Well this is a strange case. It appears that the problem is: In this case, the private member should be accessible (6.6.1.): Otherwise, the member or constructor is declared private, and access is permitted if and only if it occurs within the body of the top level class that encloses the declaration of the member … Read more
In general you use OuterClassName.this to refer to the enclosing instance of the outer class. In your example that would be a.this.otherMethod()
By an “anonymous class”, I take it you mean anonymous inner class. An anonymous inner class can come useful when making an instance of an object with certain “extras” such as overriding methods, without having to actually subclass a class. I tend to use it as a shortcut for attaching an event listener: button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() … Read more