A colleague took me to Tamahide restaurant in Tokyo, which opened in 1760 and is known for creating oyakodon, a chicken and egg rice bowl. (Oyakadon translates to "parent and child donburi" which somehow makes eating a combination of chicken and egg a little less appealing).
Looking at reviews today, people apparently see the food as a mixed bag - some are clearly disappointed. In my opinion, it was excellent, with the signature dish having balanced flavors that seem to have been refined for generations. I found it endlessly fascinating that a humble lunch place with a simple dish could survive for 250+ years - but it also makes perfect sense that simple things last.
My colleague (a local in our Japan office) told me that emperors of old had ordered the dish to be delivered to them, well before Japan had even been "opened" to the world. Perhaps the stories were apocryphal (he was a sales guy after all), but still entertaining and gave a sense of the history behind the meal.
Tokyo is an amazing city, though it can be very lonely for an expat.
Oyakodon is one of the blandest dishes in Japanese cuisine (typically made with no sauces or spices - or just a tiny dash of shichimi), so I'm not surprised foreign travelers found it disappointing. Growing up with the context of the dish helps - and so does a sensitive tongue!
This, and the way Japanese taste sushi and sashimi is very different to most foreigners. So when locals tell you a restaurant is good, it is importune to note this is in the context of the local traditions.
Living in greater Tokyo for the past 5 years, can speak the language fluently. Added the Tamahide restaurant to visit sometime, thanks!
The biggest thing I've felt since moving here: whether or not you can speak and interact in Japanese makes a world of difference. Seriously. I have interacted with expats who have not studied any inkling of Japanese, nor have tried any kind of interactions apart from other expats, and it felt their life was so bland. For example, they'd struggle to order anything except at big chain restaurants that have English menus, so that small alleyway restaurant that serves super nice ramen? Or that washoku (Japanese food) restaurant that's famous for its signature dish in Japanese? Very hard.
And that's without all the intricacies of interacting with Japanese people (beyond asking for directions where people are very helpful). Boy, that's a rollercoaster ride. Sometimes you strike up conversations with people so easily because you can speak the language. Sometimes you get hurt because of differences in ways of thinking. Sometimes you try to put yourself in a Japanese person's shoes and try to understand what they're thinking. To me, it's been one of the most fun parts so far.
And I feel much more welcome. For example, the bento (packed lunch) shop run by a family where I buy a takeout from once a week? They know my name and can tell my voice when I call to order a bento. I ask them how's life and they do as well as we chitchat while visiting their shop. I leave the shop with both of us saying "Thanks as always!". These small things do make a difference when you're living thousands of miles away from your home country.
I'm not complaining that there should be more English stuff in general; I feel people are trying to improve the situation. Nor that I'm saying not knowing Japanese will make your life hell; it won't. But, it will be bland. Especially if you happen to end up at a local town in rural Japan. That has its own charm points but you'd miss out most of them.
TLDR: Speaking from experience, if you ever plan to stay long-term in Japan, learn Japanese. I'm sure you won't regret it.
You're 100% right, that if I had better language skills I likely wouldn't have felt as isolated. I did try, and picked up some phrases, but intermittent trips rather than a contiguous multi-year stay made it more difficult.
That said, the difference between Japanese and Latin languages does play into the "foreign-ness" I mentioned. My very bad high school/college French is enough to feel comfortable deciphering a lot of Spanish and Italian, both written and spoken. Needless to say, that skill didn't transfer to Japan.
Again though, I love Japan because you truly feel as if you're in another culture. When I step off the plane in most countries, the first impression is sameness: same brands, same clothes, same affectations and language cadence. Flying to Japan truly feels like travel; I imagine it similar to going anywhere 100 years ago, before globalization (modulo British colonialism, of course).
It would be a heck of an adventure to commit to a few years' stay and really explore the country. I'd just want to do it with a partner to share the adventure with me.
I'm very happy you've had a great experience. I'm sure you will carry this with you regardless of where life's journey takes you.
Indeed, I seem to love Japan, haha. Thanks for the kind words!
For sure, do come over for a long term stay (with your partner!) and enjoy Japan. Like all countries, Japan has its own set of problems, but beyond that, it's a wonderful country. :)
I have had the same experience. To push down on this the Japanese feel shame in not being able to communicate to you if you do not speak Japanese. It makes them uncomfortable. Being able to manage some basic Japanese helps so much to build a warmer feeling in your interactions. It does not have to be perfect but you have to try. There is a bar I love that is known for not being friendly to non-Japanese. However that is not the case. They pride themselves on their level of service and they feel they cannot meet that level if they cannot communicate to you. If you go with someone that speaks Japanese you are fine but alone they will tell you they are booked (if you look non-Japanese). I have been there enough and my Japanese is good enough that that I can walk in no issues. Once I walked in with a group of foreigners and a new person rushed up and told me in broken English "all full". As soon as I asked for a member of staff I knew in Japanese the persons face dropped and he apologized and sat us. I spent the night translating for my party and everyone has a great time (and my Japanese is quite child like!) There is another place I frequent that has the same staff for the last 12 years! They smile when I walk in, even if it has been 1/2 a year! It's going to be almost a year now with this pandemic but I promise when I get back I will see the same faces and they will still know my favorite scotch.
