are detailed in the next section.

Required Documents

Police officers and other officials who need to check your identity and license verification would need the following items. Note that you MUST have all three documents with you in order to operate a vehicle:

• Passport
• Japanese Driver’s License
• Translation of Japanese Driver’s License to Traditional Chinese
  

This translation of your Japanese Driver’s License is likely the only item you don’t have on hand, but rest assured it is possible to produce this document whether you are in still in Japan or already in Taiwan. It is highly recommended you secure this document while in Japan since there are very few places where you will be able to translate your Japanese Driver’s License in Taiwan. This brings us to the next topic…

Where to Translate Your Japanese D/L

The Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) is the official and only entity which can provide a legal translation of your Japanese D/L to Taiwanese D/L.

In Japan

JAF has many locations across Japan where you can either walk-in or mail your application to. Refer to the “日本運転免許証の中国語翻訳文（台湾）の発行が可能な支部” section to find the office most convenient for you. Do keep in mind that some offices do not accept mail-in services and others may not have a reception desk – make sure to check the “受付” and “発行” sections for each office before visiting or submitting your application. The translation will take some time, so don’t expect to be able to receive your translated document on the same day.

Bring/submit the following when applying for the translation document:

• Translation Application
• Japanese Driver’s License
• 3600JPY

More detailed information can be found on their official page. Allow yourself enough time to submit and receive the translation before embarking on your trip to Taiwan.

In Taiwan

There are only two JAF offices in Taiwan (Taipei and Kaohsiung) so you will need to make a trip to either of those cities if you wish to translate your Japanese D/L. Be careful that you don’t visit during weekends or holidays as they only operate during business days.

There is an additional document when processing in Taiwan, so do exercise caution and make sure you prepare all of the following documents:

• Translation Application – You can fill this out at their office
• Japanese Driver’s License
• Passport
• 590 NTD (~2145JPY, actually cheaper than doing it in Japan!!!)

Restrictions and Precautions

The types of licenses between Japan and Taiwan differ and do not exactly match. As such, it is important to note your translated license and refer to this document (JP) to understand exactly which types of vehicles you are allowed to operate in Taiwan.

As an example, my type of license (普通) grants me the ability many 4-wheel vehicles. A highly generic summary is outlined below:

• Generally all vehicles less than 3500kg, though there are a few exceptions
• Electric bikes
• Motorcycle class under 50cc power

Especially take note that you MAY NOT OPERATE MOTORCYCLES OVER 50cc. Most rental motorcycles from Gogoro and Wemo offer bikes over 50cc so don’t expect to be able to rent one. In addition, motorcycles have quite a different set of road rules compared to 4-wheel vehicles you must follow. In my honest opinion this restriction is perfectly reasonable especially if you have only driven 4-wheel vehicles and have no experience with bikes. Don’t drive bikes in Taiwan when you have the option to drive a compact car instead.

In Case of Accident

Driving in Taiwan is not as orderly as in Japan – you will often find that drivers’ attitudes are vastly different, bikes will weave around you, number of lanes will change immediately after intersections, signal lights work somewhat differently, and many other unique nuances:

• Contact the police (110)
• If injured, contact the ambulance (119)
• If vehicle was rented, contact rental company
• If you are fined, contact Japan-Taiwan Exchange association

For the last point above, for the area of Taiwan above Taichung/Nantou and Yilan, contact the Taipei branch:

Phone (Business Hours): 02-2713-8000
Phone (Non-Business): 0937-043-408
Homepage: https://www.koryu.or.jp/about/taipei/

For other areas of Taiwan, including Penghu, contact the Kaohsiung branch:

Phone (Business Hours): 07-771-4008
Phone (Non-Business): 0929-228-458
Homepage: https://www.koryu.or.jp/about/kaohsiung/

Introduction

Many folks who, like me, wish to try pour-over coffee will definitely look into some details online – via articles or videos – about what tools to prepare and how to make the best cup of coffee. Obviously it is without doubt that the pictures and demonstrations displayed will use the highest grade of tools and materials (coffee beans included). Viewers who want to imitate the pour-over technique may be disappointed to find their results to be sub-par and not what the pictures/videos portrayed at all.

