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Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
Tatsuro Rokudo Column
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
from Toyama / Japan
Tatsuro Rokudo
Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo
While at university, he was involved in the production of plays and took photographs for magazines and advertisements for a living, as well as for a number of theatrical productions.
His 1999 photo exhibition "Ogasawara Lifestyle" was published at Kodak Photo Salon in Ginza, and his 2000 photo book "Ogasawara Tarzan" was published.
In 2005, he moved to Beijing and opened Caffè il Sole Beijing in 2007.
In 2007, he opened Caffè il Beijing and became famous for his "fantastic almond tofu" that even Chinese people are surprised by.
In 2010, he collaborated with a group of Japanese and Chinese expatriates living in Beijing to produce a comedy in Japanese called "Catch the Beijing Dream" about young people in Beijing who are struggling to pursue their dreams. It was revived the following year in 2011.
In 2013, he closed Caffè il Sole Beijing.
Qualified as SCAJ Coffee Meister, Specialty Coffee Association of Japan
Oct. 2014 Moved to Toyama; opened Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo, a coffee bean roasting and processing business, in December 2015.
2019 Tanino Crow's production "Dark Master 2019 TOYAMA" (playing the lead role of Dark Master) Toyama Overd Hall
12.5.2024
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Do you know an actor named Jean Reno?
Since all the friends around us were involved in the theater, the conversation proceeded as a matter of course.
However, for a person of his generation, who might have been his son, if he had not seen “LEON,” he had never heard of “Grand Bleu.
I was astonished.
Generation gap, culture gap, gender gap 、、、、, the gap that always arises between self and others.
If we can enjoy it, there is no problem at all, but sometimes we lament the different values and sometimes we want to eliminate the other person.
If only we had a common understanding of each other, there would be troubles that would not have arisen.
In this light, it is not easy to dismiss a life of regular exposure to movies, plays, and animations as “unnecessary and hurried.
Rather, it is an important nourishment of knowledge that we must absorb in our daily lives.
Based on Beckett's “Waiting for Godot,” a masterpiece of absurdist drama (?), this play was performed by the theater company Minamikawachi in 1990. In 1990, Hirotaka Naito, the leader of the Minamikawachi Banzai troupe, created the improvised play “The Aoki Family's Wife” based on Beckett's “Waiting for Godot,” a masterpiece of absurdist drama (?).
Based on this play, “Naan no Honkai-the Success inTOYAMA” has been rewritten and reworked to the point that it no longer retains its original form, and is filled to the brim with the Toyama flavor.
We hope that many people will share the common understanding of “Naan's Honkai - the Success inTOYAMA” as absurd comedy entertainment originating from Toyama.
November 22-27, 2024 “Naan no Honkai - the Success in TOYAMA” (Naan's True Heart - the Success in TOYAMA)
From the statement on the back of the flyer
9.10.2024
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
RELOADED
The company has decided to present “Naan no Honkai - the Success in TOYAMA” from November 22 to 27, 2024, at the Toyama Prefectural Little Theater ORBIS.
The original story is “Mr. Aoki's Wife” by Hirotaka Naito, the leader of the Osaka-based theater troupe Minamikawachi Banzai Ichiza.This “The Aoki-san's Wife” was created in 1990 as an improvisational play.
Although the main part of the story is set, most parts are developed by improvisation.
The play has been performed again and again, and on several occasions when it was performed in Tokyo during a certain period, I was a member of the crew that took stage photographs, spending time together at the rehearsal hall and at the opening of the performance.
In 2009, when I was living in Beijing, a group of local Japanese and Chinese volunteers gathered to perform “The Aoki Family's Wife.
The volunteers were not actors with extensive stage experience, but rather stage novices who had been invited to join us because they were interested in Japanese-language theater.
We decided that there was no way we could improvise for more than 90 minutes like the experienced performers we had seen, so we created a solid script based on the original play.
What was good about this was that I was able to replace the situations in the play with the city of Beijing and weave in information that was familiar to the performers and the audience.
In addition, we were able to rewrite the dialogue to suit the almost amateur actors and make it as familiar and realistic as possible to make it come alive.
I don't know if these efforts were successful or not, but I was able to revive the play at another theater in Beijing in 2011.
Surprisingly, “People's Republic of China Online” and “CRI online” still have the articles from those days more than 10 years later.
We have been holding theater workshops and events in Toyama for a long time. Then the Corona disaster struck, and we were forced to refrain from theater-related events because they were deemed unnecessary.
I can't help but feel that my motivation stems from a kind of anger or revenge that I don't know where to direct it.
Furthermore, last year, in 2023, I participated in the “Toyama Tourism School Attractiveness Improvement Course” seminar sponsored by Toyama Prefecture, and in the course of considering a presentation on how to boost tourism in Toyama, I proposed the concept of “theater tourism in Toyama.
The idea was to improve the image of Toyama and how to attract tourists from other prefectures and overseas to visit the prefecture and repeat their visit, just as one would think of promoting the branding “Toyama Prefecture is known for its sushi.
Most events attract visitors by inviting famous celebrities from the city who are already active in the media.
However, in such cases, the money from the community goes to the city, and the event is nothing more than a transient, exciting event.
In this day and age of the Internet and the decline of media such as television, it is the local areas that must have the value of appealing and communicating what is not available in the cities.
First of all, we need to gather stage actors who live in Toyama, and make sure that the theater performance is not something that only a small number of people are involved in, but rather a project that is Toyama-based, that attracts a large number of people, and that many people involved can enjoy first and foremost.
Visitors from outside the prefecture must be able to eat sushi at least once after seeing the play.
If they have no problem consuming alcohol, they must also drink sake made from Toyama's delicious water.
Since they would not be able to drive home, they would have to stay at the nearest hotel or other lodging facility.
We need them to stay at least one night and enjoy themselves while buying souvenirs the next day while they go on another sightseeing tour.
During the seminar, I had been thinking of ways to make the most of the PowerPoint presentation I had made in front of the prefectural governor. After all, whether I gave a presentation in front of the governor or won the grand prize among the seminar participants, nothing would matter if I could not “attract customers” in the first place.
They had no choice but to conclude that they had achieved nothing.
When I realized this, I realized that I had to put what I had experienced into practice, and not just sit on my desk and think about it.
7.1.2024
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
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Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
A MUJINA
I think it was January 18, 2022. I was doing office work at a store in Marunouchi when I had a stroke.
I had to be hospitalized for about a month, including rehabilitation, and since then I have been taking several kinds of antihypertensive drugs for the reason of high blood pressure.
I had my blood pressure measured when I collapsed with a high fever just after moving to Beijing in January 2005, and was told at the clinic for foreigners in Beijing that my blood pressure was high. and from then on I became a little more aware of it and was aware of my high blood pressure.
However, I had no particular pain in any part of my body, so I did not take care of my body and did not pay any attention to my diet, such as cutting down on salt or being careful about what I ate.
After more than 10 years of living without paying attention to anything, I had a stroke, which triggered the administration of antihypertensive drugs, forcing my blood pressure, which was normally over 170, down to around 140.
Even though I did not collapse in the gymnasium, I was often groggy and unable to move in the mornings because of the medication I was taking.
For the past two years, the decision had been made to sacrifice the mornings in the hopes that the blood thinners would help.
During my monthly visits to the hospital, I have complained a lot about the amount and type of medication I take after breakfast, and they have tried to reduce the dosage or change the time of day I take the medication, but in the end, the dosage is increased because the blood pressure numbers are not reflected in a positive way.
I don't think they really listened to the patient's point of view, which was that he was not feeling well because of the medication.
As long as they remembered to take their medications every day, their superficial numbers would be good, but their physical condition would become weak and groggy, and they would have trouble getting along in life.
If the rhythm of life is disturbed due to a series of irregular events, or if I forget to take my medicine, my blood pressure will return to the high level that the world says it is for sure.
You see that? and you are prescribed medicine again.
Without taking more fundamental measures to improve one's constitution, it is not possible to say that the disease has been cured.
Then, in April 2024, the reference value for high blood pressure will be changed.
( Who in the world would have the intention to change the reference values?)
The new standard is 160 for systolic up and 100 for diastolic down.
A subsequent examination showed that in the 1960s it was "age + 90.
In 1987, it was "100-180.
In 2000, it was "90-140.
In 2019, the range was 80-130.
In the past, those who were considered to have high blood pressure at 130 were prescribed antihypertensive drugs and spent their mornings groggy, but from April of this year, the problem has been cleared up.
The cost of the monthly visits to the hospital, where they were prescribed drugs at a cost of 5,000-6,000 yen, has been eliminated.
I am amazed that the drug companies agreed to move up the blood pressure numbers!
The pharmaceutical company's subscriptions will decrease!
Doctors who do not inform their patients of the change in blood pressure standards are just as much a part of the problem.
I will stop visiting the hospital now!
I was also full of disbelief about the corona vaccination.
I will not be swayed by the world's atmosphere.
If you are serious about preventing viral infections, you would have to wear a "PN95" mask, even if it is hard to breathe.
And the government-issued Ahono masks were 120% useless.
It is nothing more than a monopoly system for companies run by politicians' relatives or related parties.
As long as I continue to live in self-responsible Japan, I must first go to the long-established Jyoseki Pharmacy in Toyama City to obtain a pine needle extract called "Matsujusen" in order to fundamentally improve my blood constitution.
Human metabolism repeats itself in a certain cycle.
Skin cells are replaced in 28 days," as is often said in skin care.
In addition, it is said that gastrointestinal cells are replaced in about 5 days, muscles and liver in about 2 months, and bone cells in about 3 months.
At a rough estimate, the body's cells should be replaced in four months.
Since the Western antihypertensive drugs I have been taking for the past two years have not improved my condition, I decided to start a habit of taking "Shoujusen," a Japanese-Chinese medicine, as my main medicine, hoping for the efficacy of Kumazasa tea, red pine tea, and ginseng tea, which also contain the same main ingredients.
After a short time after drinking the tea, I measured my blood pressure, and to my delight, it showed a figure that seemed to reflect some of the effects.
I don't feel weak as if I have been forced to lower my blood pressure.
At least it seems to be better than when I was in the hospital.
4.15.2024
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
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Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Input
We managed to complete moving our belongings from Marunouchi 2-chome.
The next challenge, fire prevention measures including interior work before submitting the notification of commencement of use of fire-preventive objects to the fire department at the new address, is a bigger hurdle to overcome.
Because of the unexpected expense, it was not possible to have the interior work constructed at the same time as the moving of goods.
The supervisor of the interior work this time gave us somewhat of a glimpse of how he wanted to start the work without providing an estimate of the construction cost, saying that the craftsmen must be busy due to the impact of the Noto earthquake damage reconstruction.
In the past, when repairing the old wooden house where my grandfather used to live, which is now my home, the contractor at that time proceeded with the work without providing an estimate and proceeded with repairs one after another, claiming that there were problems here and there, and in the end he was charged a snowballing construction cost. In the end, we were put in a position where we had to do the bidding of the contractor, despite the fact that we were the client.
The last time I worked with a different contractor on the interior construction of a Marunouchi store in 2014, they did not provide me with a significant estimate of the construction period or a firm contract, and the work was carried out as it happened, and in the end I received a bill that exceeded my expectations.
When I was living in Beijing, I had a list of catalogs, names, and prices of all new fixtures in the room, from water faucets to light switches, and was told what to use.
It seems that interior decoration work in Toyama is not as clear-cut as it was in Beijing, perhaps because of the local characteristics of the area.
I can't help but feel that the more the client makes complicated and troublesome requests, the slower the start of the construction work will be.
After all, the construction work almost did not proceed during this March because of the tax return and the end of the fiscal year.
The coffee roaster has been out of commission for a long time because the interior construction work includes new LP gas and water piping.
At this point in time, I am excitedly preparing to buy a digital thermometer and interface to display the temperature inside the roaster on a graph on my computer to visualize the temperature change of the green coffee beans.
Maybe it is because I have completely lost the habit of coming to work every day after the Corona disaster, or maybe it is because my autonomic nervous system and blood pressure have been unstable since my stroke, but I have developed a kind of lazy habit that I cannot even explain to myself, which makes it hard to say that I am sick after I wake up and have breakfast. I feel as if I can do only about 30% of my previous work processing capacity.
Perhaps I am simply "getting old.
That is why I decided that I needed to make a conscious effort to work on something new, something that I must do while I still can, something that I will not be able to do once the store is up and running.
It takes about 40 minutes by car from Toyama City.
I went to Tonami City in Toyama Prefecture to observe how "Daimon Somen" is made.
It is a famous somen in Toyama known by those in the know, but I knew nothing about it even though I have been a resident of Toyama for a long time, except that I actually tried it at home and it was firm and tasty.
As someone who was born and raised in Toyama, it was just a common and delicious food since childhood, so it was not something I particularly cared about or admired. I have come to realize that the products of my hometown, Toyama, are delicious.
It is said that the technique of somen production was introduced from Takamatsu in Noto Province (present-day Takamatsu, Kahoku City) in 1848, at the end of the Edo Period. 2-meter-long thin and long noodles are rolled into a round shape and sold in a unique form wrapped in Japanese paper.
Tonami is home to sake and beverage manufacturers such as Tateyama Sake Brewery, Wakatsuru Sake Brewery, and Hokuriku Coca-Cola, and is considered a region with good water.
Using such good quality water, the wheat is kneaded many times and rolled out thinly with many times of kneading, which produces a strong and smooth texture.
It is not mass-produced at a manufacturer's factory, but is made in the Daimon area of Tonami City as a side job for farmers during the winter months of October through March, which is considered the off-season for farming.
Dried noodles seem to be widespread throughout the country, but recently a category of noodles called "semi-raw noodles" has been put on the market, offering a different texture from dried noodles.
I was lucky enough to sample some of these noodles at a local supermarket, but I would like to buy some as a staple food at home as soon as I see them in my local supermarket before the summer.
2.10.2024
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
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Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
An unexpected turn of events.
I am sure that relocating the roasting machine will be the hardest part of the project.
That's right.
It is the heart of a coffee bean roaster, the main and most important equipment, so it is only natural.
The main unit alone weighs 310 kg, and it is not something that two men can easily lift and move on a 2-ton truck.
When we installed it in the Marunouchi store, the interior had not yet been finished, and the store was empty.
The front shutters and doors were fully open.
A truck with a crane attached was placed alongside there, and the roasting machine was fished out and unloaded from the back of the truck, then brought into the store using a hand lift.
The roasting machine was manufactured in Osaka, and I remember that the contractor who installed it came all the way from Osaka and charged about 350,000 yen for the transportation.
We did not want to spend a lot of money on a move to rebuild our business after the Corona disaster.
In order to save a little money, I rented a truck with a power gate (tailgate lifter), bought a handlift for 400 kg, and brought two strong men with me.
The roasting machine has a chimney, and it would take a lot of time and effort to remove the chimney and install it with fire prevention measures.
If the handlift is capable of handling 400 kg, the main unit itself must also be of a certain weight, and even if I kept it after purchasing it, I would have trouble finding a way to use it and a place to put it.
And transporting more than 100 kg is simply dangerous work.
Amateurs may be stingy with their money and end up getting seriously injured.
It is a matter that must be entrusted to a specialist.
We had planned to ask the roasting machine manufacturer to install the roasting machine, but when we started to work out the details of the schedule, it didn't fit our moving schedule.
We also had to move the commercial refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen, so we decided to leave the moving of the kitchen equipment to a transportation company that specializes in moving kitchen equipment.
The roasting machine is equipped with ducts of 150 mm diameter (thicker) and 100 mm diameter (thinner), which penetrate the wall from the room and become chimneys outdoors to exhaust the smoke emitted during the roasting process.
The smoke smells like coffee.
Although it is not a bad smell, it must be unbearable for neighbors who hang their laundry on the balcony and whose clothes are soaked with the coffee smell.
We thought we were looking for a place that would not cause such a nuisance to the neighbors.
First, I asked the real estate agent if it was possible to open a restaurant, and told him that I actually intended to operate a coffee bean roasting shop, and asked the property owner to confirm this before signing the contract.
Even if the property was large enough to accommodate the desired space, if it was on the ground floor of an apartment building, it would be difficult to get the residents living above to understand that it would be difficult to put up a chimney for the roasting machine, and we would have to give up on the property.
It had been 10 years since I returned to Toyama in 2014 and was looking for a storefront property, and I felt that information was better organized online, and that walking around the city looking for vacant property signs and contacting real estate agents was no longer the way to go.
First, they would find a property that met their criteria online, and then contact the real estate agent in charge.
It seemed as if the city was full of stores that were shutting down their operations after the Corona disaster, but it was difficult to find the right property when it came with the condition that they had to put up a chimney and be considerate of the neighborhood.
The time limit for moving out of Marunouchi is December 31, and I have declared that I will leave by the end of the year.
At the very end of the year, moving companies and interior decorating contractors would be finishing up their work, and I feared that I might not be able to make plans in the usual sense.
I had planned to sign a contract for a new property by the end of November, but in the end it was not until early December that I decided on a new place.
Before moving our belongings and signing the real estate contract, we decided to check with the fire department that had jurisdiction over the area to make sure that we would not cause any problems after setting up the roasting machine and chimney at the new location.
I knew where the nearest fire station was, as I had once submitted a fire report for an outdoor stall at an event.
I printed out the property information that was available on the Internet and went to the fire station I was familiar with.
Using the reception phone on the ground floor, we decided to talk to the person in charge of the area or the department without getting all defensive.
I imagined that the store would be used as a workshop for roasting coffee beans, not as a café or coffee shop where passersby could come in to enjoy a cup of coffee and kill time.
Even so, they may make and sell curry and roast rice at events.
There is also the possibility of baking cakes and other sweets.
I explained my vision to the firefighter who came down to the reception desk on the first floor, and he gave me some rough advice that a restaurant serving less than 20 people would be able to operate with only fire extinguishers on each floor.
He told me that he was not in charge of the area today, and that he would call me again on another day when he had decided on the property and the location of the roasting machine, and asked me to come back.
I was relieved to finally find a property that I could move into and decided to sign the real estate contract as soon as possible.
However, after signing the contract, we started checking the interior with the contractor to see how we could modify the interior, including the interior work, and then we started to feel a slight discomfort. I began to feel a slight sense of discomfort.
First of all, how to pipe the propane gas used for the roasting machine. Originally, the building was supposed to be equipped with a city gas line, and we planned to use the gas pipe that runs through the building, but we could not find a meter for the gas company.
There is a box on the side of the building that looks like an electricity meter, but it is locked and cannot be opened.
The exterior walls of the building are entirely covered with tin, so it is difficult to tell what the building's exterior walls are made of from the outside.
An old air conditioner that seems to have been used by a previous tenant is still on the first floor of the building.
In the kitchen area at the back of the building, there is a large refrigerator that is also old and cannot be moved easily, as it has already been out of use for some time.
I asked the real estate agent about these items, but he said that they were included in the lease as they were, and that the new tenant could modify them in any way he or she wished.
We should have carefully considered the removal of the air conditioner and refrigerator when we previewed the property and made our decision.
These are not mere commercial appliances.
Both use chlorofluorocarbon gas as a refrigerant.
CFC gas is a compound of carbon and fluorine, and has excellent properties such as non-toxicity, non-flammability, and chemical stability, which is why it is widely and commonly used as a refrigerant in air conditioning equipment, freezers, and refrigerators.
As an ozone-depleting substance, its release into the atmosphere is strictly prohibited by law, and its production is being phased out or discontinued.