I understand it could be looked at that way. The point was that it was not because they do not like foreigners, but because they feel they cannot uphold their service standards if they cannot communicate. Maintaining the expected quality service and reputation for that excellence is the only thing that matters and not doing so would bring shame. It is a very uniquely Japanese view on things and I do not in this case see it as racist. The reality is that the Japanese think very differently then most western (EU/US) and it can be very hard for outsiders to understand or even relate.
(This is replying to both your comment and its parent comment.)
I sometimes run into that kind of behavior, especially when my first impression is my looks rather than my voice. But then I think of it like this: they probably have to deal with many foreign customers, "most" of whom cannot speak Japanese. Or they might not have been exposed to many foreigners that they know there are foreigners who can speak Japanese.
At the same time, Japanese society puts consideration for others at one of the higher priorities when interacting with people, and is seen everywhere and highly evaluated by many.
So it feels natural for the person to assume that I, as another one of those foreign people, most likely cannot speak Japanese. Also, they could try speaking to me in Japanese, but it'd be inconsiderate of them if I didn't know Japanese. So many a time the default, and very likely considerate route out is broken English to the best of their abilities.
I know this makes people like us who do know the language a bit bad, but then again, we're still a minority so I wouldn't read too much into it. :)
Of course, if the person in question knows you know Japanese, yet keeps talking to you in English, then it might be better to assume something is not right. :)
As a counterpoint to the sibling replies, I speak fluent Japanese and was still refused entry to a local izakaya in Hakodate. It wasn't about the language, I made plenty clear that I could speak it well. They just didn't like foreigners. Racism and discrimination is definitely a thing here, and I certainly wouldn't go back to that restaurant.
However it's only happened once in a year of living here and never in Tokyo, only a ruralish city, so I don't take it as an indictment on Japanese people. I'm sure there are plenty of bars in rural America or Australia (where I'm from) that would have been equally unfriendly to someone of Asian ethnicity. At the end of the day you just have to decide not to let it ruin your day that there are some bad eggs in the bunch, no matter which country it is.
*Caveat though that I've heard it is much worse here for people from China than it is for white foreigners such as myself. If it made up a significant portion of my experience it would be hard to live here comfortably.
> The biggest thing I've felt since moving here: whether or not you can speak and interact in Japanese makes a world of difference. Seriously.
Literally right for almost every country: France without knowing French, US without English, Taiwan with Chinese or Taiwanese, Egypt without Arabic... Japan is not special in that regard, save for the fact that most people here have quite a low level of English (which is also not very specific to Japan).
So I wholly agree that making the effort to learn the local language repays by itself for any medium or long stay.
You really don't need to speak much of the local language to get food in a restaurant. I have no experience of Japan but I've spent close to a year in China spread over a dozen trips. I ate in a number of different places, bought silk for my wife, etc., all without being able to speak the local language. My experience is that throwing yourself on the mercy of the the waiter works quite well with some sign language and perhaps a simple phrasebook not just in China but also in Spain. After all the restaurant wants you to come back and to tell your friends how good it is.
Actually, I realized this after writing out the whole thing but that sorry for the long rant is kind of like a good manners thing in Japanese internets. If you look up "長文失礼しました。", which literally means "Excuse me for the long writeup", it's usually appended to say a comment in a blog, or sometimes at the end of a Tweet when the speaker felt what they said is a bit on the longer side.
I somehow ended up picking up that habit somewhere down the line it seems. :)
I had a similar experience in Greece, where some locals recommended an out of town Gyro shop ("Gyro" is a popular Greek dish, simply put, it's your choice of meat, wrapped or stuffed in a pita, along with ingredients such as tomato, onion, and tzatziki sauce).
At a measly 2 euros, it was vastly cheaper than the Gyro shops dotted around the popular hot-spots of the island.
And yet it had been open for a very long time indeed.
> Tokyo is an amazing city, though it can be very lonely for an expat.
Could you expand upon this? I've been thinking of moving there for a year or two to focus on my language skills and work on my startup.
I spent a lot of time in Obihiro, Hokkaido in my late teens and had a blast hanging out at the university. Everyone was super friendly.
When I traveled to even more remote towns like Hobetsu / Mukawa, Makubetsu, Ashoro, and Honbetsu, the children would run up to meet me and want to take photos. (They don't see foreigners often.)
I never spent much time in Tokyo, but I did spend a lot of time in Shanghai, Changsha, and other big Chinese cities and almost want to consider that a proxy.
Why is Tokyo lonely? Is it this city in particular? Is it a certain age range?
Post-college and into adulthood does it become lonelier?
Also, what's the startup scene like in Tokyo? I'm considering something a few steps beyond VTuber streaming and think Japan would be a great environment to pull talent from.