As a personal anecdote, I watched many Youtube videos and read many articles (including this guide from Blue Bottle Coffee), but no matter what I tried I wasn’t able to produce the bloom as shown in these guides. One of the other videos I watched was from Tully’s, a local coffee chain, and I even bought some whole coffee beans from them and tried to imitate the video, to disappointing effect. Just as I was about to give up the journey of making beautiful and delicious pour-over coffee, I bought and used some coffee beans from a local store which roasted coffee beans on the spot… and the results were beautiful! The freshness of the coffee beans produced a bloom prettier and more substantial than any of the videos and guides I’ve watched.

To illustrate the difference, I have decided to create a side-by-side comparison guide of various coffee beans purchased from various cafes. In addition, as I am a still an amateur, I would also like to show that even by using non-standard ordinary tools, it is possible to re-create the pour-over effects shown in many other articles and videos on the web.

Lastly, realize that there are multiple ways to perform pour-over coffee technique. Since I live in Japan, I have opted to adopt the Japanese-style pour-over technique. Many other techniques don’t care so much for the bloom nor painstakingly controlling the pour amount/rest time/number of pours, but I find the ceremonial process of the Japanese style to be very soothing and comfortable. Much like with the upscale bartending industry in Japan, the show is just as important as the end result – the careful consideration of the server to handle a singular order from a client shows the importance of every single customer to the establishment. Of course, personally I feel the coffee tastes comparably delicious compared to other techniques I have tried in the past.

Notable Differences Between Fresh and Stale Coffee Beans

This section is basically the TL;DR, if you are not interested in reading on about the specifics.

Stale coffee grounds:

• Have little to no “bloom” when starting the pour.
• Is difficult to “maintain” the pour – the water will appear to fill up too quickly in the filter and “overflow”.
• After the bloom, when pouring in the center, the grounds will not appear to expand around the sides. This suggests that the grounds in the outer area of the filter are not having their flavor properly extracted.
• Will lack flavor and have a much bitter taste.

Tools Used

1. Tanita KJ-212 food scale (has both grams and ml measurements, down to one decimal of accuracy)
2. Kalita KH-3 Manual burr-style coffee mill
3. Food thermometer
4. Pour-over kettle
5. Coffee dripper (Hario V01) + filter (Hario)

Coffee Beans Compared

Looking at the above pictures, from left to right:

Avi Coffee

Avi Coffee, located about 5 minutes walk from Gakugeidaigaku Station on the Toyoko Line, is a small local shop that offers freshly roasted coffee beans at an affordable price. While they have some common blends they will roast on the same day, you can choose to wait and have them roast the raw coffee beans for you on the spot. I loved that the coffee beans had somewhat of a sheen on it when I first opened the package.

In this guide, I purchased 200g of their premium dark roast, and it was roasted on July 14, 2018 (the experiment was performed on July 22, 2018).

Ueshima Coffee (上島珈琲店)

Ueshima Coffee’s parent company, UCC, has a long history with coffee and interestingly was the first company in the entire world to introduce canned coffee. Just like Starbucks, they operate many coffee shops all over Japan; there is likely not one person in Japan who hasn’t seen or heard of one.

The only coffee they sell is the original Ueshima Coffee blend. I purchased 100g in which the cashier lady measured from a bag behind the counter. Thus, information about its roasted, best-by, or expiration dates are unknown.

Starbucks

No explanations needed here – everyone knows Starbucks (I hope)! While they have bags of coffee beans lined up in the shelves, it is possible to purchase a lesser amount than the 250g that is usually packaged in a single bag: minimum 100g, in increments of 10g. I showed the cashier the Dark French Roast bag, saying I wanted only 100g of it, and she took the bag, opened it up, and measured 100g for me. The bag showed on it a Best-By date of December 2018.