Since they also have a negative impact on global warming, they are being phased out in favor of substances that have less of an impact.
In short, in order to remove the substance, it must be disposed of by a specialized company, and a removal fee will be incurred.
The question is who will be responsible for the removal fee.
Then, we went to the fire station again to reconfirm the location of the roasting machine.
We brought with us a floor plan showing the room layout and a copy of the roasting machine specifications in order to obtain confirmation from the original area supervisor.
However, when opening a restaurant, it is necessary to file a notification as required by the Fire Service Law, and the reason for asking the area supervisor to confirm again was that he wanted me to file those documents.
Even though I explained that the business type was not a cafe or a coffee shop, the public health center seemed to put me in the "restaurant" category when I told them that I intended to register as a restaurant due to sanitary reasons.
And the roasting machine must be located at least one meter away from the walls in five directions.
The distance between the lowest point of the ceiling and the highest point of the roasting machine must be 100 cm.
The roasting machine's motor-driven oven can reach temperatures of up to 230°C. However, the top part of the roasting machine, where the green coffee beans are fed into the oven, and the edge of the roasting machine, where the roasted beans are discharged from the oven and cooled, are not always heated to room temperature.
In addition, the fact that a long-established coffee shop in downtown Toyama caught fire and burned down just around this time also seems to have had some influence on the fact that something harsh was said about it. ( Moreover, the January 1 Noto Peninsula earthquake also happened...).
Once again, I was formally requested to submit the necessary documents.
Notification of Installation of Fire Fighting Equipment
Notification of commencement of use of fire prevention equipment
Drawings
Drawing of the vicinity of the building
Site layout
Floor plan (1st to 3rd floors)
Elevation drawing
Fittings and fixtures
LVS Calculation
Calculation of window coverage determination
Specifications of roasting machine
About exhaust temperature of roasting machine
Construction of the chimney
After this, we visited the fire station many times, sometimes the person in charge was not there, sometimes there was a fire in the area and the fire department was dispatched, we asked for an explanation of each notification and asked them to explain in detail how to fill it out, and finally we were told that an amateur could not handle it and had to call a first class architect to draw up a plan, The conversation grew larger and larger.
And when a professional contractor came on the scene, there was no way we could afford the 10,000 yen per sheet to have the drawings done.
Even if we were to ask a professional to create an online homepage for us, they would not be able to do it for 10,000 yen per page now.
It is likely that several dozen drawings will be necessary to submit.
We can't see the whole picture until they start working on it, so we can't help but wonder how much it will really cost.
I had planned to move my belongings quickly during the New Year's holiday, and to announce the reopening of the Taiyo Coffee Roasting Center with a New Year's greeting early in the New Year, but things took a completely unexpected turn. But, it turned out to be a completely unexpected turn of events.
It seems that moving a store is different from moving a private home.
Until the end of last year, we had been focusing on moving our belongings to complete the move as a priority, but we could not imagine how much we would have to spend by the time the new year came and we resumed our business at the new address.
Since the roasting machine has only been installed and gas has not yet been installed, we are still far from being able to sell coffee beans.
First of all, we decided to ask for an estimate to prepare drawings and other documents to be submitted to the fire department.
I know that the Noto earthquake has kept the craftsmen busy, and that the end of the fiscal year is coming up.
12.10.2023
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Store relocation !
The End of the Corona Disaster(?) It is not that I am saying that the coronary disaster is over, but I have come to feel that the world has started to move again, partly due to the shift to "Class 5 Infectious Disease" on May 8, 2023.
The world had stopped moving because of the coronary disaster, but in my case, I was hospitalized for a stroke in January 2020, so in a sense, it was convenient that the world was slowing down.
Even after being discharged from the hospital, the antihypertensive medication did not suit my body well, and after taking the medication after breakfast, I could not move in the morning and could not work for a while.
After that, I complained to the doctor at the hospital about it, and by changing the distribution of the medicines I take in the morning and evening, I seemed to be able to regain my normal movement little by little, but this time I could not get rid of the bad habit of spending time slowly in the morning.
When I took a second look at Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo's store in Marunouchi 2-chome, I found that the movie-related company next door, which had been particular about showing film movies, had been closed down after the Corona disaster, and the office of a photography club run by the owner of a certain photo gallery above ours (which must have been the office of the club) was now occupied by a photo darkroom managed by the club. The office of a photography circle group that was run by the owner of a certain photography gallery above us (which must have had a photo darkroom managed by the circle) was dissolved with the sudden death of the owner, or they moved out shortly afterwards.
It was this fascinating interest in the neighborhood that led to my decision to set up store in Marunouchi 2-chome, but in the end, we were unable to meet again without being able to communicate with each other.
Even Google, which shows us the location of the store on the Internet, keeps sending me messages asking about the status of the business.
Although the shop was actively participating in outdoor tent stalls for events, it was probably because it had stopped operating like a so-called café, welcoming an unspecified number of customers to its actual shop to buy coffee beans and have them taste them.
The "Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo logo" tapestry that used to hang outside the store like a signboard has also become tattered, so it was taken down this year and has not been hung up again.
When I was at the event, some customers who knew the actual store asked me, "Did you stop?" or "Did you move?" I was also asked several times by customers who knew the actual shop.
We had been trying to figure out how to reopen the actual store.
By moving to a new location, we could turn the tide!
I said, "Yes, let's move. Let's relocate." He came up with the idea and decided not to renew the store's lease. The time limit for completing the move to move all of the store's belongings was December 31, 2023.
I should have known, in theory, how difficult and reckless it would be to make the decision to relocate and not renew the lease without deciding where to move to next, but I guess I had to experience it firsthand to learn, or maybe I was just naive or optimistic.
I knew, or thought I knew, that the coffee bean roasting machine was quite heavy. When we opened our store at our current address in Marunouchi 2-chome, we had a vendor deliver a roasting machine from the Kansai region, and had it lowered from the back of a light truck to the ground using a hand-lift, and then installed in our current location in the store.
When I reviewed the instruction manual for the roasting machine again, I found that it says the roasting machine weighs 310 kg.
The handlift that can be easily purchased on the Internet weighs around 100 kg, so it is easy to imagine that a higher grade type would be needed.
And, furthermore, smoke is emitted during roasting, so a chimney is necessary.
While not a bad smell, the smoke emitted from the roasting process must be contained.
I must have been lucky when I decided on the Marunouchi 2-chome location.
Riding the streetcar, I spotted a vacant property in a building that housed a film and photography company within walking distance of my home, and took a picture of the real estate agent's information on the door with my smartphone.
It was not so difficult to find a place, sign a lease, and start the interior work.
First of all, the property must be in "Toyama City.
We did not intend to make a store that is surrounded by nature in the mountains and only sells organic coffee beans.
I don't mind opening a store at events and communicating with customers who come to drink with me, but I can't stand the repetition of doing the same thing over and over again, setting up a store, going to the same workplace every day, being stuck in the same space, and dealing with regular customers.
I can't stand the repetition of doing the same thing over and over again.
In the future, I would like to become a coffee bean roaster that roasts coffee beans silently and makes maximum use of the Internet, focusing mainly on mail order.
If the store is to be located in Toyama, a parking lot is a must.
Without free parking, customers in Toyama would not want to stop by.
If we change our business policy to mail order, we will be freed from the restriction of having a parking space for several cars at the property.
Secondly, if that is the policy, there is no need to set up store in a commercial area in Toyama City.
As you might expect, Toyama, a regional city, is a car-oriented society, and if there are cars available and the products are appealing, it does not matter where the store is located, it will not affect the number of customers.
However, considering the smell and smoke emitted from the roasting machine, it is not acceptable to set up a coffee bean roasting shop in a residential area.
The roasting machine weighs 310 kg, so it must be on the first floor of the building.
Ideally, it should have a concrete floor.
This was the first requirement for this property.
As I had done when I found the property in Marunouchi 2-chome, I looked around the city in a manner that expanded my usual scope of activities, but I was unable to find any property that met my requirements.
From the results of such a search, you call a real estate agent of a place that you feel looks somewhat good, based on what you think is suitable for rent and the size of the store space, and actually visit the address introduced to you.
The person on the other end of the phone will tell you how he or she will act, and every word and action you say or do to each other will be a key to finding a good property.
Even if the only requirements are "about 60 square meters on the first floor of a building" and "a chimney can be erected," you will be sifted through quite a bit.
The property of our first choice was on the first floor of an apartment building, so we called the real estate agent to ask for confirmation from the owner of the building, but there was no reply even after a week had passed.
When I called the real estate agent again to ask for confirmation, he was not available because he was on his regular holiday, and the conversation never progressed.
In the end, we had to give up because the building was leaking for unknown reasons that could not be discerned from the exterior of the property.
Since the progress of the first property was not so good, we also weighed the second choice at the same time, and even contacted another real estate agent to ask for more information about the property.
In this search for a property, there is one person who has been the biggest and most influential collaborator.
He is an eccentric old man whose main business is remodeling in Toyama, but who also used to be involved in the restaurant business, running a pub, and who loves film photography and uses a Sinar 8x10 not for work but for private use.
However, I would like to add that he was the equivalent of Liu Bei Yuan De's acquaintance with Zhuge Liang.
The second choice was an older building, but the owner had given permission for the tenant to remodel it in any way he wished.
For that reason, the rent was unbelievably low.
One might be tempted to suspect that the property was a ghostly accident.
But on the positive side, it looks like a rusty tin-clad barracks hideout.
It was around 2000, I think, when I lived in an apartment in Ebisu, Shibuya-ku.
There was a restaurant (?) in the back called ZEST CANYINA, which had an American atmosphere similar to Mexican food. It was a tavern (?). I was a bit rusty in this Toyama ghost house.
For a moment, I dreamed that the rusted tin exterior of this haunted house in Toyama could become an elegant restaurant like ZEST if only it were well maintained.
However, Zhu-ge Koumei, the owner of the shop, told me, "Even if the rent is cheap, it is a roasting workshop, but it is still a customer business, and if you start to furnish the interior and exterior to your satisfaction, the interior construction cost will be too much.
After much agonizing over the third and fourth conflicts one after another, it was not until November that the next relocation site was finally decided.
The time limit to complete the move was less than two months.
The rent was reasonable, the floor space was sufficient, and the conditions were right for us to look forward to moving.
To be honest, I can't deny that I signed the contract halfway in a hurry.
The first floor of the building used to be a sushi restaurant.
10.15.2023
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
No curry?
"You don't have curry today? I'm from Kyoto."
Even if you say so, there is nothing you haven't prepared.
On this day, I had changed the dish to beef tendon hashed rice.
The fourth Sunday of every month is "Ecchu Ote Market".
As usual, we had prepared several kinds of coffee beans and prepared them the day before for the event as food to be eaten outdoors.
Normally, I would have served my standard dish, Honey Butter Chicken Curry.
However, the price of everything, not just ingredients, has gone up since last fall, and it seems that prices have finally calmed down recently, and I felt the urge to buy beef tendon for the first time in a while.
Indeed, it was a sudden and whimsical change, which was very unfortunate for the customers who came all the way from Kyoto.
Regular customers who have been coming to the restaurant many times would have been quick to suggest, "How about some bubu-zuke? But it was the first time for him to visit our restaurant.
But this was my first visit to the restaurant. I looked at the customer to see if there was anything I could do.
He had a rangefinder camera hanging from his neck.
At a quick glance, I could not see the logo of the camera manufacturer.
There was an orange filter on the lens, which should not be necessary in this day and age.
Monochrome? Film? It doesn't seem to be analog 、、、、.
Then, it is most likely a Leica digital monochrome.
The orange filter on the camera is a perfect monochrome.
Is it a Leica digital monochrome? It is M11, isn't it? I've never seen a Japanese man with one before! I was so surprised.
I was not sure if it might have been an Asian who spoke fluent Japanese.
It was about 8 years ago when I saw a Leica Digital Monochrome.
When I was still in Beijing.
A rich Hong Kong man, obviously a wealthy person, who was traveling in Beijing, was wearing it around his neck.
The body alone cost about 800,000 yen.
And even though it was a digital camera, it could only take black and white pictures.
I wanted to stop serving other customers and ask him many questions in rapid succession, but even though it was an outdoor event stall, it was still a coffee shop.
But I decided that it was too deep a question to ask a first-time customer in a stand-up conversation, so I stopped.
Leica M11 Monochrome.
When I later checked the information online, I found that it will go on sale on April 22, 2023, at a price of 1,386,000 yen, including tax.
While the CMOS sensor in the body is the same as the color one, this is a monochrome-only model with the color filter removed to increase resolution.
With a high resolution of 63 megapixels, the amount of data obtained from a single press of the shutter is said to be 60 MB in RAW mode.
It is a camera designed exclusively for photographers who shoot black-and-white posters.
If you use a color digital SLR camera and press the shutter button once, you should be able to print out 8 MB of data in the popular L-size (89x127 mm) from a copy machine at a convenience store.
It would be like driving a large truck to the parking lot to buy ice cream instead of walking to the nearest convenience store to buy ice cream.
In any case, it is a very over-spec camera for ordinary people.
There are other camera manufacturers that produce digital monochrome cameras, but all of them are maniacal and astonishing.
PENTAX K-3 Mark Ⅲ (released on 28/04/2023) Lowest price: 299700 yen.
The SIGMA sd Quattro is a mirrorless type, released in 2016 but already discontinued.
Each model is supposed to be digitally finished in monochrome, and each model is supposed to have its own monochrome taste finish.
However, if the RAW data is transferred to a computer and developed on the computer after shooting, there is no need to drive a large truck to a convenience store parking lot!
Color RAW data taken with a digital color camera body can be developed on a computer and then converted to grayscale using Photoshop or other software, or monochrome conversion software can be used.
You should be able to get similar results.
In the digital world, the image is processed on a computer, so even if an orange filter is optically placed in front of the lens, it would not be a good idea!
Theoretically, yes, but when it comes to creating photographic works of art, satisfaction in the process is also important and can be considered an element that plays a role in maintaining the motivation to continue creating works of art.
What approach would you choose?
Soon after, I learned of a photography exhibition by Hiroshi Osaka, who once taught me how to make silver gelatin prints.
The exhibition is at Nishiazabu EM Gallery on 06/28/2023 ~ 07/16/2023.
He came back from Beijing in 2014 and had several photo exhibitions during that time, but the timing was not right and I could not visit the site.
I was not able to meet him in person because he had not been in Japan since at least 2005.
The past 18 years have passed in a blink of an eye.
I was able to get in touch with Koike-kun, who used to come to see me whenever he had a business trip to Beijing when he was living in Beijing, and we met again without any difficulty in Nishiazabu.
Koike-san is a photographer who prints his photographs energetically using a method called "arvumen printing," which uses chicken-egg paper.
The wonders of the Corona disaster have passed(?). I was able to meet people when I thought I could, and it was as if something had started to move again.
It has already been 23 years since the publication of Tatsuro Rokudari's Photography Collection: Ogasawara Tarzan, a compilation of a series of photographs taken in the Ogasawara Islands.
I thought I was done using film to create my own work.
Influenced by the recent photographic situation around me, I felt the urge to make my own original prints again in some way.
6.10.2023
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Lamb Skewers Banquet (1)
Whenever I went to the nearest Costco, I would pass by it with a sideways glance, thinking it was too expensive and out of my price range.
Lamb.
If you don't have it, you don't have to eat it.
When it gets cold, I sometimes feel like eating shabu-shabu (thinly sliced lamb), as I used to do when I was in Beijing, but if lamb is not available, beef or pork will satisfy my craving.
When was the last time I bought lamb?
Probably in front of Corona.
They had a weekly tent stall where they served a different curry each week, and I once made a lamb curry with different ingredients.
After that, I never saw lamb at Costco anymore.
However, I can't get it.
It's gone.
Then, on the contrary, the desire to eat lamb came up.
When I first moved to Beijing, I used to go to a café called "沙漏咖啡" (Hourglass Coffee).
No, I used to go there every day.
It was located just north of the Forbidden City.
There is a building called "Gulou," which was built to tell the time in the area.
The "Central Academy of Drama" (中央戏剧学院) is located a few minutes walk from there and has produced most of China's actors and film directors.
In Tokyo, it is a student town like Ekoda, where Nikkei University is located.
However, a few years before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the streets around the Central Academy of Performing Arts were still overgrown with trees, the roads were uneven, there were large puddles of water when it rained, and the streets were dimly lit at night.
The Central Academy of Performing Arts was teaching Chinese, the standard language of China, and accepting foreigners.
Because of the upcoming Olympics, there were many foreign students from various countries, and the café was no longer a mere renovated hutong run by Chinese people, due to the customers who gathered there.
The café was run by a young Han Chinese who had studied abroad.
The manager of the café is a Mongolian from Inner Mongolia.
There was a Japanese girl, a foreign exchange student, as a part-time clerk.
She decided to move to Beijing to experience the rapid growth before the 2005 Olympics up close, but she did not have strong connections, nor did she speak fluent Chinese to assert herself, and there was no way she could get a job right away. I went to a café where a lot of people were gathering to get some useful information.
It was not a café where he could get a good cup of coffee.
Inside the counter sat an espresso machine made by Cuisinart, an American appliance manufacturer that had probably just entered the Chinese market.
Even to the untrained eye of a coffee expert at the time, it was an appliance coffee maker, not a professional machine for professional use.
The machine was packaged with about 500 grams of coffee beans per bag, including "巴西"(Brazil), "哥伦比亚"(Colombia), "蓝山"(Lásan), and "蓝山"(Lásan). The beans were all very deep roasted, and it was hard to tell the difference in appearance and taste.
China was a coffee backward and developing country at that time.
Starbucks had already made inroads into China, but it was not a place to drink coffee, but only a trendy place for "wealthy kids" (children of the newly rich) to meet for a date.
As in Japan 50 years ago, there was a folk belief in Beijing that "coffee is bad for you.
Therefore, basically no one drank coffee.
On the menu, which I did not see very often, you can find "铁观音"(Tieguanyin), "普洱"(Pu'er), "菊花"(Chrysanthemum Flower Tea), "可乐"(Cola), and "可乐"(Cola), The only other drinks available were "可乐"(Cola), "雪碧"(Sprite), and, I think, "亚乐"(Cola).
In a café, you would normally have to order something to drink by tacit agreement, but the manager, ULA, was generous enough to allow us to stay as long as we got to know each other.
There was always someone in the restaurant, and foreign students were more likely to be regular customers. When a local Chinese student would occasionally enter the restaurant by mistake, he would be met with a look that said, "Who the hell are you?
However, since many Chinese people are naturally oblivious to other people's eyes, they would enter the restaurant without hesitation, take a corner where several people can sit, order a pot of one type of tea, and start playing cards with those several people.
Since tea was served by the pot, the place often became a place where several people played cards for several hours over a pot of one kind of tea.
As a Japanese, I could not believe what I was seeing, so I asked ULA about it at the counter. He sometimes complained that it seemed uncomfortable for Mongolians to stay for so long over a kind of tea, and to make such a big fuss over the surroundings.
However, thanks to this, the foreign team was able to stay longer.
I am still thankful that they accepted us and allowed us to stay long in spite of the fact that we could hardly speak Chinese.
I owe a lot to SAKI, a Japanese student working part-time at the counter of the restaurant, who introduced us to many things.
In addition to that, ULA himself was pro-Japanese, and perhaps because he was thinking of studying in Japan at some point, he treated me well in every way.