Been living in Tokyo for near a decade, and I can add that despite it being a bustling metropolis, it does have this silent loneliness just in the background.
It's hard to describe, unless you spend any significant time here, and the locals of Tokyo will tell you the same -- it's a cold city. With that being said, I love the place. However, if not for my cabal of really close friends, I don't think I would stay here -- and these are friends from my university days back in America.
I can contrast it with another city I have lived in (on and off for 2-3 years), and that's Seoul. In my first year in Seoul, I probably met more close friends than in a decade of living in Tokyo. I'm an introvert through and through, so unless people open up to me first, there is going to be silence. Tokyo has a way of making you comfortable with the mundane.
Seoul is just this bustling amazing city with an energy of "anything is possible" in the air. Tokyo seems as though it has already had its heyday and is on a slow, silent, but peaceful decline. I love my little neighborhood, and have made a life for myself in Tokyo, but I can't honestly recommend it as a place to move to, unless you have some deep interest in Japan or family connections.
If you are interested in the startup scene, it's here but nothing on the scale that you would see in the US. I'd say Seoul is the place to be for startups now -- the Korean government is pretty much throwing money at people with ideas.
I'll always call Japan home, but I definitely see myself leaving Tokyo in the near future, if not for another city, then back to Korea.
To give some context, I'm a male 30 something PoC.
Very lucid and reasonable view. As much as I do love some Japanese cities (Tokyo is not in the list - but to each it's own) and always will see Japan as my only home - I do share the sentiment.
A lot (if not majority) of foreigners fall for the image Japan has when it's observed from abroad. That's a very unfortunate illusion
Maybe. (I certainly do experience that in general!) In the UK though I very rarely hear people describe themselves or others as 'a person/people of colour' though, even in full I mean; it's American to my ear.
I'll admit to only having been to Tokyo about a half dozen times, for up to two weeks at a time. It remains one of my favorite cities, but at the end of two weeks I was ready to go home. I don't usually feel that way when traveling.
I found it lonely for the same reason I loved the city: it was so familiar, and yet so different at the same time. I felt like gears that were slightly out of mesh, not enough to snap, but enough to wear away the edges and cause subtle damage over time.
Making friends as an adult is always hard, but being a transplant into such a new culture is even harder. Everyone was friendly, but finding true connection is difficult: language barriers, cultural differences, biases (on both sides), and perhaps the transitory nature of my stay meant there was always a constant difference.
I always felt like an outsider, even when welcomed warmly. Maybe this was me, but I always knew I was being accommodated: "he's a gaijin, he doesn't know better." This was absolutely kind, but I also knew that I didn't know better, and didn't know what I didn't know, and that created a subtle tentativeness and friction in social interactions.
The classic scenes of Tokyo streets with tall buildings filled with small shops and laced with vertical signage is an apt metaphor for living in Tokyo. There is so much hidden behind the facades that it takes a lifetime to know what's really there, unless you have a guide with infinite patience.
Maybe other cities, or towns, would be different. Maybe it would be much easier if I was fluent, or planned to stay for years. Maybe someone without tendencies towards introversion, or who went with a partner to lean on, would have a very different experience.
But like I said, many small factors just wore on me, and I was happy to return to the warm embrace of home.
I'm afraid I don't know enough about the startup scene to do more than speculate. I was there representing an enterprise software company, which has very different dynamics - especially in Japan.
Years back, I use to cover Europe and had taken Latin at University. Was use to stumbling through a language as there were enough common roots that I could parse enough words to sort of make sense of things. Got a work project in Tokyo and jumped at the chance. I picked up a cheap translation book and attempted to order some sort of rice bowl with meat and a beer evening after evening on my first few trips out there. Every time, I got ... something. Never what I was actually thinking it was. It was very odd to not understand any written or spoken word. Folks were very kind but it was so very odd to not understand more than a few common phrases.
This was also a point in time where our shop started insisting on receipts for travel expenses. I always got something that had a number on it, but lord knows what it actually said. Was rather a snarky moment when I handed over the stack of receipts all in Japanese.
I only lived in Tokyo for a few months, but I felt like there was a lingering loneliness paradoxically exacerbated by the high population density. Growing up around Southern hospitality set a high bar, but even compared to less friendly parts of the States, it was hard to strike up random conversations that were deeper than anything superficial. It's a hard culture to break into if you're obviously a foreigner because of the high language barrier, and you start seeing the same faces in the expat circles after a while. Still a great city where I made a lot of deep connections, and I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to park myself there for a few years.
Chinese culture and Japanese culture are very different related to this article and in the way we/they treat outsiders - the big Chinese cities are not good proxies.
In the last 20 years, a lot of Chinese tradition and respect has been thrown out and attitudes towards business and family flipped on its head with the rise of Chinese capitalism - a lot of hustle and winner takes all at the expense of everyone else attitude.