Preparation

Here is my pour-over technique. Factors such as pouring time, waiting time, and pour amounts can be individually adjusted to your liking.

1. Boil enough water so that you are able to use some for warming the coffee pot as well as for the actual coffee. I recommend the amount of coffee + 150ml extra. For this guide I will be using ~270ml of water for the pour.
2. While waiting for the water to boil, measure and grind your coffee beans. The ratio of coffee to water is not a topic of this post – feel free to adjust due to your taste – but for the purposes of this guide I will be using a 1:15 ratio. A 1:15 ratio with 270ml water means 18g of coffee.
3. Once the water comes to a boil, remove it from heat and add a small amount (~100ml) into the coffee pot to warm it up.
4. Prepare your coffee dripper and filter. Whether you wet the filter before putting in the coffee grinds is up to you and the filter you use. Most coffee shops I visit leave the filter dry.
5. Pour the coffee grind into the filter, and give it a few gentle taps to level the grounds.
6. Using a food thermometer, measure the water and confirm that it is around 90-92 Celcius (190-200F).
7. When you are ready to start the pour, remove the water from the coffee pot, put the entire setup on a scale and tare it. Have a timer ready to go.

Pour-Over Technique

Here are the steps I like to use – again, this is for 18g of coffee ground, 270ml of water for a rough 1:15 ratio:

1. Make sure the scale is zeroed. Start the timer.
2. Pour ~40ml of water from the center, moving outwards and covering all of the grounds. The pour duration should be roughly five seconds. Allow the coffee ground to bloom.
3. At the 30 second mark, slowly pour water in the center and in the clockwise direction. Pour an additional 60ml in 30 seconds. The foam which appears in the center should have a diameter of a large coin (quarter, 100yen, etc).
4. Wait 20 seconds.
5. Repeat Step 3-4 until desired amount of coffee reached.

During Pour-Over

The most striking difference is the “blooming” of the coffee beans when the first 60ml of water is poured into the dripper. When hot water makes contact with the ground coffee beans CO2 will be released, which creates a blooming effect. This exaggerated “de-gassing” is positively correlated with the freshness of the coffee beans.

(Note that in the ordering of each sets of pictures in this section is the following: Avi, Ueshima, Starbucks)

When a strong blooms exists, water that enters through the center will more easily flow throughout the entire dripper, extracting the coffee flavor before coming out of the bottom. For stale coffee beans the entirety of the grounds will not expand, and so the hot water which in from the center will not expand to the outer area of the filter. The result is over-extracted grounds near the center and under-extracted grounds closer to the outer perimeter of the dripper. Also note that a more pronounced bloom results in an outwards expansion (Avi), rather than a collapsed look (Starbucks).

After the initial pour, if a beautiful bloom is produced, there should be no issues with slowly pouring another 60ml of water over the course of 30 seconds. As mentioned above, the water will travel throughout the entirety of the coffee grounds and therefore enables more volume to be held. In stale ground coffee beans with little to no bloom, the hot water will mostly only travel straight down the center. As one can imagine, not only does this under-utilize the entirety of the coffee grounds, it becomes difficult to pour consistently over a 30-40 second interval (in my personal experience, I can only pour ~30ml before “overflowing” to the outer parts of the dripper).

When waiting and allowing the coffee grounds to breath between pours, the bloom should stay visible and not decay to the point where it disappears.

Finally, when the desired amount of hot water is reached, here is a side-by-side comparison of what the grounds look:

Additional Remarks

I have decided not to comment on the taste of the coffee produced in my experiments because of the various kinds of coffee used. However, from a scientific perspective, stale coffee beans tend to have less “good” coffee taste and more astringency by nature. In addition, the over-extraction of the grounds in the center maximalizes the bitterness while producing a weaker tasting brew. Those who use more stale coffee beans may have to not just pour in the center, but over the entire surface area of the dripper to better saturate all of the grounds.

(Update 2020-04-24: About two years after the making of this article, some of the content has changed, specifically regarding software updates for the GCP Click-To-Deploy VM, as well as different prompts from LetsEncrypt. The post has been updated to reflect the changes.)