At that time, I moved to Beijing and lived for the first time in an apartment? Apartment? The apartment was in "Xidan", a big downtown area in the west of Beijing, like Shinjuku or Shibuya in Tokyo.
From there, I took a cab for about 20 minutes to go to "Sha Lei Coffee" every day, which later became a fashionable street like Daikanyama, a student district in Ekoda called "Nangangko Lane".
I had no job, no language school, and nothing else to do, but I just enjoyed myself in the chaos of the place every day for a few months.
Everyone had something to do during the day.
And in the evening, they would naturally gather at the café, even though they had made no promises to do so.
French, British, Australians, Danes, etc., all of them came to Beijing with their own purposes and dreamed of the Beijing dream during the period of rapid economic growth.
Soon it would be dinner time, and someone would call the local Chinese restaurant and order a side dish, fried rice, or soup, and everyone would eat together with chopsticks.
"糖醋里脊 ", " 宫保鸡丁 ", " 辣子鸡 ", " 萝卜干腊肉 ", "地三鲜 ",,, (I wish I could list everything we were eating, but I'll leave that for next time).
Furthermore, as the night deepens and around 23:00, someone suddenly shouts "yang lo time ("mutton" TIME)!" and someone shouts, "Yan Lo Time ("mutton" time)!
Then, I call a nearby "Xinjiang Cuisine" (Uyghur food) restaurant and order dozens of "mutton skewers".
The skewers are about 30cm long with about five 2cm cubes of mutton, flavored with cumin, salt, hot pepper, and a generous amount of "Ajisei" (a.k.a. "seasoning"). " (a.k.a.: Ajinomoto, monosodium glutamate).
Still loudly suppressed.
4.10.2023
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
I would like to play the saxophone!
While I was lying in bed with a fever that reached 40 degrees Celsius after contracting corona at the end of last year, I had a flash of inspiration: "I want to play the saxophone! I had been a member of a brass band during my school days.
This is despite the fact that I was not a member of a brass band in my school days and had never even touched a reed instrument.
If I were to venture a guess, it might be due to the fact that I was taking pictures at a live music club for a certain record company and thought saxophonists were cool in jazz big band performances.
And for some reason, I have a CD of Hans Dulfer, a tenor saxophonist.
Not Candy Dulfer, the daughter who plays alto saxophone.
After New Year's Day, I bought a cheap used tenor saxophone on Yahoo!
I was suffering from a high fever due to Corona.
When I saw the actual used tenor saxophone that was sent to me shortly, I came to my senses.
I realized in an instant that it was not a tool that I could immediately use as it was.
If you are a saxophone beginner, it is better to start out in a neutral state with no habits.
It is your responsibility to make sure your tools are in the best condition for you to master them.
I was a bit calm after my illness and regretted my obvious floundering.
I searched YouTube for "saxophone beginner" and watched videos titled "Beginners Must Watch!" and almost everyone recommends buying a new instrument.
There are no videos that recommend buying a used instrument from the Internet.
That's how delicate the instruments are, and even though saxophones are made of metal, they deteriorate over time and require regular adjustments down to the smallest detail.
I never intend to make a living playing the saxophone, but as a complete beginner, I want to listen to him honestly.
I thought that I should forget about the used tenor saxophone in front of me and start with the more popular alto saxophone, and buy a new alto saxophone at a real music store for a little less money.
As I later found out, alto saxophones are smaller in size, so the expense may be less.
Also, there are many instructional books available, and it is easier to obtain information.
However, since I already have a rusty tenor saxophone on hand, I decided to ask for a repair estimate first.
I took pictures of the parts that were obviously in need of repair, even though I did not understand them, and decided to inquire by e-mail.
I was about to give up on the idea of having it repaired because the model was already too old and parts could not be ordered, but I got an estimate for an overhaul for less than the cost of buying a brand new tenor saxophone.
After about a month of work, it looks like they will be able to fix it to a neutral state that a beginner can comfortably start with.
It just so happens that OpenAI Inc. announced the release of the Generative Pretrained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) on March 14, 2023, and I immediately asked AI about it.
Q: I want to start playing tenor saxophone, what should I do first?
A: Taking up the 1/ 2 tenor saxophone can be a fun adventure! The tenor saxophone is very attractive to music lovers and is used in a variety of musical styles.
Below are a few steps to consider to get started with the tenor saxophone.
Get a Tenor Saxophone The first thing you should do is get a tenor saxophone. If you are unable to own a saxophone, you can rent one. When buying or renting, you will also need to purchase accessories, such as reeds, straps, and cleaning kits.
Learn Basic Music Theory Before playing the saxophone, it is important to learn basic music theory. Understanding music theory will help you understand how to read music, note length, pitch, and rhythm.
Take Lessons Taking professional instruction can be very helpful for beginners. Quality lessons will help you learn basic techniques such as proper posture, breath control, and fingering.
Practice Getting started with the tenor saxophone requires continuous practice. It is recommended that you practice at least 30 minutes to an hour each day. Practice will help you improve your sound quality and your playing technique.
Get Opportunities to Perform Getting opportunities to perform will help you evaluate your performance and build your confidence. Consider participating in school concerts or community performances.
2 / 2 Taking up the tenor saxophone can be a rewarding adventure, but the first step is to get started. With continued practice and professional instruction, you can improve your technique and develop your musical skills, and
Before you begin playing the tenor saxophone, we recommend that you take the following steps
Rent or Buy a Tenor Saxophone First, you will need to obtain a tenor saxophone. For beginners, renting is recommended. After renting, you can see if you can continue practicing before purchasing.
Familiarize yourself with the instrument Start by holding the tenor saxophone and familiarize yourself with the instrument. Tenor saxophones are heavier than other instruments, so it is important to play with the correct posture. First, learn how to support the instrument and play it slowly.
Learn Basic Playing Techniques To begin playing the tenor saxophone, you will need to learn basic playing techniques. This includes breath control, tone production, fingering, and how to read music. Instructional books and online lessons are available to help you learn basic playing techniques.
Practice Practice is critical to mastering the tenor saxophone. Practicing daily will help you improve your playing technique and musical expression. It is recommended that you establish a practice schedule and practice regularly.
Seek out opportunities to perform. This includes performing at music schools and music events, as well as online performances.
By taking the above steps and practicing continuously, you can get started on the tenor saxophone.
I was convinced and surprised by the very accurate response.
The tenor saxophone came back to me after being adjusted, and now I can actually play it.
I wondered how much motivation I would be able to maintain.
I have no experience in learning anything, so I'm not sure what will happen. I don't feel like I'm asking Chat GPT for advice on my problems because I've been stuck for less than a year.
2.8.2023
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Yunnan coffee beans
While casually organizing my hard drive, I found a folder named "Yunnan pics".
I checked each of the photo data records inside and found that they were taken in November 2013.
I had completely forgotten the details; it was 10 years ago.
It was October 2013, shortly after I closed Caffè il Sole, which was operating on the ground floor of the Longbao Building apartment building in the northeast area of Beijing, in a town named "Mugi Zidian," less than a 10-minute walk from the Japanese Embassy. It was less than a year before I left Beijing and returned to Japan, and my primary purpose was to visit a coffee plantation in Yunnan Province, which was to be located immediately after I closed the store.
As many people think, China has a strong image of "tea culture.
This was one of the reasons that led me to move to Beijing in the first place. One of the reasons that led me to move to Beijing in the first place was the Starbucks store built on the grounds of the Imperial Palace (Forbidden City), which is located in the middle of Beijing.
The People's Republic of China was founded on October 1, 1949. ( Coincidentally, October 1 is also the international "Coffee Day". w ) The Forbidden City was established in 1406 during the Ming Dynasty, when the Yongle Emperor took over from the Yuan Dynasty, and added the functions of a palace of courtesy, a post palace, and a political building, and was also the palace of the Chinese emperors for several hundred years after the Qing Dynasty.
I am not sure if my memory serves me correctly, but in 2001, after Beijing was chosen to host the 2008 Olympics, a Starbucks was built inside the Palace. I heard the news, probably a franchise, that an American Starbucks, now an icon no less than McDonald's, had been built in an iconic location in China. I think it was a BBC news program that happened to be on the cable TV at home. After moving to Beijing in 2005, many Chinese people believed that "coffee is bad for you" for a while. I thought it was the same as in Japan about 40 years ago.
In 2006, I opened a café in Beijing on a whim and on a spur of the moment, but I just liked coffee as much as anyone else. I ran around Beijing looking for good coffee beans, but I felt that Japanese and Chinese people have different tastes in coffee, and even if I was satisfied with the coffee I brewed for myself, I wondered what kind of coffee the customers who came to my store wanted. Even though I was satisfied with the coffee I brewed for myself, I did not know what kind of coffee the customers who came to my shop wanted. I was just trying to figure out what makes a coffee drink delicious. In the northeastern area of Beijing, where many foreigners, including Japanese, lived, I often went to Jenny Lou's Jenny Lou supermarket, which was like Seijo Ishii but for foreigners, to do my shopping. The store was useful for procuring cheese, bacon, ingredients for making cakes, and other items not available at local supermarkets. On the shelves of the store, along with Nestle and Illy, there were coffee beans from Yunnan Province, produced in China under the name "Yunnan Small Grain Coffee" at about one-fifth the price of imported ones. The coffee beans are small, like Ethiopian coffee beans, and look like azuki beans. The beans were not particularly distinctive, and although I would drink them if there was no other coffee available, they were not particularly aromatic, and I would not have chosen them if I had the choice.
That said, I had always wanted to visit a coffee plantation in Yunnan and see the "coffee trees" when I had time to spare, since coffee beans are grown in a large area of China.
Coffee and tea are grown in similar climatic conditions, and in many countries, they are grown on adjoining lands. In Yunnan, where a lot of tea is grown, it is said that there was a time when more people grew marijuana, which was more profitable than the time and effort involved in cultivation and tea production, because it was far from the Beijing government. I don't know if the trauma of the opium wars or not, but I heard that Yunnan encouraged coffee cultivation as a countermeasure against marijuana cultivation, and that Nestle, McDonald's, and Starbucks guaranteed to buy up all those coffee beans in bulk to make it take root.
Even after I returned to Toyama and started roasting coffee beans as "Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo," I was still somewhat concerned about coffee beans produced in Yunnan, though not actively. After all, it was the first place I visited for coffee.
I was informed that samples of Yunnan coffee beans would be distributed, and when I had them sent to me for cupping at my store, I immediately decided to purchase green coffee beans because the beans were so specialty-like that they overturned my former image of coffee beans. It has been a long time since the infrastructure for coffee production was established through the investment of multinational companies such as Nestle, and it seems that in addition to the business environment, the quality and quantity of coffee beans have been repeatedly improved to a level where they can be exported.
Last year, in addition to the Corona disaster, I was hospitalized for a stroke in January and contracted Corona at the end of December, so I was not able to move around as much as I would have liked.
12.15.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
kohada is more profitable than fatty tuna
Unexpectedly, the Marche, Etchu Ote Market, on Sunday, December 11, has been canceled.
It was supposed to be the last tent stall in 2022.
The reason was not the spread of the corona epidemic, but rather the strong winds that were expected to reach a maximum of 10 mph.
A wind speed of 5 mph would easily blow away the tents we use at the marché.
It would be very dangerous and difficult to concentrate while making hand-drip coffee.
It is a matter of human safety. It was a natural decision.
Outdoor tent stalls are always affected by the weather.
This is not the first time this has happened.
Not only in the case of slender tents, but in this snow country of Toyama, heavy snowfall in winter has an immediate negative impact on the number of customers, resulting in a direct drop in sales and a major blow to the business.
However, as a store owner, I have to make sure that my store is well heated for the sake of the general public who may pass by my store at any time.
Moreover, the cost of fuel is skyrocketing.
Such instability has become more pronounced since the Corona epidemic.
We decided to keep the store closed with the intention of keeping it minimal until the calamity had passed.
The store became a coffee roasting workshop, and the main source of cash income came from a tent stall at events such as marche, which was held several times a month.
Although it is not limited to Toyama Prefecture, a regional city, having a store is not a goal, and it is not a place where you can just sit back and relax.
If there is even the slightest chance of attracting a crowd, the store must go out and do business.
The simple operation of a food stall can increase sales simply by increasing the number of stalls, but it still has the drawback that it is greatly affected by the weather.
And the stroke I had in January of this year, although it was only a minor injury, has left a bit of damage.
Until last year, I often stayed up all night to prepare for the opening of a new store, let alone working late into the night before.
It has been 10 months since he was discharged from the hospital.
I continue to take antihypertensive medication, and I am no longer able to do the kind of work that requires physical strength.
Perhaps I will never be able to get back to normal again.
When I participated in an event for two days in a row, I couldn't do it myself.
There was a time when I was dripping coffee, and while pouring a circle of hot water into the coffee powder with the drip pot in my right hand, I lost consciousness.
Before that, I could not stand outdoors at all.
My so-called autonomic nervous system and physical senses seemed to have deteriorated.
I would sit down on a folding canvas chair outdoors and not be able to stand up as it were.
Because of this, I decided to give up my annual Hatsumode stall at Etchu Inari Shrine.
I started brewing coffee for New Year's Eve visitors at around 10:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve.
I was sick, and it was not a good idea to force myself to open a long-running stall in the cold.
It will be the first time in a while that I will spend time preparing New Year's Eve with my family while watching NHK's Kohaku, which I have no interest in.
If I could, I would be absorbed in roasting coffee beans.
Since I feel that I have reached the limit of my physical strength for setting up a tent, I would like to find a new way to sell coffee beans.
If I were to ask a small business consultant or the Chamber of Commerce, they would probably say something like, "Let's make a website," "Let's make a LINE account," or "Let's start an Insta account," and I'm sure they would be very transparent about it.
Since this summer, the price of gasoline has been rising slowly and steadily, and as usual, the price of green coffee beans has also risen by a solid 20% to 30%.
However, I am not sure if the price of coffee beans after roasting should reflect the 20% to 30% increase in price.
When we opened our store in 2014, we thought it was a temporary coffee boom in the industry, and now customers who come to the Toyama Minoichi at Gokoku Jinja Shrine are asking for the popular Geisha coffee.
Even so, most of the customers who come to our tent say, "I don't like acidity," as if it were a pillow talk.
If we ask our customers what they like and they say they don't like acidity, we can't recommend two-thirds of the coffee beans we carry.
Also, the popular beans that are the talk of the town may not always match the customer's tastes.
Since they are the products of a roasting company, whether or not they are consumed depends on whether or not they are cost-effective or not, in addition to individual preferences, and whether or not they are worth the price of the beans.
There are everyday coffees that are consumed on a daily basis and expensive coffees that are consumed on special occasions, and consumers have a wide range of choices.
According to sushi chefs, kohada is more profitable than otoro.
In the automobile industry, kohada is like a Corolla and otoro is like a Rolls Royce!
If we were to translate this into the coffee beans of Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo, we would say "Brazilian Cerrado Calamerich #18" and "Panama Esmeralda Geisha".
Brazilian Cerrado Calamerich #18" is no longer the cheapest coffee due to recent price hikes, but it is an easy-drinking coffee with the standard, familiar Brazilian beans and a hint of sweetness.
Panama Esmeralda Geisha" is a clear, fruity, bergamot-like aroma with sweetness and caramelization, and is the first of the specialty coffees that have revolutionized the coffee industry.
11.7.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Why choose COMANDANTE?
One of the keys to brewing a good cup of coffee is to "grind the beans just before" brewing.
It is no exaggeration to say that roasted coffee beans begin to deteriorate at that point.
The change from bean to powder simply expands the surface area and increases the portion exposed to the air.
This doubles the oxidation rate and accelerates deterioration.
Coffee from major coffee makers sold in supermarkets is also sold in powder form, but in such cases, the bags are filled with nitrogen or antioxidants are added when the package is packed.
As a coffee bean roaster, I would like my customers to grind coffee beans with a mill (grinder) just before making coffee at home.
It is a trivial matter, but it is the accumulation of such trivial choices that makes the difference in making a good cup of coffee.
When using a car as a means of transportation to reach a destination, one may choose to drive a sports car like a Lamborghini or Ferrari, one may choose to drive a luxury car like a Mercedes-Benz with the satisfaction of driving it, or one may choose a long-selling and very popular car model like a Toyota Corolla.
Similarly, there is such a wide variety of ways to simply grind coffee beans into powder that you can get lost in the process.
If you choose to just grind the beans into powder without thinking about it, you can choose an electric propeller mill with a low selling price, but as a roasting bean maker, I would not recommend it.
It is easy to think that it is quick if you just push the switch button and jar the beans, but the electric motor is noisy, and the grain size is not stable and varies widely.
When customers visit our shop and want to purchase a mill, we ask them how often they habitually drink coffee and how much they drink, and until now, we have often recommended a manual mill with a conical ceramic blade.
I had recommended it to those who often drink coffee alone and brew one cup at a time.
In the case of ceramic blades, even if coffee grounds adhere to the blades after use, they can be easily removed by washing.
And it does not rust.
On the other hand, for those who have a family and are likely to brew several cups at once, he recommended a manual ceramic-blade mill with a larger capacity.
Many people drink coffee in the morning as a habit, and since time at breakfast time is very precious for commuting to work or school, they may feel that they are wasting time by spending several minutes turning a manual mill.
For such people, we ask them to spend a little more money and purchase an electric conical or mortar mill.
This way, they can brew and drink right away, or brew several cups at once without stress.
Such electric mills are not without their demerits.
Because the blades are driven by a motor that rotates at high speed, the machine heats up when it continues to grind coffee beans for a long time or in large quantities.
This has a negative effect on the coffee beans.
Also, the grinding process produces a fine powder.
If you value the uniformity of the coffee powder when extracting coffee, fines are a factor that should be avoided.
These fines can cause the extracted coffee to have a cloying taste.
This may not be a concern in daily coffee use, but in hand-drip competitions organized by organizations such as SCAJ (Specialty Coffee Association of Japan) in the coffee industry, the fines are removed using a fine sieve like a tea strainer after the coffee is milled to minimize the fine taste. This is done to minimize the amount of impurities in the coffee.
Therefore, it is difficult to say that an electric mill is necessarily superior.
In the past, Peugeot of France and Zassennhaus of Germany were famous for their manual mills, both of which were equipped with hard iron blades and were compared with each other.
Coming to this point, the German manual mill COMANDANTE has been a hot topic for several years.
The newly developed Nitro Blade allows the coffee beans to be ground to a very fine grain size.
The price is around 40,000 yen, probably due to the fact that it is imported from Germany.
It is the best in the world, as well as the most expensive.
The price is enough to buy a small electric mill.
In the 1990s, when people were still shooting with regular film cameras, the flagship model of Nikon SLR cameras shifted from the F3 to the F4, and photographers were hesitating whether or not they should use the new F4 body as their main camera for shooting work.
Perhaps it was because the bubble had just burst.
The flagship models of SLR cameras from camera makers were not worth the money that could easily be taken out of one's pocket.
However, they were also sold to the general public, and high-amateur photographers, camera-loving geeks, geeks, and iron workers were able to purchase these models from a similar position.
In such a situation, freelance photographers should not be stingy with the cost of equipment and choose a second-rate camera.
I do not always shoot celebrities or professional models.
You may be asked by an acquaintance to photograph a wedding for the general public.
If you are able to have a professional photographer take pictures of you on one of the rare occasions in your life when you have a special occasion to celebrate, you might want to ask someone who knows a little bit about cameras to come and take pictures.