The elite and/or hustling Chinese embrace western things and incorporate them in their life -- even flexing their English knowledge is a way to signal social/economic class in China. I'm not an expert in Japan, but I don't see a lot of English flexing in Japanese culture.
In terms of being an expat, plenty of expat + curiosity in Chinese cities to never really be lonely.
I’ve lived in Tokyo a few times and didn’t feel it was especially lonely for a big city. Or rather it has the potential to be as cold and lonely as any other big city if you just work and go home and don’t meet people. In some ways its easier to meet other expats because you have outsider status in common, though as some of them inevitably move I suppose it could get lonelier.
This is very true. Connecting with other expats is easy and fun, and I spent plenty a night in the "gaijin ghetto." I'm not sure that that would scale for a multi-year stay though; like you say, it's a pretty transient crowd.
Just curious, how do you like Changsha? Most people on hacker-news are from the tech industry, Changsha was more famous for its TV/media entertainment industry.
Not OP, but I've visited several cities in China including Changsha and it's definitely one of my top 3 cities. The food and club scene there stood out to me in particular.
I played a game that implemented something like this. A player could have 32 buffs simultaneously, and on release there were fewer than 255 unique buffs. The id for each buff was stored in one byte and was bundled along with all of the other buffs into a much larger packet which also contained other player data.
The game later surpassed 255 unique buffs. Rather than change the packet structure, they repurposed a group of 64 bits which had previously been padding. Each buff id could then be unpacked by using the nth pair of bits from the block of 64 as the two high bits, and tacking on the original byte as the lower eight.
I think the idea was the group of ids could be compressed. Rather than storing up to 64 ids as 8 bus plus the high bit elsewhere, store them as 9 bits, then compress the chunk. But honestly, that is probably more work than it is worth. Storing the high but elsewhere is simple.
Sorry for the late reply -- this is my weekend this week!
I remember reading that the packets were encrypted using blowfish and compressed using a custom Huffman table.
There's a lot of bit-packing in the game's packets, so I initially thought it was strange that they didn't use 10 bits for each id and pack all 32 in a row. I'm not very knowledgeable, but my guess is that wasn't done because it would right-shift the rest of the chunk by 64 bits. They would then have to go through the code for unpacking and increase the offset for each field. I believe the ids were right at the start of the chunk, and there were almost 30 other fields.
Also, there was always a belief that the game's code was a fine spaghetti. A part of me wonders if the chunk was actually unpacked in multiple places, which would make correcting the offsets that much more tedious.
Damnit, last year I walked straight past that mochi shop without even realising it. And now I'm hungry.
(Seriously, though, the snacking in Kyoto is epic. Lovely temples and all, but when I go back, my first stop will be at a yatsuhashi shop, then mochi, then those red bean fish cake thingies, then maybe a cucumber on a stick. Damnit, now I'm REALLY hungry. Anyhow, these are businesses worth keeping around for a thousand years. They're just that tasty.)
The oldest restaurant in Nara hasn't changed their menu in 500 years or so: your options are barley rice with grated yam (mugi tororo) or barley rice with broiled eel (unagi).
The eel is great. The barley rice with gloopy yam on top... let's just say I understand why nobody else sells this stuff anymore.
Do shops like these mostly inherited? I'm also aware of Japan's adult adoptions. Is there pressure on the next gen. to take over the family business? I would think yes.
In my mind, just imagining operating for a Millennium, these institutions are more temples than businesses. Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Thankfully the practice is not very widespread as I could easily have found myself taking care of a breakfast place by a moderately busy highway in Southern India.
The documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi has a poignant commentary on this. Jiro's oldest son is expected to eventually take over Jiro's sushi place, so as a result essentially is toiling for his father into old age. On the other hand, somewhat ironically Jiro's younger son actually has more freedom, so he strikes out on his own pretty early and has his own very successful sushi joint.
> The documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi has a poignant commentary on this. Jiro's oldest son is expected to eventually take over Jiro's sushi place, so as a result essentially is toiling for his father into old age. On the other hand, somewhat ironically Jiro's younger son actually has more freedom, so he strikes out on his own pretty early and has his own very successful sushi joint.
IIRC, that's wrong. The documentary said that Japanese tradition is that the eldest son inherits the father's business. Jiro has two sons, so he created a clone of his business for the second. They're literally exactly the same layout except mirror images of each other.
The poignant thing that I remember is that the person who actually made the sushi for the reviewer who made the restaurant famous was not Jiro, but his son. And the wondrous thing was that the enterprise wasn't about chasing fame or fortune, but about being dedicated to excelling at a craft.
Your last sentence is what I often feel about (usually) Japanese arts and crafts, but I always get a pang of jealousy of sorts, because I don't feel like I or anyone in "the west" can live like that - sure, there's sayings like "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" and all, but in reality, we all need to earn a living, contribute to society, and somehow min/max everything we do - maximize profits, minimize efforts and cost.
Closest thing we have are the arts, and there's the meme about the starving artist here because most artists struggle to get by, or end up having to do commissions for others (I hear furry porn is lucrative) so they don't get to do what they want.