This is part 3 of a three-part guide to setting up and configuring WordPress hosted on Google Cloud Platform and registered with a Google Domain URL. Readers should make sure their WordPress instance is running and behaving properly using GCP, have WordPress admin access, and registered their custom domain (eg http://www.example.com) before attempting this section.

To prevent bulking of a single article, I separated this holistic guide into three separate parts. Feel free to jump to the previous articles when you need any past references. For your convenience, the guides are outlined below:

Why Should You Do SSL Verification?

There are multiple reasons; without going into too much details, here are some important ones:

• Increased security via encryption – connections to your site will be encrypted and therefore safe from evildoers who may capture information without you noticing.
• Increased user trust – Internet users generally feel more safe browsing an HTTPS site rather than an unsecured HTTP site (see that “unsecured” warning beside your URL when you go to your current WordPress site? Sounds ominous… doesn’t it?)
• Increased SEO performance – Search engines favor HTTPS sites and will rank them higher in the search results in order to promote Internet safety for all users.
• Finally, by routing all of your HTTP traffic to HTTPS, it helps with your site traffic analysis in that you won’t have to aggregate both the HTTP and HTTPS pageviews – all traffic will be recorded as HTTPS which makes for easier viewing.

So, in a nutshell, unless you don’t want your site to do well, you MUST make sure your site is secured using HTTPS (via SSL verification) :).

General Steps To Add SSL Certificate to Your WordPress Server

1. Log into your WordPress server via SSH.
2. Using the default package manager (“apt-get” for Debian 8 for Google Cloud Platform WordPress Click-to-Deploy), install Certbot under administrator.
3. Make backup of your Apache2 settings (for possible rollback purposes).
4. Execute Certbox command to “semi-automatically” generate SSL Certificate and modify Apache configurations to allow HTTPS.
5. On WordPress Admin Console, inside General Settings, change Hostname and SiteURL to reflect its HTTPS equivalent.
6. Verify HTTPS connection to your WordPress Site.
7. [If something went wrong or it doesn’t work] Rollback.

Pre-Requisites

Note that this is the last post from a three-part guide about how to set up WordPress using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Domains. That said, as of July 2018, the WordPress Single Instance Click-to-Deploy solution contain the following important and relevant configurations (versions have changed as of 2020-04-25):

• Debian 9.11 “Stretch” as Linux OS.
• Apache 2.4.25 as the webserver. Its configurations are located in /etc/apache2/ . The Click-to-Deploy solution comes with separated default-ssl.conf and wordpress.conf Apache config files.
• WordPress 5.2.3, which root hosting directory lies under /var/www/html/ .

This guide is not guaranteed to work for different versions of the Linux OS, nor if the server is not deployed using GCP’s Click-to-Deploy method. Proceed at your own risk.

Installing Certbot

Certbot is an easy way to enable HTTPS on your server using the free, open Let’s Encrypt certificate authority. In the Certbot homepage, if you input “Apache” under the Software field and “Debian 8 (Jessie)” in the System field then you will get this page which will guide you through a somewhat automated installation of your SSL certificate. Unfortunately, blindly following what is written on that page will get you into some errors when configuring Apache due to the way the WordPress Apache is set up. There are a few things to watch out for, but the next few sections will go into detail about exactly what you should do. Do not fret!

Certbot doesn’t exist on the server by default, so it will need to be installed via the following command (You may CTRL-V to paste any copied text into the SSH terminal)…

sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache -t stretch-backports

… which will take around thirty seconds. A bunch of installation messages will come up but you may proceed if you don’t see any errors.

Make Backup of Apache2 Configurations

This guide will modify the Apache settings. In order to rollback in case anything goes wrong, it is strongly advised to backup some of the configuration files so that we can overwrite them with the originals easily to restore access to the HTTP WordPress site. To do so, execute the following commands which will essentially backup the entire folder and its contents into a backup directory:

cd /etc/apache2/ && sudo cp -R sites-available sites-available.backup

One of the steps in the rollback section of this guide includes removing the sites-available directory and renaming the sites-available.backup to sites-available, effectively restoring the original configurations.