If there is someone nearby who knows a little bit about cameras and knows that a professional photographer has gone out of his/her way to come and take pictures for you.
I would have to give a performance of shooting with at least the best Nikon SLR camera at that time with F4s, not with the second best camera.
It is a once-in-a-lifetime event.
That is the spirit of a professional.
I also tried to use the best equipment available at the time so that there would never be any faults caused by the equipment, and if there were any problems, they would be accepted as the photographer's own problems.
Thirty years later, the best digital cameras now cost more than one million yen, and it seems foolish to choose a camera with over-spec functions that one would never use for one's own photography, because the manufacturers are playing tricks on us.
Times have changed so much that camera manufacturers have stopped developing digital SLR cameras.
Nevertheless, as a coffee roaster, I can't help but choose a manual comandante with a NitroBlade blade.
10.7.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
R.I.P. CHAPPY
September 18, 14:39 , I received a Facebook Messenger from Bobbi man after a very long time.
→→→→ It's been a while. I am sorry to inform you that Chappie passed away this morning.
→→→→ He went surfing alone to Dragon Outside (open sea in Miyanohama) and was found floating by a diving boat and pulled up by a boat of the National Security Agency, but he was already in cardiopulmonary arrest.
I saw him at the clinic at →→→→. His hands were still warm and he looked like he was about to get up at any moment. I still can't believe it either, I am so sorry.
At this time of year, when typhoons are born and move northward toward Okinawa, Chichijima in the Ogasawara Islands gets good waves.
Okinawa was within the storm zone of typhoon No. 14 from about the 16th, and it continued to move slowly northward, making landfall on Kyushu on the 18th, so the big autumn waves must have been coming to Chichijima just in time.
He was 54 years old.
Looking back, he was a surfer who had been riding waves since 1995, when I met him on a filming trip to Chichijima, so to say that he was like Chappy would be an understatement.
It was hard to believe that I would no longer be able to see him on the island, as he was the island's most famous BONIN ISLANDS SAFER, a man who rode the waves in silence.
However, I received relentless news of CHAPPY's passing one after another from his friends on Chichijima via Facebook, Instagram, and other means.
By the following day, the 19th, the conversation on SNS had shifted to plans for a farewell party organized by friends of the same generation.
Since CHAPPY had graced the cover of my photo book "Tarzan of Ogasawara," they wanted to print out the book at the farewell party using the largest printer on the island.
The only photo data I have on my Mac right now is a rough thumbnail of the photo data in my self-introduction file.
It is not data that can withstand A0 size printout.
Fortunately, I had some at home that had been carefully darkened, book matted, and framed.
The photos were part of the ones I evacuated early after returning to Japan in 2014 because the house my parents were using for storage was in danger of leaking.
I printed them as darkroom work in 1998.
It was probably printed for a photo exhibition of the APA (Japan Advertising Photographers' Association), which I had just joined at that time.
I had carefully developed, rinsed, and toned the prints using FB (fiber cotton) balayta paper, and made book mats out of a thick board called acid-free muse cotton, so the photo surfaces remained in a very clean condition that surprised even me, with no discoloration at all, even after more than 20 years.
Although I escaped the leaks in the warehouse, I could not boast about preserving them at home.
I had no regard for room temperature or humidity, and took no care at all with the way things were going.
However, the archival prints were amazing.
I copied it again with the digital SLR camera I have at hand and made digital data of the best condition.
I pulled out the strobe, which has become less and less popular since digital has become the mainstream, and set the head on the stand.
I use a reflector that is too large to spread out at home and take pictures in RAW data.
I input the data of the lens at the time of shooting into Photoshop, which is now installed in my Mac, and it digitally corrects the aberrations of the lens with just a click.
When I enlarge the image on the Mac screen, I can see the aberrations even though I had carefully printed the image at the time.
In the age of analog chemicals, dust shadows on negative film left white dots on the screen when it was printed by an enlarger.
To prevent this as much as possible, the acetate film was exposed to the wind of an electrostatic remover or blown away with a blower.
Even with the utmost care, it was difficult to make the darkroom dust-free, so after rinsing and drying the prints, I used a very fine brush to spot the white dots and write the particles of the photograph on them.
Now I convert the RAW data opened in Photoshop into data that can be printed out in A0 size.
I then use Photoshop's copy stamp tool to apply the spotting process.
This process is called "digital remastering," which is often heard in movies.
Finally, we saved the data as tif data with low compression ratio, and sent the heavy data to Chichijima by Gigafile Mail.
A farewell party was held at 9:00 a.m. on the 23rd at Ogasawara St. George's Church on Chichijima.
CHAPPY, an Ogasawara who had loved surfing all his life, returned to the sea as a surfer.
9.6.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
September 2022.
I have known him since the time when the restaurant first opened, before it became Corona Disaster.
He was on a business trip to Toyama to work for a company that Mr. Kiho, who runs a theater troupe in Kansai and is introduced to me by Matsumura, a junior staff member, makes his living, and he came by to check on me after his illness.
His job is a sales job to get a license contract for a certain cat character, which does not seem to be appropriate for Toyama.
The last time I saw him was in front of Corona.
We had just started rehearsals for "Dark Master 2019 TOYAMA" and had just received the script, so we hadn't seen each other since shortly after the New Year's holiday.
I wanted to make sure that visitors from outside of the prefecture could enjoy seafood from the Toyama area, so I decided to go to lunch at Bino Sushi, located a few hundred meters away from the Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo restaurant.
Toyama Bay is called a natural fish tank because of the mineral-rich melt water that flows into the bay from the Tateyama mountain range, which rises to a height of 3,000 meters.
They serve "Toyama Bay Sushi" using fish caught in Toyama Bay.
The restaurant was featured in the Michelin Guide Hokuriku 2021, and many customers come all the way from Tokyo to visit. It is also visited by an actor who has been making headlines recently for roughing up a Ginza club hostess, so it is usually difficult to get a reservation.
As soon as you pass through the curtain, the proprietor asks, "Are you feeling all right? He asked me over the counter without hesitation.
It has been more than half a year since I left the hospital, and as someone who does not outwardly appear to be sick at all, I feel embarrassed to be taken by surprise and asked so attentively.
In fact, I still cannot write with my right hand.
I can manage to use chopsticks.
And, although it is hard for me to realize it, I feel that my ability to concentrate has somehow become shorter.
Two days later.
For the first time in 2022, we were to open a tent around the stadium at a Catale Toyama home game.
Soon after I was discharged from the hospital, I resumed my twice-monthly stalls at the "Gokoku Shrine Toyama Minoichi" on the first Sunday and the "Ecchu Ote Market" on the fourth Sunday of the month, but I was not physically able or anxious to stay at these outdoor events.
I am sometimes unexpectedly unable to do things that I used to be able to do without any hesitation.
I thought I had regained a good grip on my right hand, but suddenly, regardless of my intention, my fingers lost their strength and I dropped the plate and broke it, splattering the curry on the ground.
The rehabilitation at the hospital he had been visiting has come to an end, partly because it has been six months since he was discharged from the hospital as of last month.
From now on, he will be at the stage of aiming to return to work while being conscious of his own rehabilitation in his daily life.
Because of this, we decided to ask a man to join us as a help person, instead of the two of us who had been running the tent store.
If everything were normal, we would have asked a cute and amiable girl in her 20s to work part-time to motivate the owner and impress the customers, but the Catale Toyama stall has a lot of luggage and some heavy items.
The coffee grinder was powered by a generator that the owner had brought with him.
When filled with gasoline, the generator weighed over 30 kg, which had to be lifted and unloaded from the car that we drove in and out of the stall, and we decided that we could not afford to have our help staff be too friendly or visual.
The Catale store will not be serving curry as they usually do, but they have decided to serve "Taiwanese Lunghi Rice" as an alternative to curry.
There were more than 10 other stalls, some of which had mobile vending trucks and kitchens on site.
Curry is not a rare thing in this place.
As with curry, the preparation of roshi is done the night before.
I bought 10 kg of pork ribs for about 40 servings.
This was my first purchase this year.
The price of pork, which I had not bought in nine months, had gone up by 20% from the previous price, probably due to the recent situation and price hikes.
I thought, "Shouldn't the price of roast pork be increased to reflect the price of roast rice as it is? I thought that it would be a good idea to raise the price of the Lu Bei, but since this was the first time the restaurant had been open for a long time, I didn't want to raise the price.
While I was mumbling and complaining, I had to cut up a chunk of pork belly to prepare the Lunghi Rice.
Cutting 10 kg of meat into 2 cm cubes is simply a time-consuming task even if my right hand was working properly.
Sighing is not going to help the work.
I cut the pork belly, which was so heavy that I almost dropped it.
First, I cut it into pieces large enough to fit into a 10-liter pot, and boil it just enough to heat through.
The boiled pork belly is cooled in ice or in the refrigerator, and then cut with a knife.
It is possible to cut raw meat, but it is difficult to cut raw belly because it is soft and fatty and slides on the fat.
It is more efficient to boil the meat and cut it into pieces after it has hardened at a low temperature.
During the process, the knife is sharpened many times and the blade is washed in hot water many times.
Is a stainless steel knife not good enough?
When I was in Beijing, the butcher's knife that A Yi (auntie) used to carve for me at the market was a rusty, brownish-red iron knife that could be found anywhere, but it was surprisingly sharp.
It cut with just one movement of the hand.
When I use an unsharp knife, I jiggle the knife like a saw.
So far, the best way to cut the meat seems to be to pre-boil it to a low temperature, but I wonder if it is really possible.
Anyway, I have to keep moving my right hand to keep cutting, which is the rehabilitation in my life.
On September 3, the day of the opening of the Catale store, it was raining unfortunately.
It was raining quite seriously.
I wish it would stop just when we were preparing to open the stall, but nature is unforgiving.
It took us a long time to leave from the store to load coffee tools, pots for roast rice, tents, and tables、、、、 into the car because it had been a long time since we had opened a stall.
If we didn't strictly adhere to the set delivery time, we would have had to drive our car into the stadium, blocking the way of the spectators who were gathering around the stadium and causing a lot of trouble for the security guards who were guiding us inside the stadium.
However, the roads leading to the stadium were congested due to the rain, which is rare in Toyama City.
Even though I move the windshield wipers quickly, the visibility is poor, and I feel irresistibly irritated when I drive.
I try to calm down so as not to cause an accident, and manage to arrive at the entrance of the stadium eight minutes past the deadline for the delivery time.
The first security guard standing at the gate says, "Excuse me! I'm late! We're here to bring it in! This is Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo!" I called out to him, and he led me down a side street to the planned tent location.
I slowed down and proceeded on my way, and a security guard who knew me was waiting for me.
He opened the window of the car door and said, "Sorry! I'm late! I thought he was going to say a few words to me.
He came running up to me in the rain and welcomed me with a big smile on his face and said, "Welcome home!
Around the middle of this month, Yu Chih-ding, who has been staying mainly in Tokyo on a long-term business trip from Beijing, will come to Toyama.
He says he is coming to eat good food, but ultimately he is coming to check on my dad, who has had a stroke.
7.11.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
hospitalization
As expected, I was diagnosed with a stroke and was immediately given some pills and started on an IV drip.
He was given blood thinners to prevent further damage to his brain cells.
Surrounded by several nurses as I lay on a stretcher, I was told, "Oh, it's Taiyo Coffee! It's that store along the streetcar line, isn't it? I've been wondering about you for a while, right?
Each of them asked me to "squeeze my hand" in order to understand the symptoms of my current paralysis, and I tried to squeeze their hands back, but I could not do it at all.
Their condition seemed to have been progressing slowly and steadily toward worse for several hours after their arrival at the hospital.
I remember it was already around midnight when I was taken to the hospital room.
The resident on duty showed me a CT image on the monitor on his desk and confirmed that there was damage to the left side of my brain, where the haze was hanging.
I could not understand anything unless he explained it to me.
The patient himself has no pain at all.
The entire right side of his body feels heavy, and his right eyelid comes down unintentionally.
The right side of his lips also felt numb, like the anesthesia he had received at the dentist's office, and he felt an unusual slowness in his movements.
Perhaps because of this, it was somewhat difficult to talk to the nurses.
It was frustrating.
Is this what it means to be "slurring your words"?
After entering the hospital room and settling down for a while, I suddenly came to my senses and fell asleep.
My left hand was drained by an intravenous drip and my right hand was paralyzed, so I couldn't move.
I could not watch TV.
I don't even watch TV or look at the Internet on my phone.
I felt miserable and disappointed, but resigned to the fact that I would have to spend the rest of my life in an endless state of boredom.
However, I was faced with something new and fresh that I had never experienced before.
I went to bed at first light, and when I woke up, of course I was still in my hospital bed, but I didn't feel as depressed as I do now that I think about it.
It must have been around 3:00 a.m., and I was thinking that even if I had had a stroke, I would naturally have to urinate.
I remembered the nurse call button that had been placed near my hand, which was difficult to move, when I entered the hospital room, saying, "Please press this button if you need anything.
But my hand did not move as I expected.
How was I supposed to pee when I couldn't even stand up to go to the bathroom?
Since I was in the middle of an intravenous drip, the image of a tube coming out of my body took precedence, and I was given a "urinary catheter" to drain urine on the bed! I was occupied with my own delusion that I was going to be given a "urinary catheter" on the bed to drain urine.
When a patient has difficulty urinating on his/her own for some reason, a tube is inserted into the bladder through the urethral opening to artificially drain urine.
About 10 years ago, when I was still living in Beijing, I once had a gastrocamera inserted through my nose when I felt discomfort in my throat due to PM2.5 or something.
It was an endoscope to check my throat.
It was not a thick black tube like the so-called "mouth-to-mouth" gastroscopy, but the nose is a place for breathing, not for inserting and removing tubes.
The only thing that remained was the memory of the pain I had never experienced before.
My nose was runny, and tears were coming out of my eyes.
And now, from the urethral opening to the bladder.
How many centimeters are there?
I couldn't help but feel that I was in unimaginable pain.
I was so afraid of the pain that I didn't want to press the nurse's call button.
But with the mental tension, the urge to urinate grows unrelenting.
Should I wait a little longer or press the button now?
A nurse arrives at the right time to change my IV.
Fortunately, she looked a little older and experienced, and had the dignity of a woman who might have been the head nurse.
As she finished changing my IV, I asked her fearfully, "Um, ......, I need to go to the restroom.
Oh, you can't move yet, can you? Use the urinal.
She offered me a soft, milky white plastic urinal that was ready beside the bed.
I responded, "I've never used one before. ......."
I responded, "I've never used one before.
Wait a minute!
He immediately put on a plastic transparent apron, which was placed at the entrance of the room as a measure against the new type of corona, and put on thin latex gloves, snapping the ends of the gloves as if he were ready to go.
The head lady showed no hesitation at all.
Rather, her combat readiness switch was flipped.
Without hesitation, she peeled off the quilt, pulled down her trunks from under her hospital gown, and with a steady hand, placed them at the entrance of the urinal, plucking them with her thumb and forefinger.
I was caught off guard, and although I didn't say it out loud, I almost screamed, "Hee~! I almost screamed.
The head nurse put a quilt over me again as if to cover me, said, "I'll be back in a little while," and left the room. I guess that means I should do my business while I still can.
Even so, in the more than half a century I have lived, I have no memory of doing my business while lying down.
The woman's deftness seemed to have momentarily calmed down my growing urge to urinate, as I had just done.
I managed to urinate in the urinal as if holding on for dear life, and as soon as I took a breath to think about what to do, the head nurse reappeared saying, "Otsukasare-sama~.
She appeared with such exquisite and efficient timing that I wondered if she had been waiting outside the door.
Thanks to this, I was able to easily escape from the fear of catheter introduction that had been swelling in my mind on the first night of hospitalization, which seemed to have been damaged, and went to sleep peacefully and soundly as it was.
However, mornings in the hospital come early compared to my normal routine.
As I drifted off to sleep, I was naturally awakened by the sight of people passing by in the hallway to serve breakfast.
The hospital food was unexpectedly delicious.
4.5.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
OH, NO !
In the Corona Disaster, the Marunouchi store will not be open for business for a while.
Since that decision was made, the store has taken on the appearance of a warehouse, filled with tools and other items for the opening of the tent.
Since it is our policy not to invite customers even for coffee tasting, we have been using oil fan heaters to keep our feet warm when we work, even on cold winter days.
Now that I think about it, that may have been one of the reasons why it was not a good idea.
Since my job is to earn money, writing invoices should be categorized in the "fun" category of emotions and should motivate me even more, but it takes the most time of all the clerical work I hate, and I never seem to be able to make any progress.
I should have stopped at a good break and had lunch, but I was so swamped with accounting work that I could not see the goal at all, and I missed the meal.
I fished around in the cold table behind the counter to see if there might be something there, and found a whole Camembert cheese untouched.
I peeled off the wrapper and took a bite, and as I was returning to the table to get back to work, I accidentally dropped the cheese on the floor from my right thumb and forefinger.
What a waste! I've only had one bite!" I crouched down and picked up the Camembert that had rolled under my chair.
What the heck is ............?"
I felt a strange sense of discomfort at the moment, since I rarely drop something that I usually hold in my hand.
As soon as I picked up the cheese and took a step or two to go straight to the trash to throw it away, this time I plunged head first into the pile of empty Amazon cardboard boxes in front of me.
At that moment, I thought to myself, "Damn! I was concerned that the fingers of my right hand, which were still clutching the cheese, seemed strangely insensitive.
I don't remember hitting my hand on anything.
There was no pain.
And I no longer wanted to continue working on the account.
Let's just have a cup of coffee for now!
I turned on the De'Longhi Magnifica S fully automatic coffee maker on the counter.
Basically, I brew coffee by hand drip, but since this coffee machine is used by a restaurant that regularly purchases our coffee beans, I put it in the store to check the taste and flavor.
I put it in the shop to check the taste and flavor of the coffee, but soon after turning it on, it brews hot coffee at the push of a button, so it sits on the counter for easy use.
It was also the day of the regular online meeting of Ecchu Ote Market from 19:00 to 21:00.
Around 18:00, it was about time for my wife to leave the office, so I tried to tell her via messenger that I was going to stay at the restaurant instead of going home because I had an online meeting to attend.
I am apparently making a lot of mistypes in typing on my phone.
I am not making progress. It is a mistake that is not caused by my fat fingers.
Numb fingers is not the right word.
The fingers of my right hand, which are used for typing messages, are numb.
While typing the message, the content of the message changed from telling me to stay at the restaurant afterwards to the content of the dull sensation in my right hand, to the point where he suggested that I should go to the hospital.
About 30 minutes later, my wife arrived from work on her bicycle.
I put away the accounting documents and computer that were spread out on the table in the store, turned off the heat and the lights, and prepared to go to the hospital.
I felt as if something was progressing and my body was getting heavier and heavier, as if my health was slowly deteriorating.
Even if I could have reached the hospital by driving my own N-VAN, I had completely lost confidence in my ability to drive myself home.
I asked him to call Tomitaku and have a cab come to the store.
Unlike Tokyo, it is unlikely that you can catch a cab on the street in Toyama.
While we were waiting, the temperature inside the restaurant, where the heating system had been turned off, dropped quite a bit, and it was getting chilly.
I sent a message to the messenger group that I was going to cancel the meeting and waited for the cab.