Meanwhile in Japan you get 1000 year old roadside snack shops, brushmakers, a watchmaker that spends a year holed up in his apartment to produce a single watch, etc. That's the 'PR' side of Japan anyway, on the other there's the 14-hour workday wage slaves.
The West includes the Amish, where inheriting your father's farm, and with it a centuries old tradition, is the norm.
Meanwhile, Japan underwent modernity just like everyone else, and there, the modal (male) life story is: get a lifetime job straight out of college, and work insane hours for the rest of your life, or don't, and never get a job worth having.
There's a lot to learn from Japan, particularly about excellence in craftsmanship, and it's easy to romanticize this, particularly for those of us from countries which are only a couple hundred years old.
But I've been to a pub in Nottingham, ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which claims to have been founded in 1189 (superb ale by the way). Swiss watchmakers, French cognac distillers, Chartreuse, even Harvard: all of these things are closer to that tradition of continuity and and craftsmanship than the starving artist stereotype.
The poignant thing that I remember (possibly mis-remembering exact numbers) is that in 20 or 30 years Jiro had only taken one day off from work, to attend his father's funeral.
This is a phenomenon (harsh in the case of Jiro's son amid modern sensibilities about free will and obligation), which is said to have fueled some aspects of human exploration (and also unfortunately the bad aspects of it) in history.
The 2nd son didn't inherit under the doctrine of primogeniture, leading the later sons to be the (often) neglected or less favored / wealthy, motivating them (for better and worse) to set out on their own and prove their worth.
Yes. A son in the Church was sort of a hot-swappable backup, as the Church would cut him loose if you had a good reason, such as the primary heir having died (and, of course, subject to the payment of a ...modest donation...), but while he was in the Church he was no threat to the primary. Any children he himself had (this was far from unheard of) would be automatically be illegitimate and not in the line of succession.
Extra sons were, yep, often sent off to war. They'd either conquer their own territories or be killed. In either case, they were no longer a threat to the primary heir.
The first son would inherit the family assets. Second son would join clergy. The third son would be sent off to join a knight's group such as the Knights of St. John.
Jiro’s work ethic is brutal and I actually feel pretty sorry for people like them.
I saw another show about a small ramen shop owner who took a half day off a week and never went on a vacation for 5 years straight. That sounds more like prison than a job.
This is the biggest takeaway I got from the documentary, particularly when his young kids didn't recognize him due to his absenteeism from home. The determination and tenacity is admirable, but it's not something I'd think many people would aspire towards.
From the outside looking in it seems romantic, having the opportunity, safety net, and shared experiences of operating a family owned business sounds pretty amazing.
Realistically I’m guessing it’s more complex than this, depending on the family and what the business actually is.
I would hazard to say it is only in relative recent history (and in capitalism) that new and adventurous = prosperity. For much of history, leaving behind what you know was no guarantee of success (and maybe great risk of material poverty).
> I would hazard to say it is only in relative recent history (and in capitalism) that new and adventurous = prosperity. For much of history, leaving behind what you know was no guarantee of success (and maybe great risk of material poverty).
That hasn't really changed. Taking risk is no guarantee of success. Sure, some risk takers win big, but some people win the lottery, too.
Oh I would say it has changed a lot throughout history. For quite a long time, setting out on your own from your family, profession, town, etc. was a great risk, and there was nowhere near the social/economic mobility that we have today.
I had a buddy in college who was from St. Thomas. He struggled with his desire to be a doctor when his family just wanted him to take over their diamond business. A true dilemma.
But at the same time, for many people, what they want to do is to carry on a legacy and contribute to something larger than themselves. A culture that forces all young people to build from scratch denies those opportunities just as surely as a culture that forces everyone to follow in their parent' footsteps denies opportunities to start afresh.
I think it really depends on the legacy. I mean...how many of the misty eyed people commenting are doing the same thing one of their parents do/did, or wishing they were? I certainly am not.
I am not either. But I also would not want to make any moral claims that would make it harder for those who do want to follow some legacy.
And, honestly, my disconnection to my past and structures larger than myself is a source of unhappiness for me. I don't know if I would necessarily advocate for my own life choices. I think I made the best choices I could at the time based on what I knew then, but there are real downsides to building a life more or less from scratch.
that's what maturation into adulthood is, taking responsibility for social institutions that are larger than oneself and endure longer than oneself, rather than being a 35 year old owning nothing and playing paintball, which is, in contrast to the business culture on display here the future sold to us by the beloved SV companies. Most of which if I had to bet will not last longer than this store.
Maturity means different things for people at different income levels. I've seen young children mature by managing a real estate portfolio, and then moving onto greater relations and responsibilities. I've seen other children mature by rotting in a failing Filipino bakery.
maturity has nothing to do with your income level. Maturation is the integration of the individual into a community and the establishment of mutual responsibility. You can be livelong rich and at the age of 70 have not progressed one day at all, and you can be poor and be well integrated.