Execute Certbot for Automatic SSL Certificate Generation and Apache Configuration

An additional preparation we need to do is to un-comment some parameters in the apache files (it appears that the default WordPress installation has these commented out by default). The automated SSL Certificate configuration will fail if we do not comment-in these fields. To do so, let’s do a full search-and-replace of #SSLCertificate and replace it with the non-# equivalent:

sudo sed -i 's/#SSLCertificate/SSLCertificate/g' /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf

And let’s add in an Apache service restart to update the changes:

sudo service apache2 restart

We are now ready! To execute the automatic SSL certificate generation and Apache configuration, run something similar to the following command:

sudo certbot --authenticator webroot -d ##DOMAIN_NAME## -d www.##DOMAIN_NAME## -w /var/www/html/ --installer apache

Where ##DOMAIN_NAME## should be replaced with the custom domain you have registered for the site.
If you deployed WordPress using GCP’s Click-to-Deploy method, your WordPress should be served from /var/www/html/ – you can leave it as-is.
Here is an example command I used for this site:

sudo certbot --authenticator webroot -d jiyuulife.net -d www.jiyuulife.net -w /var/www/html/ --installer apache

Once you execute, it should ask for your email address, so go ahead and fill it in:

Next it will ask you to agree to the Terms of Service. Once you have, proceed by typing ‘A’ and pressing return:

Next, since there are multiple configuration files inside Apache, the automated SSL certificate service is not sure which Apache settings to modify. When the prompt appears, choose the number corresponding to the “default-ssl.conf” file. If default-ssl.conf does not exist, then choose the one with your hostname in the middle column and HTTPS to the right of it (and example is below with filename “000-default-le-ssl.conf”):

Once you’re done with that, there is a prompt asking you if HTTPS is optional or mandatory. There’s really no reason to use HTTP at all, so choose the “Secure” option (“Redirect” for new version of LetsEncrypt as of 2020-04-25).

And that’s it! You should be brought to a congratulations prompt…

LetsEncrypt issue certificates with short life-spans, so it becomes imperative to renew certificates in a timely manner. As of 2020-05-13 certificates last for three months so we will need to schedule a job so that we won’t need to touch the server so often. For websites I maintain, I set a cron job to check and renew certificates on a weekly basis.

The below command will append a certbot cron job to run the certificate renewal command every Sunday at midnight. I did not use @weekly as it may not be compatible for some flavors of Linux OS. Also, the “-q” parameter silences normal output and will only log errors which are saved to a file for future reference:

crontab -l | { cat; echo "0 0 * * 0 sudo certbot renew -q"; } | crontab -

Make sure that the above command is added successfully and that your current cronjobs – if any – were not modified in any way:

crontab -l

(Update 2020-04-24: The below is no longer available UNLESS you upgrade LetsEncrypt to version 0.32.0 or higher. The stretch-backport version of LetsEncrypt is only version 0.28.0 which is bugged and cannot run dry tests. More information here.
You may attempt to upgrade LetsEncrypt but I give no guarantees that it will run smoothly.)

Your SSL is now set up and ready to go. An an optional procedure, it is recommended to perform a certificate renewal dry run to test that your certificate will be renewable then the time comes. You can try it using the following command:

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Change Hostname and SiteURL in WordPress Admin Console

Go into your WordPress admin console’s General Settings area, and change the WordPress Address and Site Address to reflect the HTTPS equivalent. An example is below:

Making a change like this is known to cause issues with Permalinks, so we will need to press the update button on those settings as well. Go to Settings -> Permalinks, and just hit the “Save Changes” button without changing anything on the page.

Verify HTTPS Connection to Your WordPress Site

Everything should be all set and good to go! Check that the various combinations of URLs will direct to your HTTPS-enabled site. Some examples are below:

• example.com
• http://example.com
• www.example.com
• http://www.example.com
• etc…

IF Something is Wrong, Rollback!!!