Since I couldn't stop by the bank beforehand, I was a little worried that I might not have enough cash to pay the cab fare, but there was a sticker on the acrylic board behind the driver's seat indicating that PayPay was accepted, so I could slump into the back seat without worry.
As my health started to go from bad to worse, and the right side of my body started to slow down, and I could feel paralysis in my face and mouth, I thought to myself, "This is what they call a stroke! I came to the conclusion that it was a good idea.
Just a year ago, one of my college classmates, Yamaguchi, had contracted this disease.
I happened to be in Tokyo on business, so I went to visit him in his hospital room and said to him, "It's not good to have high blood pressure! Tomorrow is my life! But I had no idea that a year later it would really happen to me. It was completely unexpected.
I told the receptionist that I was going to Toyama Central Hospital, but when I arrived there, the receptionist told me that the hospital was closed for emergencies today. The reply was cruel.
In Toyama City, it seems that the hospitals that provide emergency services are rotated on a regular basis.
I was so stunned that I jokingly asked, "What if I die? I laughed.
I had no choice but to move to Toyama Municipal Hospital and asked my wife to call a cab for me again.
In hindsight, I should have called an ambulance at the Taiyo Coffee store from the beginning.
And perhaps I should have taken an ambulance from the central hospital as well.
In the past, cerebrovascular disorders, called strokes, were considered to be a disease that required the patient to remain motionless and at rest from the time they were thought to have occurred.
However, modern medicine has updated its response, and it is believed that serious illness can be avoided if the stroke is detected and treated at an early stage after its onset.
In the end, I was seen at the emergency center of Toyama Municipal Hospital four hours after the cheese fell from my right hand.
The first words of the emergency doctor was, "What time did it happen? Just in time! I was forced to listen to the unmistakable, unadulterated, unadulterated statement, "You're just in time!
In the emergency room area, there were several people lying around who appeared to be patients, with doctors and nurses scurrying about to deal with them.
It seemed that family members were not allowed inside and had to wait in the hallway.
I found myself, before I knew it, being stripped of all the clothes I was wearing and made to change into a yukata-like hospital gown with a front opening.
In the back of the room, a little girl was crying "itty bitty, itty bitty," and an old man was moaning and screaming, his head bleeding, as far as I could move my neck to see.
Amidst scenes I had seen in dramas and movies, I was being moved around the hospital corridor on a stretcher and having CT and EKGs taken.
I lay on my back on the stretcher and opened my eyes. I don't know if it was because I was moving or because I was sick, but I felt dizzy and sick.
The resident who took my place showed me a black and white CT image on the monitor.
By the time I could see for myself the light black smear on the left side of my brainstem from above, I was well aware of the paralysis in the right side of my body.
Naturally, I was admitted to the hospital, and as the various procedures were being carried out, a nurse came to me with a document and asked me without hesitation, "Are you registered to donate your organs?" He asked.
The question caught me off guard, and time stood still for a moment.
I knew that these days there is a box on the back of driver's licenses that allows you to indicate your willingness to donate your organs.
And although I had not declared my intention, I knew that if I were to donate, my lungs must be clean as I was not in the habit of smoking cigarettes.
I also thought it would be plump and definitely recommended.
However, I was not sure if I would have been able to say, "eh? Could I be brain dead?" I couldn't help but ask back.
That is how unaware I was of the situation I was in.
I was aware that my blood pressure was usually higher than normal, but I had not had a medical checkup in more than 10 years and had never considered a physical examination.
I had always thought that a disease was something that was diagnosed by a doctor and given a name.
When I was admitted to the hospital, I had my blood pressure measured on the bed in my room and it was 220 at the top.
It was a number I had never heard of before.
2.5.2022
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Ecchu Inari Shrine
This is the seventh year that we have set up a tent at the Echinaka Inari Shrine.
Even though I do the same thing every year, the older I get, the more physically demanding it becomes.
On the other hand, I don't feel like welcoming the New Year without setting up a tent.
Anyway, last year was hard.
As usual, we set up our tent on New Year's Eve, welcomed the early arrivals, and left for a break when the crowds had died down.
The snowfall that followed was far heavier than we had expected, and the soft tarp tent was unable to bear the weight of the snow that had fallen for several hours, and each of its legs had bent and collapsed, rendering it completely useless.
This meant that I had to return to the spot a short time later, rescue the coffee equipment from the wreckage of the tent that had been crushed by the snow since New Year's Day, January 1, bundle up the broken tents for disposal, and exhaustedly work in vain to reopen for business.
After that, the heavy snow continued, and the main roads in Toyama City were not plowed at all. I got stuck in the snow while driving my 4WD Elgrand, and although I called the road service of my insurance company for help, the road service itself could not come to the scene, and as a result, the road service abandoned me.
And this year, 2022, the Year of the Tiger.
The La Niña phenomenon, which I had never heard of, was expected to cause another heavy snowfall soon, and the learned people of Toyama Prefecture stocked up on emergency rations, water, and instant noodles, just in case they were trapped inside by the snow.
Those who run their own businesses tend to own and manage a large parking lot, so they started to get a large special license in the fall so that they can operate a wheel loader for snow removal.
However, compared to last year, when we were caught off guard, we were nowhere near as good as we were last year.
In our case, our favorite diesel Elgrand 4WD that we had been driving until last year was coming up for inspection in May, and the people around us explained that it would be more economical to use the repair cost for a new car to cover the loan for a new car rather than fixing some repairs and passing the inspection.
My next choice was an N-VAN.
The reason why I chose a mini-car was to reduce fuel costs for the economy, which is not sure how long it will last, and also to give my wife a chance to try driving, as she has become a paper driver and is beginning to feel somewhat inconvenienced.
Given the inspection system in Japan, even if you have a favorite car, it is difficult to keep driving it because it has become old.
I felt that the government's policy is to let people switch to newer cars rather than to drive old ones while fixing them.
That's what the government is doing.
In the future, Japan will not be able to set its own prices for fuels.
In addition, the world is shifting to electric vehicles.
I don't know if I will be able to drive a gasoline-powered car in 10 years.
However, I can't jump on the bandwagon of the new electric cars, and I don't like them to begin with.
In fact, I hate them.
As a tool for daily transportation, it is economical, eco-friendly, and progressive.
However, I want cars to be useful only in emergencies when something happens.
When floods submerge the area, landslides, earthquakes, and other disasters occur in places with poor footholds, and in areas like Toyama where heavy snowfall occurs, cars are a tool that we need to live with and be aware of nature.
In that sense, electric cars are a big misconception, and they can be a useless piece of junk when the time comes.
And then there is this new N-VAN.
Whether it was the times of the Corona disaster or the world situation, semiconductors and other parts were not available at the factory, so it took more than six months before I could take delivery of the car, and I was finally able to drive it on the streets of Toyama in early December.
Needless to say, the N-VAN is a 4WD vehicle.
It was a winter debut, but there was nothing to worry about.
What is important is the ability to carry the luggage that we will be carrying to the site of the tent opening.
Since it is a casual light cargo vehicle, it can carry almost as much luggage as the Elgrand if you are creative in your luggage layout.
Furthermore, it has good fuel efficiency.
It's a good boy.
New Year's Eve.
I loaded up my luggage and headed for the Echinaka Inari Shrine.
There was already almost 30cm of snow on the ground, but they were able to open for business at 10pm very successfully.
Since I had left my N-VAN lying in the tent I had set up until I finished opening the store, there was no way I could leave it parked there unattended for any length of time, so I decided to move it to the parking lot where I had planned to park it.
When I got there, I found the parking lot, or rather, the vacant lot.
The parking lot, or rather the vacant lot, was covered in white fluffy fresh snow from the entrance.
In such beautiful fresh snow, you want to leave yourself unprotected and take a plunge.
Even though I was in an N-VAN that I was not used to driving, I had such an urge.
In the fresh snow, with my new N-VAN, I was like, "Woooooooo! in the fresh snow.
The N-VAN stopped just as I drove into it.
No problem at all.
This N-VAN is a four-wheel drive vehicle.
、、、、、、、 "What?
I don't know if it's because newer cars are digitally controlled and don't allow the tires to move unnecessarily, like spinning, or for some other reason, but there's no sign of the tires turning even when I step on the gas pedal.
I got stuck. ！！！！
Since I was able to open the store successfully, I didn't want to waste time trying to get out of the stack.
We left the N-VAN as it was, walked back to the tent, and welcomed the new year 2022 before we had time to count down.
I will never forget January 18, 2021, when my Elgrand got stuck in a heavy snowstorm and I called the road service but they didn't show up.
Even though the snowfall was not as heavy as that time, the N-VAN got stuck on January 1st, New Year's Day.
A day when the world stops moving.
Many people must be eating ozoni (stewed rice cakes), drinking slaughterhouses' sake, watching TV, and lounging around.
I thought of having someone come to my rescue while I was on my first visit to the shrine, so I looked at my Facebook timeline. It turned out that a clay figurine had just uploaded a picture of himself clearing snow from his front porch.
The first lucky day of 2022 came my way.
He rushed over in the morning with a Hiace 4WD with a tow rope, and our N-VAN was able to get unstuck without difficulty.
12.5.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Taiyo Coffee PANGBIAN
Japan has decided to suspend the entry of foreigners from all over the world from midnight on November 30, 2021 until the end of the year for the time being.
This is because a new variant of the coronavirus, the Omicron strain, is spreading to many countries.
As a resident of Toyama Prefecture, I can't help but feel the difference in temperature between the news reports and the situation in the city.
Since the beginning of November, there have been no new infections in Toyama Prefecture for a long time, and on November 27th, a man in his 70s, who had never been outside of Toyama before, was hospitalized with a mild illness, which was the first news in 26 days.
On a sunny Sunday, November 28, the event that I regularly attend every month was overflowing with parents and children who were looking forward to being able to go out as usual.
As the crowds returned to the city, restaurants, which had been deserted, seemed to be gradually welcoming people back.
This fall, the other tenants of the building that houses Taiyo Coffee Roasting have gone out of business, leaving us as the only tenant. The landlord of the building jokingly asked us if we could rent the space next door. The landlord of this building jokingly asked if we could rent the one next door, but I don't have the confidence to double the rent, which is a fixed cost, along with the store's floor space, when I don't think the rent is commensurate with the current ability to attract customers.
I don't feel like reopening a coffee shop in this place to roast and sell coffee beans as I did before the Corona disaster.
In addition, heavy snowfall is expected on the Sea of Japan side again this year due to the La Niña phenomenon.
If you imagine a heavy snowfall like last year's disaster level, ordinary people will be trapped in their homes and will not be able to go out to shop even for daily necessities.
There is no going back to the way things were.
This is not the time to set up store, sit on your hands and wait for customers.
Right now, we are just barely surviving by choosing to go to places and events where people gather.
How can we turn this situation around in the future?
At the same time, I received a call on my messenger from one of the theater people.
How are you, Mr. Roku? Is it possible for you to do a stage in Toyama somewhere between the end of November and the first week of December?
Is this a message to the guy who controls the stage in Toyama?
I couldn't help but laugh, just as I was having a hard time thinking of my next move.
On March 28, 2020, I'll never forget, I was forced to cancel the performance of "Hyogeba Toyama + Shimengeki," which I had planned to perform, and now on December 19, 2021, I'll restart the theater department with "Shimizu Hiroshi's Return of Standup Comedy: It's been a while since I've performed in Toyama! to restart the theater department.
This will be actor and standup comedian Hiroshi Shimizu's third visit to Toyama.
He has been performing standup comedy in English since 2010 and has participated in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the UK, the world's largest theater festival.
He was interviewed by the UK's leading newspaper, THE TIMES, and was featured in their national edition.
The last time he came to Toyama, there were about 25 people packed into the Taiyo Coffee Roasting Shop.
Local government facilities with small theaters and halls in front of the station are very sensitive to the influence of Corona and are risky to use. This time, we decided to rent the property next to our restaurant for a short time since it was just available.
The name of the venue is "PANGBIAN," which means "next door" in Chinese.
The venue is called "PANGBIAN," which means "next door" in Chinese. 30 people will perform on two stages to avoid crowding.
As with the cancelled "Hyogeba Toyama + Shimengeki" performance, we will take all possible measures to prevent the spread of the new corona infection.
Although the number of people we will be able to attract is not large, we will start with what we can do with our own will and footwork. Even if corona spreads again and the situation takes a turn for the worse, I have a feeling that we can get through it.
A passionate man is coming to Toyama to make a breakthrough in this situation.
11.5.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Half-scaled pot with a diameter of 32 cm
My memory is already fuzzy, but it's been a long time since I had to cancel my planned performance of "Hyogeba Toyama + Shimengeki" on March 28, 2020, in order to prevent the spread of the new corona infection.
On the other hand, we have been actively participating in outdoor marches and events in tents, and the store has become a place to store our belongings, as well as a coffee bean roasting workshop and warehouse.
One day, he decided to start making curry with spices, and started serving it at the tents.
One of the pretexts is to increase the price per customer, but in reality, it's just because it's fun to make.
Today, I made and delivered two types of curry for 50 people each as part of the "Curry Day" event held at a company's dormitory.
"Butter Chicken Curry" and "Pork and Daikon Curry".
Both of these curries are quite large to serve 50 people.
The 32cm-diameter half-scaled pot that I usually use is 23 liters, so the contents were definitely more than 20 liters and weighed more than 20kg.
When I lowered the pot from the gas stove, which was about 80cm high, I flinched for a moment.
It was so heavy.
When you hold something heavy, you should stand up straight with your knees bent with all your might.
Never use your waist as a fulcrum for lifting.
This is not a coffee shop job anymore.
Faced with the new Corona, the world will no longer be able to return to the original shape it had before, and we should at least think about changing our business model and do what we can to survive.
It's been 25 years ago.
The 90s.
We were still using film to take pictures, and we had to carry a lot of heavy equipment to go out to take pictures.
Nowadays, the cameras we shoot with are digital, and the lighting equipment has changed to something else that is more compact and lighter.
At the time, I was warned by the older photographers around me that "photographers always get back pains around the age of 30.
Since the world was in a bubble economy, I decided to go to a gym as my own way to prevent back pain.
The gym was located in a high-rise building in Shinjuku, and I remember paying about 300,000 yen for the membership fee alone.
"I was a photographer by profession. After work, I play squash and believe in UFOs. I believe in UFOs. ......
I had no intention of learning from the advertising copy of the bubble era, but I decided to start playing squash without thinking about it.
But this was a bad idea.
You hold the racket in your right hand and swing.
The repetition of this one-way biased movement turned into a full-blown backache for someone who had started to have some back pain.
Later, though, I would eventually stop going to the gym like a three-day monk.
Next, I decided that I needed to do some kind of maintenance, so I looked for an osteopathic clinic that was within walking distance from Ebisu, where I was living at the time.
There was no way to search for a reputation on the Internet like there is now, so I used the phone book to call several clinics in the Ebisu area to see how they were doing.
Some of them made me buy coupons at once, while others accepted health insurance, so it was hard to make a choice. Please let us know your phone number so we can call you back. Please leave your phone number so we can call you back.
I could imagine that it was simply one person operating the business, but I decided to go there because I felt that they would take care of the patient I was witnessing without picking up the phone, which would have interrupted the treatment.
After that, I started going to the osteopath for anything and everything, and at that time I was able to live my life without getting the so-called gikko back.
In 2005, I moved to Beijing.
Until the Beijing Olympics in 2008, I was barely able to make ends meet with the photography work I was commissioned to do in Japan.
I occasionally worked for local magazines and still shot film, but the work at the lab was rough.
It seemed that even if I made a serious order, they would not respond to it.
Naturally, I began to shoot more and more in digital format.
Although the style of shooting with an SLR camera did not change much, the equipment I carried with me changed simply because the media changed.
While I still felt nostalgic for film, I told myself that there was no change in the process of taking pictures and conveying images, and gradually made the transition.
Then, around 2006, I started to get interested in cafes.
In my daily life, it was convenient to take a cab for basic transportation.
Buses would have been even cheaper, but I couldn't stand waiting at the bus stop for the bus to come.
Even though I no longer had the opportunity to carry around heavy photographic equipment as I did when I was living in Japan, I still had a lot of anxiety about my back, which led me to several acupuncture clinics.
If you are an expatriate of a large company, it is normal to live in a beautiful apartment with good security at the company's expense, but here I was living in a local apartment where ordinary Chinese people live for economic reasons, because I was a curious individual who came to Japan to live abroad.
In Japan, most homes have a bath and a bathtub in the bathroom, which is undoubtedly the style.
In Japan, most households have a bath and the bath tub is the undisputed style.
The local apartment I lived in in Beijing was no exception, and the shower room was not equipped with a bathtub.
At the time when I moved into the apartment, prices were still low because it was before the Beijing Olympics, and I thought about purchasing a bathtub myself, but the construction of the drains was so obsolete that even if I could put a bathtub in the shower room, it was obvious that the drainage would not be able to keep up with the amount of hot water in the bathtub and a lot of hot water would overflow from the shower room.
Living without a bath in Beijing, which is probably colder than Hokkaido, was quite damaging to my body, especially my lower back, which tends to be a weak point in my daily life, as my body naturally cooled down, although I occasionally used a place like a super public bath located in the corner of a high-class apartment building.
I was also at the age when I would suffer from forty shoulders.
In fact, it was while living in Beijing that I got my first back injury.
Even though it was my first experience, it was so severe that I was instantly aware that it was a back strain.
And soon I couldn't move because of the pain.
I had no choice but to go to the nearest acupuncture clinic to experience the treatment of a Chinese doctor with a good reputation.
He used a glass cup to suck out the bad blood from the affected area of my lower back.
At that time, so much blood came out that a white cloth about the size of a handkerchief turned bright red.
In addition to that, I received some kind of bodywork treatment, and I think I escaped from the disaster in a relatively short time.
After that, I met a Japanese doctor who was studying acupuncture and moxibustion in China, and I can only say that I was really lucky.
It was a great relief to be able to communicate with him and have him understand the subtleties of my condition.
Thanks to him, I saw him not only for my back and shoulder pains, but also whenever I felt a negative sensation in my body, as if he were my doctor.
When I had a high fever due to a worsening cold, he would encourage me to release bad blood from my ears to relieve the fever, and when I had hay fever, he would use stainless steel needles as long as chopsticks to treat inflammation in the back of my nose.
Western medicine treats pain with drugs to prevent pain, but Oriental medicine works to improve the cause of pain in the body.
Especially with his acupuncture, the stimulation of the acupuncture needles awakened the dormant nerves in my body and gave me energy.
As autumn approaches and the temperature begins to drop, I feel the need for some body maintenance.
10.5.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
The black ones are coming!
Since the spring of 2020, when the new Corona virus began to spread, the Taiyo Coffee Roasting and Serving Shop in Marunouchi has ceased normal business operations and has been actively participating in outdoor events, marches, and flea markets outside of the store.
The store mainly sold coffee beans and coffee brewing equipment, and a few customers came to the store to sample the coffee for a fee.
In Toyama, many stores applied for subsidies from the local government and quickly installed measures to prevent the spread of corona in their stores. However, I knew that even if the new corona was over, the world would not return to normal.
For the time being, we will just do what we can do.
We'll see how it goes, and if it does, we may have to make a drastic change in our business model. And so on.
Every Saturday, I set up a stall in front of Kurosakiya's store.
This fish shop is located on the south side of Route 8, which connects Toyama City and Takaoka City.
Perhaps it is because they have their own purchasing routes, or because they take the trouble to nerve-tighten their fish, but they offer sashimi that is much tighter than the fish shops in the regular supermarkets.