The purpose of these Japanese companies is the latter, integrate into society in a way that strengthens the community they surround. The purpose of SV is the opposite, advocate a culture of individualism, 'disruption' and 'freedom', and then sell you an anti-anxiety smartphone app with a subscription service because you're lonely.
Yet the maturity we speak of here are the stories of people stepping into rich, high responsibility community relations, ones paved by their parents.
When you own real estate and don’t work with a management company, that means you deal with tenants yourself. Yes, collecting rent checks is a part of some stories of maturing. Ethnic restaurants often serve as community vehicles for immigration, and will ingratiate yourself with the ethnic community. You will also have a different perspective on the ethnic role of business, and of course when you own such vehicles you also take over your folks relationships. It would be selfish to abandon all the goodwill and debts your parents leave behind, both material and social.
And for the article, we have people inheriting a 1000 year old institution. Yes, we have different stories of what we expect from our young men and women based on where they came, and we often expect that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The responsibility which is narrated by the article is one of humble yielding before the call of legacy.
Japanese companies massively exploit their employees and the presidents often live like kings. They might not get an SV salary but they get an expense account, cars, vacation homes, and other perks all provided by the company. Meanwhile their employees get paid shit and work 10-12hr days and don't get paid overtime.
I'd chose SV over that anytime. SV at least pays on average 6x what a similar employee makes in Japan and effectively treats their staff like royalty. Flex hours, lots of vacation, space, good equipment, breaks, gyms, meals, etc...
Suicide in Japan is generally higher than the USA. It might not be as high as SV (no idea) but if you're choosing based on suicide rates you'd be better off choosing another city in the USA
If everyone took this approach, we'd all be working on family subsistence farms.
Though, actually, even agriculture was originally presumably a dangerous and tradition-breaking innovation. Possibly we'd all be doing family hunter-gathering.
Hunter-gathering was an amazingly good lifestyle when only a few people were doing it. As soon as the density increases you start going hungry/running out of animals/getting into fights about food etc.
Swiddening (Agriculture but you move every year) was safer but much harder work by comparison. Higher population densities became possible.
Fixed field agriculture was safer still, but much harder again. Higher densities again.
Historically the people doing this were not usually permitted to leave (eg frequent proclamations banning them from abandoning their lands, soldiers brought in to round up those who had and bring them back to work).
the point isn't to go back to hunter-gatherer society. Go visit the South-West of Germany were family-owned businesses going back hundreds of years are at the forefront of their respective industries. Israel and Switzerland have similar ecosystems. You can find places that have shunned 'hypergrowth' and VC money in favour of sustainability and craftsmanship all over the world.
The point is not to be backwards, is to be accountable to the community one exists in, be small and not indebted to foreign entities, and put communal interest ahead of profits.
If everyone acted that way we wouldn't have to interface with unaccountable industrial behemoths which can cut you off from your entire existence in a second and will do so without any second thought.
Imagine everyone around you is allowed the opportunity to choose their career. You however are the son of a plumber, and have no choice but to be a plumber. This plumbing business is 1000 years old! Why throw away the family name?! Well, because I'd rather not be a plumber and I'm perfectly capable of something else.
> Imagine everyone around you is allowed the opportunity to choose their career. You however are the son of a plumber, and have no choice but to be a plumber.
Many people end up doing something similar to their parents. Maybe you won't be a plumber if your dads is one, but it's far more likely you'd be a blue-collar tradesman than a doctor. It's also far more likely that a doctor's one will become a doctor or a lawyer than an electrician.
Also, IMHO, this idea that the path to satisfaction by pursuing some kind of dream profession is a fairy tale.
Sounds like you didn't find yours. I know plenty of people that did find their dream profession so it's might not happen to everyone but it's factually not a fairy tale
This sort of thing might appeal to some people, but a lot of people would not be at all keen on having their life pre-determined by what their ancestors did.
Someday I hope to own my own little pub, free and clear, and just do that for the rest of my life. It wouldn't be stress-free, but I enjoyed my time working in a bar, and I like the idea of operating a little community hub.
As someone who (finally) went from employee to small business owner, I wouldn't wait for "someday". Start the process while you're still working now. Take the time to learn everything you can to make this happen over the next couple of years.
"Free and clear" stops a lot of people, but it's not as important as knowing how to scale up and down so your cash flow is always above paying your debts. There will be balancing acts whether you own the building or not. Figure out the minimum sales you need to survive, and plan the maximum size you can grow to. You can start toward "free and clear" by negotiating a "lease with the option to buy". Considering recent situations, hire a lawyer to put contingencies on rent in case of government mandated shutdowns or reductions.
If this is truly a dream of yours, don't wait. Start looking at locations and gathering information.
I for one will continue to dream about winning the lottery and owning a bigger house. No clue what I'd do if I never had to work again though, I'd probably find some kind of employment anyway to keep busy.
If you'd like running a pub well, thank you for being that person. Seriously I'm glad some people want to do it.