If you come across any issues and need to revert to the original settings, you will have to perform the following:

1. Restore sites-available directory
2. Disable SSL
3. Restart Apache
4. Update General Settings on WordPress Admin Page

To restore the sites-available directory, use the following command in the terminal (assuming you followed the backup procedure above):

cd /etc/apache2/ && sudo mv sites-available sites-available.auto && sudo mv sites-available.backup sites-available

This will essentially exchange the current Apache configurations with the original – the copy before you attempted this guide. As you can see, it does not do any deletions, so you are free to review the changes and do some debugging later.

Just changing the Apache configuration files will not cause an update on the current Apache service, so we will need to do that manually. However, we must first run a command to disable SSL:

sudo a2dismod ssl

And then restart:

sudo service apache2 restart

Finally, go back to your WordPress Admin Console and change the WordPress Address and Site Address back to HTTP equivalent, and update permalinks again. This is basically the reverse of Figure 2-1 and Figure 2-2 above.

Feel free to comment if you spot any errors or if the guide is incomplete in any way, and I will update it ASAP. Thank you!

This is part 2 of a three-part guide to setting up and configuring WordPress hosted on Google Cloud Platform and registered with a Google Domain URL. Readers should make sure their WordPress instance is running and behaving properly using GCP and have WordPress admin access before attempting this guide. You can read part 1 here.

To prevent bulking of a single article, I separated this holistic guide into three separate parts. Feel free to jump to the next article when you are done with this one. For your convenience, the guides are outlined below:

 

Benefits of Using Google Domains

Google Domains is a relatively new service compared to other hosting services such as GoDaddy and HostGator which provides some features that are convenient for regular Google account holders. While discounts and promotions are seldom for Google Domains (this makes Google Domains usually more expensive than other hosting services at the most basic level), it comes with many options included in the base price. You can read about the features on the Google Domains landing page, but the two good selling points that come packaged are the masking of WHOIS information as well as the domains being hosted behind Google’s fast and reliable data infrastructure. Although I haven’t used other domain hosting platforms, Google Domains’s UI is also very straightforward and simple, making things like DNS setting very easy.

Continue on for the step-by-step guide.

Pre-Requisites

• GCP account with running WordPress instance, and administrator console access.
• Have your instance IP address on hand – you will need it to configure DNS records.
• Google Domains, with a domain purchased and ready for setup:

Setting IP Address of VM Instance to Static

Make sure that your instance is always assigned the same IP address. Failure to do will may result in GCP assigning the instance a different IP, which will break the DNS configurations you will make further down this guide and result in the domain not being able to resolve to your WordPress instance. This is a rather important step that should not be overlooked.

To set your instance to static, open up your GCP account and set it to your WordPress site’s project. At the center of the header navigation is a search bar – type in “External IP addresses” and select the “External IP addresses – VPC Network” option:

Set the IP address to static and confirm in the popup window that appears. Enter a name for the external IP address – it can be anything you like:

Configuring Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud DNS Settings

At the center of the header navigation is a search bar – type in “Cloud DNS” and select the “Cloud DNS – Network Services” option:

Since I already created my DNS zone, an entry is visible as shown. For you, however, a prompt may appear for you in the middle of the window to create a new zone. If so, click on that button, or refer to image below to start setting a new DNS zone.

You will be brought to the following screen:

• Zone Name can be anything you want as long as it complies with the naming convention (A prompt will shout at you if you give a bad name!).
• DNS name should be the domain you registered with Google Domains (in this case, example123.net). Do not include “http://” nor “www.” here.
• Click Create

Now you will add TWO record sets – one for linking the domain to your instance’s IP address, and another for mapping www. subdomain.
Start with the “A” record.

• Make sure Resource Record Type is “A” (should be default).
• For IPv4 Address, set this equal to your WordPress instance’s IP Address.
• Click Create.

You should return back to the DNS Records setting page, and a new entry for “A” record should now be visible. To configure the “CNAME” record, Follow Figure 2-5 and click on “Add Record Set” again.

