One pattern I see sometimes is to define a util class, but rather than having a bunch of static methods, you wrap the underlying object in a util wrapper that adds all of the utility methods. Unfortunately, Java also has no good way to delegate methods without simply redefining all of them, so it's by no means a perfect solution. (And it's not really worthwhile unless you've got a fluent API that returns the same object every time; otherwise you're wrapping for just one call, which is arguably noisier.)
Or for quick and dirty debugging, with print statements, being able to put a println in the middle of any method call, just by adding a .also{println(it)} to the chain.