Me, I remember the first time I was sure I didn't want to do that. I met a lady running a bar/restaurant/hub. It was clear her life was the place. It was open nights so she was there every night. It had lots of events. No more free nights for her, going out with friends, dancing, dinning etc. Her nights, while she did get to greet people, were mostly running around the place putting out fires. I'm not dissing that life at all. If she enjoys it that's great. It's not for me in the same way I'm sure staring at a computer screen is not for her.
I have a similar dream, but knowing lots of people in the business I plan to do it only in
“retirement,” by which I mean whenever I have enough money to live without the bar/café making any profit.
Because one of the key things I’ve learned from those I’ve known in the business is that it’s sometimes very, very stressful to make your living this way. And, as the pandemic has shown us, sometimes hard work isn’t enough.
Usually we try keep family and business apart (nepotism is seen as evil), but the way businesses run so often exploits or abuses humans and families. With this mindset of adopting future business owners into your real family, it's putting family above business even in business. I wonder how the results pan out, maybe there's wisdom in here we're largely missing by the way we approach things.
It's important to have assets. If the family business is an asset with opportunity to grow in value, by all means the next generation should be overjoyed that someone built something which they now have an opportunity to take over and continue building. Not all family businesses are like this though, as people in general are weak and wretched; family business owners can easily ruin themselves and their descendents by going into debt, or embezzling money away from the business to fuel personal vices which invite poverty and instability.
As with many things in life, the make-or-break factor ultimately falls upon how well the parents have matured as human beings, and the quality of the upbringing they've given to their descendents. So I would say it is impossible to make a rigid, universal determination one way or the other. All I know is I would do anything if my parents or their parents asked. Anything.
Well, in some respect, that is the strength of culture. Culture is a software that controls what people do, and what their country becomes (to some significant extent).
For some purposes, such a culture is very restrictive and discontent-inducing. But for other purposes, this culture might help you survive through long problems and dangerous situations that might kill off a people who believed in doing whatever you want and bailing when things get hard. It really depends on the environment that it operates within -- this is not a statement that a particular culture is "better" in every case.
Side note, this is why, as a visitor to Japan, you get to enjoy all the benefits of seeing the examples of what discipline (and inflexibility) can bring -- but you would go crazy and not be happy if you had to live there.
I heard a story about some restaurant or hotel where a owner apologized for not providing the authentic experience because the original shop burned down like 600 years ago
> The Japanese companies that have endured the longest have often been defined by an aversion to risk — shaped in part by past crises — and an accumulation of large cash reserves.
> It is a common trait among Japanese enterprises and part of the reason that the country has so far avoided the high bankruptcy rates of the United States during the pandemic.
I live in Japan (I'm not Japanese).
From experience, the first paragraph above rings true for many, especially smaller/family-run, businesses.
But jumping to the conclusion in the second paragraph is a stretch. By making such a facile and generalized statement and leaving it at that, the article ignores that the Japanese government's measures since the pandemic started have in many ways prioritized economic health over individual health, and that is one reason why business in general has not been as hard hit here.
For instance, Japan actually instituted "Go To Travel" and "Go To Eat" campaigns to stimulate the economy during the pandemic. Criminally irresponsible in my view.
Japanese pandemic response has also largely been ignoring the reality of aerosol transmission, evidenced by issuing compliance certifications (basically a sticker businesses can put on their door) even to businesses that promote indoor eating and other activities where safety from aerosol transmission cannot be maintained.
In fact, even if the Japanese government wanted to take stronger measures, my understanding is that legally they can't - so there has never been a mandatory lockdown here. All we had was a voluntary lockdown around April.
To put it bluntly, Japanese businesses are largely doing well because all cessation of economic activity so far has been completely voluntary, while the government has taken steps that do more to play down the pandemic threat.
Conversely, the main reason that the Japanese people are so far doing relatively better than say the US (in spite of the government's best attempts to fail at pandemic policy), seems to be that nearly everybody wears a mask whenever possible. Coupled with a few other social factors such as less talking in public spaces and less physical contact especially between strangers.
I bought some great carbon steel knives from a little 1-man shop called Shigeharu in Kyoto a few years back. Supposedly dates from pre-1390. Feels like owning a piece of history. Was very much wondering what would happen to the shop in the future as the owner/knife-maker was quite elderly.
Honestly the shop would just cease to exist. There was a local cake shop and a tofu shop near me that was passed down for generations. Saddly they both ceased to exist in my lifetime as there was no one to inherit the legacy. The cake shop eventually did reopen under new ownership but it's not as good.
The article lacked any detail on the “honor system” that sustained it for centuries in place of the fixed prices charged post-WWII. What does that mean...pay-what-you-like?