It's totally different!
Kurosakiya is open Monday through Saturday, 09:00-19:00, and closed on Sundays because the river bank is closed.
Many restaurants and sometimes even sushi bars in Toyama City line up in front of the store before it opens and wait for the doors to open.
The restaurants that line up before the doors open at 09:00 in the morning buy whole fish or fences.
Special pre-ordered fish are delivered through the back door, and in the afternoon, the fish are packaged and sashimi-ready for the general public.
And don't forget about the seasonal and unusual vegetables grown by farmers in the suburbs of Toyama City.
It's fun just to look around the store and see unusual vegetables such as red radishes and white bitter melons.
These vegetables are served as ingredients in a number of Michelin-starred restaurants in Toyama Prefecture.
One such farmer, Ao-chan, had 12 cats born on July 30 at his house.
He seemed to remember that I had casually mentioned that I wanted a black cat! He seemed to have remembered that I had casually mentioned that I wanted a black cat, and he informed me that there were two black cats among the 12. I decided to get them immediately.
I decided to take them both in without hesitation.
When I graduated from university, I had picked up two kittens in Tokyo that had just opened their eyes, and I was supposed to raise them as they were, so I felt like I had some kind of connection with them this time.
Four weeks after their birth, the two kittens came to our house after being nursed for a while on their parents' milk.
The timing was just right for the transition from milk to baby food.
I remember bottle-feeding the kittens I had 30 years ago, but I don't remember how I weaned them at all.
When I checked online blogs and YouTube again, I found that the status of cats has improved a lot since the times changed.
First of all, I learned that cats whose origins are unclear and who are in a similar position to stray cats should see a veterinarian for a health check.
Cats can also have infectious diseases such as HIV and parasites, so they should have a blood test, physical examination, urinalysis, and stool test.
Besides, I had the easy understanding that I should just give her cat mamma after milk, but apparently giving her human food has a negative effect on her kidneys due to the salt content.
I was given a cat cage at the right time, and I was planning to keep them at home, but I had to get them into the habit of going to the bathroom, and I had to keep track of when and how often they ate, so I went to work with them in a carrier bag for a while.
When they are sleeping in the cage in the store, they are quiet and there is no problem, but when they are awake, they run around in the cage and have a big play session.
After I finish roasting, I look into the cage and when our eyes meet, they say, "I'm hungry! or "Let me out of here! or "Play with me! or "Play with me!
I almost give in and listen to what they say.
It's been less than a month since they came to my house, and I've become a cat parent fool.
Both cats are male.
I named them "Kuroneko no Yamato" and "Kuroneko no Tango" and appointed them as our invitation cats to ensure the safety of our family and prosperity of our business.
9.5.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Auditioning for the Corona disaster
Everyone thought that Toyama, with its relatively low population flow among the Hokuriku region, would be safe.
Until now, the number of infected people has always been higher in Ishikawa, and as long as Kanazawa, which is the most densely populated city in the Hokuriku region and is a tourist spot with a constant flow of people, was the most densely populated city, I thought that the number of infected people in Toyama would not even come close to those in Ishikawa.
As soon as August arrived, I started to see many cars with license plate numbers from other prefectures on the main roads in Toyama City, and family restaurants and sushi restaurants with a large floor space were usually full at the best time of the day. And naturally, as a result, the number of cars in Toyama Prefecture increased.
As a natural result, the daily number of infected people in Toyama Prefecture exceeded 100.
On August 10, 2021, the prefecture issued its own special alert for the spread of infection (Toyama Alert) because the number of infected people and hospitalized people continued to increase in the prefecture.
Also, from August 20 to September 12, about 4,000 stores throughout the prefecture were asked to refrain from operating after 8 p.m.
Toyama City became the focus area of the priority measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
I don't know if they were expecting the worst, but there were open auditions scheduled for August 27th, 28th and 29th in Toyama and Ishikawa prefectures to select cast members and extras for a movie.
It was written in the guidelines that the audition would be conducted in video format, considering the fact that it was a Corona disaster.
If this was the case, it would be more likely that the director and the screening staff would be impressed with the applicants who applied via video rather than going through the interview process in person. If you are able to meet the schedule, you can send in your video and then go directly to the interview venue for an audition.
The first thing I need to do is to take an impressive video myself.
I came up with the idea of using the iPhone gimbal stabilizer that I've been interested in since last year and recently purchased to shoot video.
It has been a long time since the iPhone made it easy to take both photos and videos. Even if it's shooting video on iPhone, it should look neat and tidy if I attach the stabilizer and remove the camera shake vibration that I feel annoyed when I watch the video.
And if you are a video professional, you must have noticed that these images were created with a lot of ingenuity.
In fact, it should be better not to get involved in a shooting group that you don't notice.
DJI OM 4 COMBO, when activated by installing a dedicated app on your iPhone, becomes a pretty excellent video system.
Since I was shooting alone, I set the camera to selfie mode and used the inner camera to recognize and memorize my face, and then it would continue to track and follow the subject's face.
If you set up a small tripod on a table and fix it, the camera will follow your face in response to the slightest movement of the person's upper body.
I bought the camera knowing what it would do, but when I actually set it up and got the image I was expecting, I naturally said, "Oh! When you get the image you are expecting, your voice will naturally leak out.
The contents to be recorded are "self-introduction (about 30 seconds)," "recitation of lines from favorite movies and dramas (about 30 seconds)
"(about 30 seconds), a recitation of lines from a favorite movie or drama (about 30 seconds), and a special skill/appeal (within 3 minutes).
What I saw was far out of the realm of an audition, and I was already just an old man acting suspiciously.
I sent the video data to the person in charge of the production company via GigaFile Mail without waiting for the deadline, just in case there was a problem with the data, since the video screening is not considered to be very successful in the world.
As expected, I didn't receive any confirmation that the person to whom I sent the video data had downloaded the data from GigaFile Mail even a few days after sending it.
There must have been some problem.
Well, it's the kind of trouble that can happen when you work in photography.
It was to be expected.
In the meantime, some of my audition buddies around me were getting new information that should not have been available on the Internet, such as the date of the interview, the location of the audition venue, and the names of the performers yet to be announced.
If the video that I was supposed to watch had not reached the screening staff due to some kind of trouble, I would have to check first and ask them to recover somehow through a direct interview.
When I called the contact, my prediction was right on the money.
The young woman who answered the phone seemed to be a production assistant, and judging from the way she spoke, she was still inexperienced in the field.
This might be her first time in the field.
Furthermore, the number of applicants for this audition was much larger than I had imagined, and she seemed to be in a state of panic because she didn't seem to be able to process them in time.
This is the type of person that one or two people are likely to find on the set of a movie or drama.
In such a case, a cunning old man would never do anything like this to get the young girl into trouble.
I coaxed and coaxed her gently to become my ally, and carefully arranged for her to reconfirm her e-mail address so that she could watch my video data again.
Then, on the morning of August 27th (Friday), I was able to have an audition for a direct interview at a certain place in Kanazawa.
In the email I received again, in addition to the schedule and location, there was a "Corona tips for the audition venue" attached.
Before coming to the audition venue, take your temperature and take care of your physical condition.
If you have visited a country or region where the infection has been spreading within the past two weeks, or if you have any health concerns, you should refrain from coming.
Next, everyone must wear a mask when coming to the audition venue.
Use the hand sanitizer provided in the lobby. Use handkerchiefs and pocket tissues and follow cough etiquette.
Take your temperature at the reception desk and inform the staff if it is above 37.5℃.
Wear a mask during the screening to prevent droplet infection.
During self-introductions, there is a possibility that you will be asked to remove your mask behind a partition to prevent droplet infection.
Keep as much space as possible between you and others when waiting in the hall or entering/exiting the hall.
Ventilation of the venue.
And so on.
But isn't Toyama already an area where the infection is still spreading?
Isn't the infection still spreading throughout Japan?
Didn't the director and other production staff come from Tokyo, where the Paralympics were being held?
Coincidentally, August 27th (Friday) is the day the movie "How to Fight Off a Dove" opens in theaters nationwide. Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara in the lead role.
This movie was directed by Shuta Takahata, a native of Toyama, and was filmed entirely in Toyama last spring, 2020.
This was at a time when Corona was beginning to spread across the country and the film crew was wearing masks that they were not used to, feeling annoyed as they worked.
Who would have thought that the Corona scourge would still be around when the movie was released?
For a brief moment, I think I played the part of a rough worker kicking the bucket.
It's not impossible that the scene was cut out entirely, since he speaks lines that don't play a major role in the film's story.
He was not given a scripted dialogue.
On the day of the shooting, or rather, on the very spot of the shooting, I was improvising on the spot, speaking lines that had nothing to do with the main story.
I had an audition in Kanazawa in the morning and wanted to rush to the cinema right away to see myself on the screen, but tomorrow, August 28 (Saturday), I have an outdoor stall at the stadium for the home game of Catale Toyama, and I have to prepare the day before.
This is an important source of income for the Corona disaster, so I'll have to put my heart and soul into this.
8.2.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
New records
On July 31, 2021, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced a new record of 4,058 infected people.
The number of confirmed cases nationwide has rapidly increased to 12,342.
Even though the Olympics are underway, this is a record that should not be broken.
At least in Toyama during July, the increase in the number of infected people seemed to have slowed down, and the cause of the infection could be identified to some extent, such as contact with visitors from outside the prefecture or those who had come to Tokyo on business trips.
The number of people infected with the new coronavirus is now in the double digits, exceeding 20.
A new coronavirus infection spread alert (Toyama Alert) has also been issued for all of Toyama Prefecture.
What is most annoying is that Muto, Secretary General of the Organizing Committee for the Olympics, stated at a press conference on August 1 that "both Prime Minister Kan and Governor Koike have denied any causal relationship between the spread of the infection and the Olympics, and I agree with them.
Since last year, all measures, including those related to the new corona, have been taken with the Olympics as the priority.
The Olympics were held in the midst of the global spread of the Delta strain and the declaration of a state of emergency in Tokyo, so who would expect anyone to believe that there is no connection with the Olympics?
It is a consistently incoherent, contradictory and foolish plan.
After all the time and effort spent by so many people and the unlimited amount of money spent on the world's biggest event, there is probably no one among the current politicians who has the capacity to turn such an extremely heavy rudder in the opposite direction.
The Sun Coffee Roasting Shop has been closed since March 13, 2020, when the first emergency declaration was made.
On the other hand, we have been rather active in opening tents at outdoor events, and even if the Corona disaster is over, we plan to consider such mobile sales as our main business in the future.
The days of setting up a store and waiting for customers to show up are gone.
Even if Corona comes to an end, we will not be able to go back to our old way of living and working.
It will be necessary for the future of our work to not be afraid of change and to keep transforming ourselves in search of new forms.
I have found a new place where I can sell my products on the road, and by the end of August, I will be ready to make a lot of money from one place in addition to my regular business.
In preparation for the event, I've been in contact with the organizers, exchanging photos and promotional materials for the products to be sold at the stall, and working together with them to make the event a success.
So far, I have been brewing freshly ground hand-drip coffee using my own roasted coffee beans and cooking a different spicy curry every week, staying up almost all night the night before.
Whether it's an emergency declaration or a Toyama alert, the basic premise of my work is to get customers to come to my restaurant.
With my rebellious spirit and my own motivation rising, I feel as if the time has finally come for me to pull out my family's treasured sword.
However, if the number of infected people in Toyama Prefecture continues to increase or if the number of infected people in Japan continues to break records, the event itself will be cancelled to attract such people.
Yes, if it were a normal event, it would be cancelled and human lives would be prioritized to prevent the spread of the infection.
If the event is not worth the budget, such as if there is no revenue from tickets, the choice is to cancel the event and wait for the next opportunity to avoid a fatal blow.
After a hot summer in August with no time to think, I wonder what September will bring.
7.2.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Curry Ramen at City Hall
In the morning, I slipped into the parking lot of Toyama City Hall while it was still uncrowded.
My beloved ElGrand, a diesel-powered four-wheel-drive car that I had been driving almost every day, was due to expire on June 19, 2021, and after having it inspected, I was told that it would cost more money than I had imagined to continue driving it after repairing various potential failures and replacing consumable parts.
In tears, I made the decision to scrap the car without repairing it.
In order to go through the whole process, I needed to have my personal seal and proof of seal impression.
Nowadays, as long as you have a My Number Card, you should be able to get a certificate of registered seal and certificate of residence at the nearest LAWSON, but I was reluctant to follow an unfamiliar new procedure, so I chose the troublesome option.
Moreover, when I entered the city hall, I found that the machines for obtaining certificate of residence and certificate of seal impression, which used to be there until last year, were not there when I ran up from the parking lot to the first floor and looked around.
I ran up to the general reception desk and asked, "Where did they move it to? I ran up to the general receptionist and asked her.
It seems that the machine itself has been removed, not moved.
It was back to the same old routine of filling out the application form, receiving a numbered ticket, and waiting for the printout to be finished.
I wonder if this is an attempt to imply, "If you want a certificate of seal impression, take your My Number card to LAWSON! Is this an implied request?
Luckily, despite the artificial process, I was able to finish my seal registration in just a few minutes.
I thought it would be a shame to leave in less than half an hour, even though I had parked my replacement car in the underground parking lot, so I remembered the cafeteria at the city hall and decided to go there.
I usually don't come to the city hall often.
And I don't always come at the right time, around lunch time.
Even if you know that the city hall has a cafeteria that can be used by the general public, you don't always get a chance to use it.
The person who told me about this cafeteria was Master S. He is a rakugo storyteller from Toyama. He is a rakugo (comic storytelling) storyteller from Toyama, and although he is mainly active in Tokyo, he is a man of many talents, appearing and disappearing all over Japan.
Although his activities are now greatly hampered by Corona, his footwork before Corona and his strong stamina are worth learning from, and I have taken the liberty of positioning him as my "heart friend.
He travels back and forth between Tokyo and Toyama every week, and even though the travel alone is tiring, he is always ready to give a performance wherever he goes.
According to his Facebook page, he drinks a lot, makes his own bento lunches and cooks a lot of food.
In his Facebook comments, the keyword "turmeric intake" appeared many times.
He seems to like curry.
And for some reason, the curry ramen at the Toyama City Hall cafeteria was mentioned multiple times.
I think curry udon is more popular than curry ramen, but in this city hall cafeteria, it is curry ramen.
At the entrance of the cafeteria, there are waxed food samples of noodles and set meals served in the cafeteria in a glass display case. I couldn't find any curry udon.
The people of Toyama like curry.
They like Japanese curry, which is fundamentally different from the spicy, authentic curry of Pakistani and Indian origin that has become popular in Imizustan, Toyama Prefecture.
If you go to your local supermarket, you will find a corner where you can find curry roux from famous manufacturers such as House, S&B, and so on without hesitation.
In Toyama, they have twice as many shelves as supermarkets in other prefectures.
There are twice as many shelves lined with products.
I guess that's how much demand there is.
I'm not sure where the data is published, but Toyama City is said to be the top city in the "City I want to continue living in 2020" ranking.
For those of us who live in Toyama, it is too familiar a matter to make an objective judgment.
Also, in the 2014 change in the percentage of owner-occupied houses by prefecture, Toyama Prefecture ranked first.
In 2017, Toyama Prefecture ranked second in terms of the prevalence of private automobiles by prefecture.
At first glance, this data seems to be positive and Toyama residents seem to be happy and satisfied, but men in their 50s who have lived abroad for a while do not accept the data that is being spread around the world so honestly.
Toyama seems to be an area where it is considered important for the eldest son of a family to build a house or buy a condominium upon marriage, although this is not the case only in Japan.
In my case, as the only child and the eldest son, I came back to Toyama from overseas without much awareness, and found that there was a house that could accommodate a couple.
When we decided to move to Toyama, we renovated and lived in a house that had once belonged to my grandparents and had since become vacant and uninhabitable.
Most of the eldest sons are lucky to be able to take over the house, but the second sons and onwards seem to have to manage on their own.
In the western part of Toyama Prefecture, there seems to be a lot of pressure on such adult males to marry, and the second son is sometimes derisively referred to as "having no home.
In short, they are very attached to the big purchases in life, such as houses and cars.
There are not many people who can pay for such big purchases in a lump sum in cash.
Many couples in the prime of their working years in Toyama are forced to work together to make ends meet with house and car loans.
Curry, a dish that can be made in large quantities and enjoyed by everyone in the family, is very popular in many households in Toyama.
With this in mind, we have been making curry every week at Taiyo Coffee Roasting for over a year now.
When we talk about statistics and numbers, it may seem that we are not just making curry for the love of it, but that we are approaching the restaurant industry with a wise eye on marketing and the market.
However, these theoretical ideas from a goofy advertising agency are nothing compared to the flash of inspiration you feel at a certain moment.
Toyama Prefecture's coffee consumption is in the top third of the national rankings.
By the way, the prefecture that consumes the most coffee is Kyoto Prefecture.
In Toyama, a prefecture that ranks in the top third of Japan, Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo, which was established in 2015, seems to be having an easy time growing its sales, but it seems that most of the people in Toyama consume coffee in the form of coffee drinks, canned coffee, and instant coffee.
There is a lot of room for Taiyo Coffee Roasting to play an active role in getting the people of Toyama Prefecture to consume coffee beans.
Oops, I was talking about curry ramen.
There is no curry udon, but there is curry ramen.
Personally, I don't like either of them very much.
I haven't eaten curry udon for decades, and I would never have eaten curry ramen if it wasn't for my master.
I probably wouldn't choose curry ramen even if I went to City Hall again in the future.
6.2.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Imizustan, Imizu City, Toyama
One of the regulars at Taiyo Coffee Roasting asked me to take him to ZAIQA CURRY HOUSE.
Unfortunately, he is not a regular coffee drinker.
He's a curry regular who makes curry every Saturday for his tent stall.
He has been buying two servings of the curry that I have been making every week for about a year and a half now, almost every week.
They eat curry more than once or twice a week.
In addition to Taiyo Coffee's curry, curry from Indian and Pakistani restaurants scattered around the prefecture are also included in their rotation.
He seems to be familiar with the staff working at each store, who are immigrants from India and Pakistan, and we exchange greetings in simple Hindi. We exchanged greetings in simple Hindi and ordered the recommended curry of the day without even looking at the menu.
It was Wednesday, May 12, the day when Ramadan ended and all the people involved in Zayka and its customers gathered to celebrate together.
I was brought to the restaurant, but to tell the truth, I didn't know much about Muslims.
I have traveled to the Middle East several times, and when I was living in China, I had an acquaintance from the Uyghur Autonomous Region who frequently ate mutton skewers.
However, I only had a limited understanding of the people who don't eat pork and fast during Ramadan.
According to Wikipedia, during the holy month of Ramadan, people abstain from all food and drink from sunrise to sunset to experience hunger and self-sacrifice, and to develop empathy for the hungry and equality.
By sharing the painful experience with relatives and friends, the sense of solidarity among Muslims is strengthened and many donations and charity are given.
As a person involved in the coffee business, I think it is necessary to deepen my knowledge of the Islamic origins of coffee.
One of the several episodes of the origin of coffee is the discovery of coffee by the Muslim cleric Sheikh Omar.
Omar was praying for many people in the port town of Mocha, where a plague was prevalent.
One day, the daughter of the King of Moka fell ill, and Omar cured her through his prayers, but he fell in love with her, which angered the King and he was banished from the city.