• For DNS Name, add “www” to the field as shown above.
• Set Resource Record Type to “CNAME”.
• For Canonical name, set this equal to your Google Domains’s URL.
• Click Create.

You should now have a total of FOUR entries in the Zone Details page: “A”, “NS”, “SOA”, and “CNAME”.

One piece of information you must note from here are the NS values, highlighted below:

GCP and Google Domains use DIFFERENT name servers, and so we will need to override the Google Domains’s DNS settings to reflect the values shown here. How to do that is detailed in the next section.

Configuring Google Domain’s Cloud DNS Settings

On the same or separate browser window, navigate to Google Domains Console and verify that your domain exists in the dashboard.
Under the DNS column, click on the icon corresponding to the domain you wish to change DNS configurations for:

Select “Use custom name servers” and fill in four entries corresponding to the DNS name servers you found in the GCP Cloud DNS page (refer to Figure 2-7). Click Save to save the settings. When you’re done, scroll down until you see the section labelled “Custom resource records”. Here you will make the same settings you did on the GCP Cloud DNS settings section. Refer to the figure below for guidelines – note that “@” is synonymous to your domain name.

** There may be a warning that shows up stating “It looks like you’ve changed your name servers…”. You may ignore it.

Once you are done, take a 5-minute breather (grab a coffee!) and then you may optionally check to see whether your domain is registered successfully across DNS servers worldwide. If everything goes smoothly then you should see your domain being registered to the IP address of your WordPress site and reflected in the DNS Checker results. The site I use is DNS Checker.

Configuring SiteURL and Host Name on WordPress Admin Console

On another browser window, navigate to “http://##DOMAIN_NAME##.com/wp-admin/options-general.php” and provide your admin credentials if necessary. You should be brought to the General Settings page and, if you deployed the Click-to-Deploy version of WordPress, you should see the two fields “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)“. Fill it with your registered domain (see below for reference), and click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page.

Confirming Domain is Successfully Registered

Test that you are able to connect to your WordPress site by trying any or all of the following combinations:

• domain.com
• www.domain.com
• http://domain.com
• http://www.domain.com

If you could successfully navigate to your site via the options above, congratulations, you have finished registering your Google domain with your GCP WordPress instance!

Next Steps

Now everything is set and ready to go for online readers to navigate to your site. However, one problems remains which is that your WordPress site is not secured under the HTTPS protocol yet. To do that, you will need to to create and register a certificate on your WordPress VM instance and configure Apache settings to redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. Having HTTPS provides a security advantage, SEO advantage, and gives readers piece of mind knowing that your site is committed to a decent level of security.

While considering what to write for my first How-To article, I came to a realization that the entire process for deploying WordPress and getting it to run on a cloud provider with a custom domain is a rather arduous process. While there are many guides scattered around the internet detailing the various stages of setting up, the concept of a holistic, DIY-everything guide is missing – especially if you go into the details of EXACTLY what platforms and services you are using. Therefore, I’d like to write a comprehensive guide for how to deploy a WordPress instance by yourself using Google Cloud, followed by how to register this WordPress to a custom domain hosted by Google Domain. Finally, I will walk you through the steps of SSL verification and having all traffic route via HTTPS for enhanced security.

To prevent bulking of a single article, I will separate this holistic guide into three separate parts. Feel free to jump to the next article when you are done with this one. For your convenience, the guides are outlined below:

Why Google Cloud?

To be honest, for individuals who are starting out and want to quickly jump in and get started with WordPress on a single, self-hosted instance, many of the cloud services available today have free tiers to get started on. For example, you can run WordPress using AWS for little to no cost provided there is low to medium traffic on a monthly basis. Similarly, Azure also has free tier services, with stricter limits. Lastly, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) also comes with its own free tier. You can read about some of the differences here, but do keep in mind that there are minor differences between cost for each service, so always DYOR (Do Your Own Research).