In Regensburg, Germany, there is a restaurant that has essentially been operating for 850 years since the construction of the Steinernen (Stone) bridge was constructed in 1146 AD, and in its precise/current form as a sausage restaurant since 1806. It's really incredible to see the longevity of a simple business like this and be able to eat where entirely different generations ate for almost a millennium (Plus the food is honestly remarkably good if you eat meat). There are only three things on the menu: sausage, sauerkraut and potato soup and together they make a very nice meal :)
Please go to Fugetsu-do mochi, if you are ever in LA. They are 117 yrs/old and follow this Japanese tradition. They need business during COVID. https://www.fugetsu-do.com/
> The Japanese companies that have endured the longest have often been defined by an aversion to risk — shaped in part by past crises — and an accumulation of large cash reserves.
> It is a common trait among Japanese enterprises and part of the reason that the country has so far avoided the high bankruptcy rates of the United States during the pandemic. Even when they “make some profits,” said Tomohiro Ota, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, “they do not increase their capital expenditure.”
I found this part very interesting; it seems like Japan’s monetary policy would present a huge disincentive to this.
> The Japanese temple and shrine construction company, Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (founded in 578) has weathered a few storms over the millennia, from nuclear bombs to financial crises. In 2006, it was bought by the construction conglomerate, Takamatsu Construction Group Co., and continues to operate today.
The story is that Kongo Gumi was founded by people who had worked on the first Buddhist temple, but the first Buddhist temple, Hōkō-ji, wasn't started until 588. Not sure exactly what's going on there, someone should check the paperwork.
Canterbury Cathedral was founded in 597. I find it kind of wild that those two events were only nine years apart.
That seems like a rare reason for the story to seem suspicious. Predating the religion that they mostly work for. I bet they started out as a general purpose carpentry/construction company (I mean it was 588, they probably didn't need civil engineering licenses), and specialized to what what was getting them money.
"Not sure if this new religion will work out, but we could always go back to making tables" - Them, probably.
"(Some of the oldest companies, including Ichiwa, cannot definitively trace their history back to their founding, but their timelines are accepted by the government, scholars and — in Ichiwa’s case — the competing mochi shop across the street.)"
Skeptic that I am, I wanted to see the proof. There isn't any - its just a claim. Its just a sweet story.
In fact, I suspect that this is some sort of tourism puff piece, PR of some sort, perhaps by the Japanese tourism board to drum up enthusiasm. Maybe they are planting seeds for when the lockdowns are over.
A small, geographically bound family business like this is one thing, but we should pay more attention to what kind of creatures we're creating in the long run.
An LLC is a very useful legal fiction, but more and more we're seeing the effects of allowing virtually unbounded, private for profit organizations.
As just one counter-example; I'm sure there are plenty more/earlier: Siemens was founded in 1847 (edit: by building telegraph equipment and infrastructure).
Edit: I'm sure there must have been earlier companies involved in "tech" that are still relevant? Maybe let's think about "tech" as "information technology" companies?
I was originally looking for "old companies that currently work in tech", but even their original industry of copper smelting was pretty high tech for the 15th century.
If you consider banking to be information-managing tech (which it seems to me that it is), then the oldest may be either Berenberg Bank (1590) or Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (1472). It depends on the definition of "bank". The later is certainly a bank now, but was more like a pawnbroker in its early years.
Its constituent companies were older, though. Hollerith's original Tabulating Machine patent was filed in 1884, and his machines and punch cards were used for the 1890 census.
If any were to, I'd hope it'd be YouTube. For better or worse, it's an amazing repository of what it is to be human in the early 21st century in terms of the billions of hours of evidence that people record and upload. Imagine being an archaeologist in 1000 years having access to this.
Related to this: I've tried to figure out what the oldest surviving organization in the world is (specifically something with some form of rules or decision-making process that has been formally kept and amended over time instead of being replaced by a new code of rules). Best I could do is the Roman Catholic Church, but I feel like my search terms might be missing something.
Partially inspired by Francis Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order" and this article, I really want to read more about the Japanese culture that keeps these shops alive for so long.
Does anyone have good recommendations for books on Japanese culture that I could put on my wish list for Christmas?
This reads like some "noble savage" rubbish about how the Japanese are better than us evil capitalists, but how exactly does one maintain a business in a steady-state for 1000 years when the neighbourhood around you gets gentrified, or the zoning changes, or your city made pension promises it can't keep for council employees so your land tax doubles every 5 years?
Don't do those things? The Japanese were appalled by Europeans when they first encountered them and considered them savages. They may have had a point.
There are some pretty old businesses in Europe- plenty of English pubs claim to go back to the Middle Ages, and at least some have records to prove it.
Looking at reviews today, people apparently see the food as a mixed bag - some are clearly disappointed. In my opinion, it was excellent, with the signature dish having balanced flavors that seem to have been refined for generations. I found it endlessly fascinating that a humble lunch place with a simple dish could survive for 250+ years - but it also makes perfect sense that simple things last.
My colleague (a local in our Japan office) told me that emperors of old had ordered the dish to be delivered to them, well before Japan had even been "opened" to the world. Perhaps the stories were apocryphal (he was a sales guy after all), but still entertaining and gave a sense of the history behind the meal.
Tokyo is an amazing city, though it can be very lonely for an expat.