One day, while living in a cave and not being able to get enough food, Omar learned that he could feel refreshed by drinking a soup made from the red berries that grow on the branches of trees.
One day, Omar learned to drink a soup made from the red berries of a tree branch, which made him feel refreshed. Later, he shared this mysterious drink with the people of the city, and was allowed to return to the city.
Later, the lyrics were added by Seiji Nakazawa of Japan, and the song "Coffee Rumba" was created in 1961.
It was sung by Sachiko Nishida and later covered by Yosui Inoue and Yoko Oginome.
A great Arab monk once said
To a miserable man who has forgotten love
A drink in amber, full of a tantalizing aroma
He taught him an amber drink full of tantalizing scents
Soon he was in a mood of excitement and wonder.
The man immediately fell in love with the young girl.
The conga, the maracas, the joyous rumba rhythm
The aroma of tropical passion
It's a wonderful drink, coffee mocha matari
Let's drink and dance merrily Coffee rumba of love
It is thought that the coffee culture, which was introduced to the Indian peninsula from the Middle East by Muslims, gradually shifted to tea culture and chai became popular due to British colonization.
In the 17th century, Europe began to colonize Asia, and in the late 18th century, the British colonized India.
The British colonization of India lasted from 1858 to 1947, and after the end of World War II, Britain gave up its colonies, and in 1947, the British Indian Empire was dismantled and divided into two countries, the Indian Union and Pakistan, to become independent.
The Hindu and Muslim communities in the Indian peninsula could not unite, so the Hindu-majority area became independent as India, and the Muslim-majority area (present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh) became independent as Pakistan.
Here in Imizu City, Toyama Prefecture, there is an area commonly known as "Imizstan.
Even though it is supposed to be called by its common name, a GoogleMap search will point you to three Pakistani restaurants: Kashmir, Zayka Curry House, and Al Baraka.
I had never heard of such a thing at all when I lived in Toyama until I went to college, probably since the 1990s.
There was a row of used car dealerships along Route 8 that exported Japanese used cars to Russia.
When I drove along Route 8, I saw a lot of signs in English and Russian, creating an exotic atmosphere.
Most of them are run by Pakistanis, and it seems that along with used car sales, an authentic Pakistani restaurant where local people go to eat has appeared in a similar prefab style.
Although real travel is difficult with the ongoing Corona disaster, we were unexpectedly exposed to a foreign country that actually exists in the prefecture.
I'm sure I'll be going to Imizstan for a while without getting tired of it.
5.2.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Uber Eats
In the midst of this corona disaster, which we don't know how long it will last, we can't do things the way we've always done them.
And even when the corona is over, the world will not necessarily return to the way it was before.
No, things will never be the same again.
I returned to Japan in the fall of 2014, and it was the first time in 30 years that I was back in Toyama.
Although I was born in Toyama City, I lived there until high school and then moved to Tokyo when I went to university, so I only know the city as far as I can travel by bicycle.
Also, while I was away, the city had changed so much that it was almost as if I had arrived in a new place.
This was the same year that the Hokuriku Shinkansen line opened and Toyama was expected to be revitalized.
Some people may have had such illusions, but that is exactly the way the Showa era thought.
This kind of hardware will only spur the outflow of people to the cities, but in the end, if there is no charm that can be transmitted from the regions, there will be no revitalization in the regions.
With this in mind, I decided to open a coffee shop not far from the shuttered streets of Chuo Dori and Sogawa Dori, where the address is written "Marunouchi.
I don't want to make a living out of photography anymore.
Let's just take our own pictures.
Even if there are bridal and family photo shoots in Toyama, a photographer cannot make a living in the same way as in Tokyo, where there are no publishers or media.
Advertising work would also be handled by agencies dispatched from the cities, and there would be no initiative in the countryside.
In addition, the era has shifted from film to digital, and the value of photography has changed dramatically.
Nowadays, I have serious doubts about whether I should buy a smart phone with a good camera or a compact digital camera that can also take movies.
After impulsively building a café when I was in Beijing, I decided to work in the coffee industry in Toyama without any hesitation.
As I felt that the world was experiencing a global coffee boom, I decided to start a coffee bean roasting shop so that I could be able to identify good coffee myself.
He buys and roasts green coffee beans by himself, and sells them.
You can taste the coffee in the shop. But I don't want it to be like a café where you can eat sweets or even a meal.
Of course, the goal is to make it a thriving store in Toyama, where I don't know much about the geographical situation, but it will take a lot of time before I can run the store by myself, and it will be recognized as a store that roasts coffee beans and sells coffee beans, not a cafe, as I intend.
Although the rent in rural areas is cheaper than in Tokyo, the fixed costs of rent and labor are still significant.
The first step is to establish a minimum.
Once you are recognized as a bean store and have enough money, you can add a café or build a shop elsewhere.
However, in the worst case scenario, if I couldn't get recognition as a bean shop, I wanted to obtain a food sanitation permit from the public health center so that I could continue to operate as a store.
It was the winter of 2017, three years after I had set up store. It was the first time I experienced heavy snowfall after coming back to Toyama.
( The winter of last year, 2020, was even worse...).
Even though I opened the shutters of the store, turned on the powerful gas stove, and waited, no customers came at all during business hours. I thought I knew in my head that customer traffic would be affected by the bad weather, but it would simply be reflected in sales and various payments would be delayed.
In Toyama, just because you set up a store doesn't mean you can do business.
Rather than waiting for customers to show up, we decided to go out and do business in places where people would gather.
However, even tent stalls are subject to weather conditions.
In this age of smartphones, we need to strengthen our mail order business.
After that, a collaborator came along and we had several meetings, but in this sales process, services that many online retailers offer as a matter of course, such as "next day shipping" and "free shipping," were not enough for a small shop like ours, which was run by just one person.
Is this something that can be solved by getting someone to work part-time?
Given the fact that we have our hands full with just opening events and the fact that our sales are unstable, it seems that we will have to wait a little longer before we can strengthen our mail order department.
In the meantime, I have started to see UberEats in Toyama, riding through the city on bicycles with square box-shaped backpacks on their backs.
The stores have been basically closed since last year when Corona started spreading.
The store has become a warehouse, and although they roast coffee beans for their regular customers, they put so much energy into making curry to sell at events that some people think they have changed their business to a curry shop.
It was a good decision to get a food sanitation permit from the health department.
As a bean shop that also makes curry, we are quite happy when people order butter chicken curry and Indian AA Monsoon Malabar as a set.
It's like a marriage of curry and coffee.
April 22, 2021.
It was last December when I applied for UberEats.
A lot of time has already passed.
The person in charge of UberEats, whom I hadn't even met yet, half-heartedly asked me to upload the menu as soon as possible and set a date for me to take pictures of the menu.
I spoke with the person in charge a few times on the phone, but he only sent me an email with the schedule and things to prepare for the menu photo shoot. The remote is very thorough.
We were scheduled to start at 3:00 p.m., but at 2:30 p.m., the photographer called and said, "We've just left the Kosugi interchange. He said, "I just left Kosugi Interchange.
He got on the highway and came!
Where is he coming from? Was there a traffic jam or a big accident?
A photographer living in Kanazawa arrived about half an hour later.
The Blue Impulse was flying over the western part of Toyama that day, and there was a big traffic jam on the way to Toyama City.
If all goes well, the UberEats website will start serving some of Taiyo Coffee Roasting's menu items around the end of the May holidays.
4.1.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Chocolat Blend
March 28. Last year, on this day, I had to cancel the performance of a play I was going to give in Toyama, in order to prevent the spread of the new corona.
You could say it was the anniversary of my death.
One year has already passed.
Fortunately, one year later today, the "Maki Tabata Dance 2021 Performance 'Carnival'" was held as scheduled at the Sogawa Grand Plaza in Toyama City.
For the past several years, dance workshops have been held every year, and amateur dancers from Toyama Prefecture have gathered to rehearse and perform.
In the fall of 2014, when relations between Japan and China became unpredictable and it became difficult to live in Beijing, I came back to Japan to move my life base to Toyama.
Maki Tabata and my wife, Chen Mayuzumi, were classmates in the theater department at Toho.
They met again unexpectedly in Toyama, and Mayuzumi began to participate in dance workshops soon after.
This performance coincided with the opening of a coffee shop tent every time, so I never saw her dance contemporary dance after her marriage to Mayuzumi.
I was like a father who was too busy with work to go to his child's piano recital.
Fortunately or unfortunately, due to the effects of the Corona disaster, all the usual spring events and marches were cancelled and the schedule was shifted to the fourth Sunday of the month with no stalls anywhere.
Because of this, this time was special.
At the Grand Plaza, the venue for the event, I prepared a pot of coffee to be left in the waiting room for the people involved in the dance to drink in between the two stages of the event.
The weather was getting warmer, and people were starting to gather at the cherry blossom viewing spots in Toyama City, regardless of the three densities.
The weather was getting warmer, and people were starting to gather at cherry blossom viewing spots in Toyama City without regard to the three secrets.
Since most of the participants were women, we decided to make a "chocolatey blend" based on Taiyo Coffee Roasting's most popular and cosmopolitan Brazilian Cerrado Calamé Rich #18, with a touch of Costa Rican acidity to give it a chocolatey impression.
It's rare for me to make blends at my store, since we usually focus on single origin beans.
And while I don't take stage photos as part of my job, I can't help but take some photos when I'm there. It would definitely make me feel uncomfortable to be on hand.
So, I decided to use my iPhone camera's movie to record and film.
Holding the iPhone handheld for about 20 minutes would transmit the vibration of my hands directly to the video, so I decided to debut a gimbal, a stabilizer for the iPhone that I snapped up on Amazon a while ago.
I'll also have my still camera ready.
However, I didn't want to go into work mode, so I decided to bring along my Panasonic G2, a toy camera that I don't use for work.
However, as soon as I started shooting, a switch was flipped inside of me, and the slow memory buffer speed of the toy camera and the time lag between the actual movement of the subject and the movement in the viewfinder of the EVF (Electronic Viewfinder) became unbearably uncomfortable and caused me a lot of stress. It was very stressful.
The Bluetooth connection between the iPhone and the gimbal seemed to interfere with the radio waves or some kind of noise that was flying around in the field environment, and it stopped functioning on its own during important recordings, eventually causing the gimbal to move like it was having a seizure. I had some equipment trouble.
I had to reconfirm that it is not good for my mental health if I don't keep my equipment in the best condition at all times, no matter what the situation is.
Aside from the inadvertent photo shoot, Maki Tabata, who was visiting from outside of the prefecture for this dance performance soon after the emergency declaration was lifted on March 21, had taken a PCR test beforehand.
After today's two performances, there was no launch party, no consolation party, and no toast for the participants and people involved.
In the past year, not only theater, but also events, funerals, weddings, and school classes have all been canceled, postponed, or reduced in size, forcing us to choose a different and unwanted situation.
It's not anyone's fault.
It was to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.
There's no way around it.
That's what I've been trying to tell myself.
But now, I can't help but feel that the Tokyo Olympics is the only exception to the rule, and that it is being forcefully implemented.
On March 21, while the number of infected people in Tokyo was said to be bottoming out, the emergency declaration was somehow lifted and the torch relay started in Fukushima on March 25.
I wonder where the phrases "Olympics for reconstruction" and "compact Olympics" have gone?
Whose agenda is it to forcefully hold the event despite the fact that it is far beyond the original budget?
No explanation is given and no one takes responsibility.
It is inexcusable.
2.1.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Costa Rica Granitos de Ortiz Red Honey
Roughly speaking, a green coffee bean is one that has been dried by removing the seeds from the coffee plant.
Yes, we say "coffee beans" for convenience, but they are not beans, they are seeds.
The processing of the coffee cherry after it is harvested has a great impact on the taste and aroma of the coffee.
The ripe coffee cherries are carefully picked by hand by people called pickers, and the skin of the fruit is removed.
The cherries are called cherries because they look like cherries, but they are a little smaller and the flesh is not as thick.
When the skin is peeled off, the slimy pulp comes out.
The pulp is juicy and sweet-sour like a fruit.
To be more precise, this slimy mucilage is called mucilage (Spanish miel: meaning honey), and the refining process of drying it while it remains in the seeds is called the "honey process.
Coffee beans that are processed in this way have the sugar of the pulp condensed in the seeds and also have a complex flavor with a rich refreshing acidity. In addition, depending on the roasting process, a caramelized taste may also appear.
Red Honey is dried slowly over 12 to 14 days, leaving 50% of the mushy residue.
It's a very good coffee, but it's also very expensive.
Summer 2019.
In the summer of 2019, a movie was filmed in the building of the Uozu Fishery Cooperative Uozu Osakana Land.
The TLO (Toyama Prefecture Location Office), which is run by the Toyama Prefecture Tourism Division, seems to be very active these days, and movies and TV dramas are being filmed all over the prefecture.
This spring, I made my stage debut in the stage production "Dark Master 2019 TOYAMA" at Toyama Aubade Hall, which led me to play the role of the main character's boss in this movie shoot.
This is not my first time in such a scene.
When I was working as a photographer in Tokyo, I used to take photos for video packages when V-cinema was popular, and I also worked as a stills staff for a two-hour TV drama on location in a local area.
I was involved as a staff member of such video scenes, and I also appeared as an "inside tiger," an extra played by one of my relatives, without dialogue, like a passerby.
This time, however, it was different.
I was treated as a full-fledged performer, and since I had a word or two to say, I felt as if I was being treated with some importance.
They were treated differently from the extras who didn't have any dialogues and you couldn't tell if they were on or off until you saw the resulting video.
A male staff member, perhaps a third assistant director, showed me to a room and I went in. In a brightly lit area by the window, the actress, who was playing the lead role in the film, was getting a facial massage while chatting with a female staff member who seemed to be a makeup artist.
On the opposite side of the wall, there were about four hanger racks where many costumes that were supposed to be used for the shooting were hung, and next to them, in the changing room, or rather, the changing area, which was blindfolded with a simple curtain, an actor playing a childhood friend of the lead actress was changing his clothes.
The male staff who showed me around said, "This is Mr. Rokuwatari, who plays my boss! The male staff member who showed me around said, "This is Mr. Rikudou-san, who plays the boss! I'm Rokuwatari, a local performer from Toyama. It's nice to meet you. I greeted him, but I couldn't say anything else.
Please sit here. I'll be back in a little while with your lunch. But I felt uncomfortable, as if I was in the wrong place.
I felt like a borrowed cat.
To begin with, I knew very little about these two actors, partly because I have been living in Beijing since 2005 and came back to Toyama in 2014, but also because I don't have a TV receiver at home and don't watch TV.
Before I started shooting this film, I immediately rushed to the rental store to watch all of Naoto Kumazawa's films.
But I hadn't checked out the films of his co-stars.
I was too careless.
In the banquet scene where the two main actors, Yuko and Ichiro, the elderly people of the town, and the town office staff gathered, there were some surprises that made me feel comfortable, and for the first time I found such a shooting scene enjoyable.
In such scenes with many people, the main actors who weave the story act in front of the camera, while the rest of the actors are in the background and are required to act according to the atmosphere of the scene. In many cases, the background actors are only given a scripted setting and no dialogue, so they have to improvise to match the atmosphere without speaking, and appear as if they are communicating with each other normally.
The assistant director instructed me where to sit for the banquet, and when I got to the table, I was surprised!
Shortly after I moved to Tokyo for college, a friend of mine introduced me to a part-time job as a black coat worker at the Shimokitazawa Honda Theater, and said, "You can take pictures! So, not long after I started taking stage photos, I was in the theater for a dress rehearsal to take stage photos of "Cloud Nine" at Shibuya Parco SPACE PART III.
It was a translation of a play by a British playwright, but I had no idea what it was about even though I was there to see it.
However, the director and the lighting designer were having a difficult time deciding on a scene.
The only thing I clearly remembered was that the director and the lighting designer were having trouble deciding on a scene, and they had to come back the next day to shoot the scene after the theater's closing time.
I just looked it up on Wikipedia and found out that it was a 1986 performance.
Nant? Kyoko-san (tentative), the actress who appeared in "Cloud Nine," is here in Toyama, more than 30 years later, sitting across the table from me saying, "This tuna red meat is so good! as he gobbled up the disappearing sashimi platter that had been prepared for the banquet scene without waiting for the staff's instructions.
Eventually, she said, "You should eat it too! He even called out to me, "Why don't you eat it too?" and asked me to be his accomplice.
No, I live in Toyama, so I can eat at ...... anytime I want.
"Then you! You can't eat this kind of food in Tokyo," she said, poking the side of Asuka, who was sitting next to her and had already been in show business for 20 years, and forcing her to join her.
She was bursting with the character of a carefree old lady.
Thinking about it, whether it was a calculated or natural act by the veteran Kyoko, it must have been her words and behavior that softened the scene in front of the fun and exciting banquet.
I was so happy that I couldn't help but say, "I was in the theater for a scene of 'Cloud Nine'! I couldn't help but say, "I was in the theater filming a scene for Cloud Nine!
In the short time we spent waiting to repeat the rehearsal, I couldn't finish telling him the story of how we got from Shibuya 30 years ago to Toyama today.
But, selfishly, I felt a sense of camaraderie, a sense of having spent time and space together, which is unique to theater.
If I could, I would have liked to hear more about those days directly.
I'm sure that in the banquet scene of the actual movie, the main character Yuko is having a conversation with an elderly person who will determine her future, and in the back of the room, a metabolic old man is happily pouring drinks for her, a little out of focus.
Unfortunately, I couldn't meet up with Kyoko-san (tentative) for the rest of the shoot, so I didn't get to say hello to her.
I thought that if she ever appeared on stage again, I would go see her backstage.
When I returned to the waiting room, Yuko, Ichiro, and Asuka (tentative) had also returned.
Most of the scenes for this film were shot in Toyama Prefecture, and it seemed they had already been in Toyama for almost a month.
This day's filming was near Uozu fishing port, but according to the three of them, they also filmed in the mountains where cell phone reception was questionable.
The filming was led by the two main actors, so they couldn't just go to a convenience store for a change. And the nearest convenience store itself is not there.
Before I knew it, Asuka (tentative) had finished all of her shots and was getting ready to leave, saying with a cheerful expression, "Let's meet again in Tokyo!
I found out for the first time that all three of them belong to the same agency.
The details were not given, but the film was a "25th anniversary project" of the office.
I wondered if they were greeting each of the staff around them with "After you! Asuka-san (tentative) came up to the metabolic old man who was sipping vegetable juice in a corner of the waiting room and said, "It was fun! Thank you very much! I'll see you again! Shake hands! He held out his hands to me.
I just cringed and held out one hand and said, "Thank you again! It was all I could do to shake her small hand.
Now I was completely captivated by an actress 20 years younger than me!
Even though I still had a few scenes to do, I felt as if I had already accomplished a great feat, but then I came to my senses and remembered that I had coffee beans in my car that I had driven to the location.
Costa Rica Granitos de Ortiz Red Honey" for times like this!
When Asuka (tentative) got into the black Alfard parked at the location building, I said to her, "Wait a minute! These are coffee beans that I roasted myself! I said.
For a moment, I felt like a junior high school boy giving his first present to a cute girl in his class.
About a year after the filming was finished, there was a preview of the film in Tokyo for the people involved, but I couldn't make it from Toyama due to time constraints and the new Corona.
This year, in 2021, a screening in Toyama was scheduled, but it was cancelled due to the first heavy snowfall in 35 years.