Since this guide series will focus on GCP, let’s go into more detail about the free services. First of all, to avoid confusion, allow me to go into detail about the GCP Free Trial versus the Free Tier mentioned above. Anyone with a Google account may apply for a 12-month, $300 credit free trial ($300 value will be properly converted to the currency of your residing country). Within this 12-month period or within the $300 budget (whichever comes first), any services usage that’s not supported in the free tier will be deducted from the $300 balance. In other words, if you remain completely within the free tier service, there will be no deduction from the $300 you get from your 12-month free trial. Of course, this makes it safe for you to play around with GCP and explore other features and perhaps use the credits as an insurance in case your site’s traffic expands quickly.

Pre-Requisites

For this guide, only a GCP account set up (billing included, and Free Trial if you wish to partake) is necessary:

Set Up New Project

To get to Figure 1-1 above, new users will need to first create a project. I believe you will be prompted to do so immediately if you just accepted to using the GCP service.

Fill in the Project Name to whatever you like. For organization, you may leave it at “No organization”. Once done, click create, and wait upwards of a minute or two for GCP to instantiate your project.

Execute and Confirm Click-to-Deploy

Now that you have a new project, it is time to use the convenient click-to-deploy feature to have GCP spin up a VM and configure WordPress for us.

From Figure 1-1, on the bottom left section labelled “Getting Started”, click on “Deploy a prebuilt solution” which will bring you to a whole range of items to choose from. In the search bar, type on “wordpress click to deploy” and wait a moment for the results to refresh. Choose the option labelled “WordPress” with the description “Google Click to Deploy”, as shown below:

Click on the Launch on Compute Engine button in the resulting page. Do not worry about the estimated costs shown – we can change the instance to one that is supported by the free tier immediately afterwards.

You should see a “Configuring APIs, This may take a few minutes” message. Go grab a cup of coffee or something and come back later. You should arrive at the following screen automatically:

1. For Deployment Name, enter an instance name of your choice.
2. Set Zone to the region of the world you want this instance to be hosted. For example, I’m in Tokyo so I choose asia-northeast1-a.
3. Machine Type is “1 vCPU” by default, which is not part of the free tier plan. The only selection for free tier is the “micro (1 shared vCPU)” option.
4. Leave everything else as-is and click “Deploy“.

[Important!] Memo the Username/Passwords

You should be at the following screen. You may continue once you see something like “##instance_name## has been deployed” notice on the upper left corner, and that the right-hand-side column has values for site address, WordPress administrator username, and so on:

Note the WordPress administrator username and password, as that is the information you need to login to the administrators panel.

The MySQL password is for the “root” user and is required for accessing the MySQL database which lives inside of your instance. Under normal circumstances you won’t ever have to directly manipulate the WordPress database, but it might save you from being locked out of your WordPress because of some misconfiguration (it happened to me)! That said, it is better to note it, just in case.

Don’t worry if you moved away from the page and forgot to jot down the credentials – the information will be kept inside the VM instance details for you to come back and refer to.

Confirm Site is Operational

At this point, you can click on the Site Address which should take you to the default WordPress site. Hooray!

Let’s see if you can use the Admin login credentials in Figure 4-1 to login to the administrators panel. Append “/wp-admin” to the URL and hit enter to reach the admin login page. Fill in the credentials and try logging in. It should take you to the admin console:

Proceed with steps to reset your password once you’re successfully in.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You have finished setting up your WordPress site using Google Cloud Platform!

As you may notice, your URL is currently your IP address, and using unsecured HTTP protocol, both of which hurts your site’s credibility and SEO rankings.

If you have a custom domain, you should proceed with registering it to this site so that other people can begin to access using a more memorable URL. Remember that part 2 of this guide series will go into detail about how to register a domain you purchased on Google Domains to the WordPress instance you created above.

Lastly, if you would like to perform SSL verification to convert your site from HTTP to HTTPS, you can follow my part 3 guide. You will have to get down and dirty with accessing your instance via SSH and performing from Linux commands, but that should be no problem for you who originally planned to self-host your site to begin with, right? 😉