I have not yet been able to see my screen debut.
As expected, the film will be released nationwide today, Friday, January 29.
The movie "Omoide Shashin" tastes like Costa Rican Granitos de Ortiz Red Honey.
1.3.2021
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Siphon Coffee
Coffee made with shallow-roasted coffee beans, which is fruity and has the color of tea, is usually served in a Wedgwood peony-shaped cup. However, when the cold season arrives with snowfall, the coffee in a classy cup like a peony cup may have cooled down by the time I finish the cup. When I think about it, in the cold winter season, I would like to drink a cup of coffee made with a siphon with a thick and plump mug with a bitter taste.
In the case of hand drip, by the time the water is transferred from the boiling kettle to the drip pot and poured into the coffee powder, the temperature of the water is about 90-85 degrees Celsius and the coffee is extracted. In the case of the siphon, the water in the round part of the flask at the bottom of the apparatus becomes positive pressure due to the vapor pressure caused by the boiling of the water, and when the pressure exceeds atmospheric pressure, the water moves to the funnel at the top of the apparatus, and the hot water comes into contact with the coffee powder and mixes with it to start extraction. When the hot water in the flask is fully transferred and the fire is turned off, the temperature inside the lower flask starts to drop and negative pressure is created, and the extracted liquid is sucked from the upper funnel into the lower flask with the filtered liquid becoming coffee extract. Due to the nature of such extraction equipment, the coffee powder is exchanged in a higher temperature state than in the case of drip.
The bitter component of coffee is easily extracted at high temperatures. Sometimes I want to pour a mug of warm, fatty milk and drink it as a café au lait.
The recent trend in the coffee industry is to sell "refreshing acidity" or "bright acidity," but on the other hand, when making a café au lait, I want the bitterness and presence of the coffee to be as strong as the milk.
In this case, we use African green coffee beans that originally have a strong acidity to make a deep black roasted coffee that has both bitterness and richness. At Taiyo Coffee Roasting this year, the deep roasted Kenya AA Kiunyu was very popular. If the beans are not strong enough, the coffee will turn out to be burnt and bitter with a black juice that looks like it was extracted with charcoal.
Coffee with a refreshing acidity is good, but coffee with a bitter taste is also good!
In December, just as I was thinking of shifting from acidic to bitter for this year's Christmas blend, I had an idea.
Mr. I, a senior freelance photographer, contacted me on Facebook Messenger.
When I was living in Tokyo, we worked together for several years shooting a fashion show for a certain manufacturer, we did a humble job of documenting the greenbelt by the side of the road in Edogawa or Koto ward, and at one time we were one of the few photographers who worked together several times a year 、、、、.
He was one of the few photographers I worked with several times a year. Fukuoka location!
It didn't take place on Saturday or Sunday. The store was closed as usual, and I had no reason to refuse.
From Toyama, I would have to transfer from Toyama Airport to Fukuoka Airport via Haneda. From Toyama, I would have to transfer from Toyama Airport to Fukuoka Airport, or drive to Komatsu Airport and then to Fukuoka Airport. Due to time constraints, we drove to Komatsu on the 22nd and took the evening flight to Fukuoka Airport. We decided to shoot on the 23rd and 24th, stay an extra day on the way back due to flight time, and return to Toyama Airport from Fukuoka Airport on the 25th. I was able to book an air ticket online immediately.
When I asked for more details about the shooting, I was told that it was not difficult. However, I felt that the lens I had was not sufficient, so I decided to buy a wide-angle zoom lens on Amazon right away.
It's been years since I've been to Fukuoka. It's been a long time since I've been to Fukuoka. I hadn't been to Fukuoka since I was still living in Beijing, when I decided to go back to Japan and took advantage of the Japan Rail Pass, a special pass for overseas residents to visit coffee shops in Japan. This time, we would be staying an extra night and would have time to spare, so I really wanted to visit Adachi Coffee and Honey Coffee.
However, the new Corona has been raging day by day, and on December 18, the GoTo campaign with Tokyo as the destination was temporarily suspended.
In my case, I only booked the air tickets independently, so although I had nothing to do with the campaign, I had to shoot because it was my job and I was looking forward to Fukuoka, but there was no time to spare for a two-week self-imposed quarantine as I returned to Toyama after the shoot and entered the end of the year. How could a freelance photographer turn down a job that he had already accepted? This time, I had to make the impossible choice of cancelling the job itself in tears.
This year end and New Year's Eve, I'm planning to set up a tent in the grounds of the Echinaka Inari Shrine for the New Year's visit. This will be my sixth year in a row. As long as there is not a lockout all over Japan, I will be there to make coffee and welcome the New Year.
In fact, there is a similar "spiritual beast" called "Kutabe" in Toyama, and in order to blow away the disappointment of 2020, Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo will be making a special coffee called "Kutabe Blend" for 2021.
We wish you all a very Happy New Year in 2021!
12.1.2020
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Mundo Novo
The play "The Fortress of Smiles '20 Homecoming" by the playwright and director Tanino Crowe will be performed at Toyama Aubade Hall from Wednesday, December 2 to Sunday, December 6, 2020.
If I were to put it roughly, it would be a citizen's play (?) in Toyama. This is a project in which the play is produced by Tanino Crowe, a native of Toyama, and the cast and staff, both of whom are from or live in Toyama.
This is the second production of the project, following "Dark Master 2019 TOYAMA," which was staged last year in March 2019 and sold out all tickets.
This time, he plans to do a stage photo shoot.
Incidentally, I was asked to play my first starring role on stage at the age of 53 in my last play, "Dark Master 2019 TOYAMA".
At that time, in the rehearsal room where the cast and crew gathered and in the dressing room of the show, I am proud to say that the coffee from the catering service was switched to coffee beans from Taiyo Coffee Roasting Honpo, and I am sure that the people involved in the show enjoyed the coffee enough.
Unfortunately, however, this year's show, in the midst of the corona crisis, was not going to be able to do that.
Catering is not allowed because it is not allowed to be shared by many people.
There were 10 performers this time.
At the beginning of rehearsals, when we just received the scripts, we usually do a "book reading" to get a feel for the play and to check the lines of the actors.
This "Fortress of Smiles '20 Homecoming" started with a reading session using Zoom.
It seems to me to be both progressive and rational, like a Zoom meeting, but when it comes to the more serious parts of the play, such as the importance of the pauses between the lines, there is a time lag that occurs when using the Internet, which is a bit of a disappointment.
It seems that theater is sometimes categorized as something that is not necessary or urgent, but those who are seriously involved in it take measures to prevent the spread of infection and pay close attention to the performance so that they do not lose their temper over a long period of time.
The heavy soundproof door of the rehearsal room is opened all the way to prevent densification, and every time there is a break, the staff carefully sprays the area where people were present with ethanol.
The main cast and crew will probably be tested for PCR and confirmed negative before the show.
Toyama Overd Hall's special on-stage theater is a stage-on-stage theater that is usually used for large operas and musicals, so it does not use its own audience seats, but sets up a stage on a large stage where you can feel the actors' breathing. However, the maximum number of seats in one stage is limited to 130, taking into account the social distance against corona.
In other words, even if the theater is full, ticket revenue will be cut in half.
All visitors are expected to take their body temperature and write down their contact information at the theater reception desk and disinfect their hands with alcohol.
Furthermore, the officials will not be allowed to celebrate the success of the show with their usual party after the successful conclusion of the show.
Going to the theater to watch a play is a way to enjoy watching a play or an actor's performance and sharing the space with them, but as for the performances held in the midst of the corona disaster, I want you to catch a glimpse of the spirit of the people involved in making sure the show goes off without a hitch.
Show Must Go On!
As for the coffee bean shop, I'm going to turn in the individualized drip bags.
11.5.2020
DAYS/ Tatsuro Rokudo Column
Coffee +
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
For Enjoying Toyama Life !
Mundo Novo
The Toyama Regional Meteorological Observatory announced that the first snowfall in Tateyama was observed on October 17.
They said it was nine days later than normal.
But this year 2020, the passage of time has been funny since spring.
It would be easier to blame it all on the new corona, but the number of deaths around us is so high this year that I can't even count them on my fingers.
It's depressing.
Since March, I've been attending a funeral almost every month, and I've been wearing a black suit more often than ever before.
In order to prevent the spread of the virus, the funeral is held in a social distance, and there is an unnatural space between the two, so that they can do exercises with their arms spread wide apart.
In some cases, the audience was limited to "up to 30 people"; in other cases, they set up an altar at their house and burn incense at the entrance where they had placed a portrait of the deceased at the altar; and in other cases, they learned the news of the deceased through e-mail or Facebook and told the deceased that they would not hold the funeral because of the current situation.
They were people I hadn't seen in months or years, and if the funeral was not a bittersweet experience for the deceased, it made me feel like I was just continuing to be away from them for a long time, and I couldn't get over it.
I'm a freelance photographer who is about 10 years older than me.
We met at a photography workshop I attended at one point in time.
We would discuss our own ideas about what was going on in photography and do our best to make black and white photos, and then we would go into the darkroom to make prints together and help each other with the photography.
After our monthly workshop meetings in Meguro, we would always have peasant tofu and shiso-crusted dumplings at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and afterwards we would go to Shinjuku to have karaoke until morning.
I think it was in the late 90's. The bubble had already burst then.
The bubble had already burst, but he was a photographer who had benefited from the bubble, and when I had just met him, he was driving a big Mercedes-Benz C or S 600, not a wagon.
It's a useless car for photography work.
And the emblem on the hood was made of gold!
He drove his Mercedes into Kabukicho in a long fur coat with a hard mohawk on his head, so when he got out of the car, "all kinds of people" bowed their heads to him and greeted him.
My girlfriend, who was 20 years younger than me, used to come and go to the office in Minami Aoyama, and I have a strong impression that she was always standing next to me, making a glass of water for me to enjoy.
Anyway, when she got into a fight and lost her temper, she was out of control.
He is the picture of the unconventional, and at first glance he seems to live in a different world, but he didn't graduate from a photography university, nor did he study abroad at a photography university, nor did he have any experience working in a photography studio as a low-ranking employee.
And for me, he was a very valuable senior freelance photographer, and a big brother to me, not to mention the fact that I had never studied under a famous photographer.
He wasn't all that unconventional and flashy.
I met him after the bubble burst, so even though I sold that example Mercedes Benz, gave up that big, useless watch I'd never seen before, sold off my beloved SINER 8x10 that used to appear when I had a spirited job, and fell into a situation where I had to downsize such a life, it was still as if nothing had happened He seemed to be aloof, but I felt that there was a kind of determination to be learned from him.
After all, if you ask me whether photography is a job that is absolutely necessary for people to live, it is a job that is considered unnecessary.
When the world goes into a recession, sales are greatly affected.
If you compare it to the ant and the grasshopper, you'll be on the grasshopper's team for all intents and purposes.
But the grasshopper has a grasshopper's way of life, and he has the pride to enjoy life even if it means changing his life to ride the waves of the world as the environment changes.
From the grasshopper's point of view, when winter comes, the grasshopper can move to the city to find summer.
As long as you live your life in search of summer, life is endless summer.
There are a lot of photographer friends in common, and we said we would get together and go to a hot pot restaurant in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, once Corona had settled down and we could casually go to Tokyo again.
It's really quite shocking.
People die unexpectedly easily.
Since then, I haven't updated my Facebook page at all.
Just then, a new batch of Brazilian green beans arrived at Taiyo Coffee Roasting, which has been closed since March of this year.
Of course, this is because I ordered them myself a few days ago.
The name of the green coffee beans is "Brazilian Tomio Fukuda Bau Dry On Tree".
The coffee is from the Bau farm run by Mr. Tomio Fukuda, a second-generation Brazilian Nikkei, and is called "Dry On Tree", which means that the coffee cherries are fully ripe and dried with their pulp still attached to the tree.
It's the so-called coffee cherry, which is like a dried grape with branches.
In order to keep it in this state, the seeds inside the dried coffee cherries are designed to soak up the sweetness of the pulp.
Moreover, the name of the coffee seedling is "Mundo Novo", which means "New World".
The name of the seedling is "Mundo Nobo," meaning "new world.
When Taiyo Coffee Roasting was established, Mundonovo was first roasted in Brazil, but due to the management policy of Ipiranga Estate in Minas Gerais, Brazil, the Mundonovo plantation was sold to another farmer, and the same Mundonovo was no longer available. I had to put it away.
The bitter cocoa vibe is one of the hallmarks of Mundonovo, but the new Mundonovo is clearer, clearer and clearer, and has the quality of the crop itself.
Delicious!
It's time for Taiyo Coffee Roasting Shop to aim for a new world.
The new coronavirus is relentless.
By the end of March, the number of infected people in Toyama Prefecture had been confirmed, and even in June, when the University of Toyama began to use the Internet to teach classes remotely, and Taiyo Coffee Roasting Shop opened a shop on the campus, there were still few students walking around the Gofuku campus.
This year's new students, unable to start club activities or make new friends, had no choice but to wait for the right moment.
In June, the temperature in Toyama topped 25 degrees Celsius, and the Gofuku campus was no exception, selling iced coffee.
Almost all of the visitors to the tent came for the spicy chicken curry at lunchtime, but we also got an iced coffee as a bundle, just like a set.
Then a boy in a cap approached us on a bicycle.
As he straddled his bike, he examined the menu of beans on the coffee grinder with his gamete and said, "Costa Rica Puente Talas Tipica Natural, drip! .
While most of the customers ordered iced coffee, they ordered hot coffee.
And shallow roasted beans.
As I twisted a knob on the cassette stove to reheat the water in the kettle, I asked, "Oh, you're from the coffee circle? Are you from the coffee circle? I asked without thinking.
I had heard that there was a coffee club at Todai called the 'Parista', a play on the name of the coffee barista, and that there were about 30 members.
I'm thinking of starting a mobile vending business soon. ......
While transferring the boiling water to the drip pot, he said, "Oh, I wonder if the circle is trying to plan another event in the town of Sogawa?
'No, I don't do circles, I do my own hand net roasting and stuff like that. I've already bought a mobile van!
In my mind's eye, I thought of the Toyota Quick Delivery, a vehicle often used by Kuroneko Yamato for deliveries.
This vehicle was discontinued in 2016.
As I set the coffee powder in the paper filter, I said, "That's amazing! You're a man of action! But I was distracted by the drip of water at hand, so I gave a curt reply.
I transferred the kettle's freshly-boiled water, at 100°C, to Takahiro's drip pot "Shizuku," which lowered the temperature by about 10°C to 90°C.
There is no doubt that it is possible to brew coffee at 100 degrees Celsius, but at higher temperatures, it is easy to get unnecessary bitterness and other unpleasant tastes.
The first pitch, as if you were doing it by placing hot water in the middle of the coffee powder set in the dripper. About 20-30ml.
Moisten the coffee powder and take 30 seconds of steaming time as it is.
Measure it exactly on a proper timer.
Steep it thoroughly to expand the surface area of the powder.
The larger surface area allows for more efficient extraction when pouring hot water into the next batch.
And the second pitch, plus 90ml.
Pour hot water slowly into the center of the powder in the dripper, in a circular motion, about the size of a 500 yen ball.
Only pour the hot water over the powder.
Don't pour hot water into the dripper, but don't pour it into the coffee powder and the paper filter.
If you pour hot water into the paper filter, the hot water goes down to the server, and the coffee liquid in the server will be thin as a result.
Also, if the hot water passes through the powder quickly, the coffee will be thin, and if it passes slowly and the contact time with the powder is long, the coffee liquid will be thicker.
The third pitch, plus 40ml, while keeping an eye on the water level in the dripper.
Finally, plus 20ml.
It is thought that it is better to remove the paper filter from the server without removing this last hot water.
The unspent liquid left in the dripper may also have some coffee residue in it, so it is said to be thrown away without removing everything.
Although it's only one cup of coffee, this is how they try to brew a cup of coffee without any negative factors.
It's important to brew a cup of coffee in a fluent tone of voice while explaining the coffee beans to the customers.
I'm trying to avoid making comparisons with the young people of today, and I'm trying to avoid talking about them or putting words in their mouths.
After 50, college students are the equivalent of their sons and daughters.
Costa Rica Puente Talas Tipica Natural, I'm in! And while pouring it into a paper cup and handing it to him, he said, "Making money is something you're going to have to do eventually, even if you don't want to, so you might as well not be in a hurry and do something that you can only do now. If you like coffee, I think it would be a valuable asset to go to Costa Rica or any other coffee producing country and see the coffee plantations and see what kind of flowers this tipica produces and how these naturals are processed after the harvest, I couldn't help but go off on a tangent.
I said something that sounded like I was talking from above and imposing my experience on him.
'Thank you!' He smiled a carefree smile and took a sip from his paper cup, "Fruity! He added and left.
Left alone, his business acumen may allow him to sell more and more coffee beans in a mobile van, use the latest roasting machines, and before you know it, he may be the owner of several shops and a number of employees.
No one knows what the right thing to do is, and no one can guarantee that it will be the right thing to do.
The new coronavirus has made going abroad less easy, and that makes me want to go abroad even more.
Now that I have my own shop, it is surprisingly difficult for me to go on long trips.
I came back to Toyama from Beijing and have not gone abroad once since.
My passport has expired and has been left intact.
Before the Marunouchi store opened, I went to Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Brazil to visit coffee farms one after another in coffee-producing countries. During his stay in Beijing, he also visited a coffee plantation in Yunnan Province.
If only we hadn't been hit by the corona crisis, we would have gone to Ethiopia soon to see the birthplace of coffee.
I would like to visit Ethiopia several times, take some photos, make a series of works, and hold a photo exhibition, and brew Ethiopian coffee on the spot so that visitors can drink coffee while looking at the photos.
Where there's coffee, people gather ! And the pictures, the movies and the plays.
prologue
Saturday, March 28, 2020, was originally supposed to be the first day of my first show back in Toyama.
The Taiyo Coffee Roasting Shop was to be completely closed for the day for the actors, local staff and others who were coming in from Tokyo.
As a producer, I planned to keep my body open.
I was going to take whatever measures I could think of.
I had already secured more than enough masks for the number of people in the audience and bought a large quantity of latex gloves and hypochlorous acid water.
However, after coming back from Beijing to my hometown of Toyama, it was too late to force my first independent performance.
The confidence in the success of the show was never satisfied, and the inexplicable anxiety could not be dispelled.
Even if we had been forced to go ahead with the performance due to the ego of those who were responsible for it, we would not have been able to fill the auditorium this time.
It is an impossible choice to perform a play without an audience.
(Unless, of course, you are planning a play that was intended to be performed without an audience from the beginning.
Early in the rehearsal process, I had a meeting with Matsumura, the director, in which we discussed the idea of putting on a play without an audience.
It was agreed that if any one person involved in the project was infected, the performance would be cancelled.
Every day I see new news from around the world.
We were in constant communication with Matsumura and we were worried and anxious about whether or not we could really put on the show.
Then, two weeks before the show was to start, he got a call from Tokyo.
Theaters and rehearsal spaces for rent were completely blocked off, and we were unable to finish up right before a performance.
At that time, the first case of infection had not yet occurred in Toyama Prefecture.
In view of this unprecedented situation, we decided to postpone the show indefinitely.
I don't want to say that the performance had nothing to do with the coffee roaster's business, but...
In a spirit of reckless disregard, the roastery will not be open for business as usual until that time comes.
In addition, I decided to keep growing my own hair out without cutting it and put it in a ponytail.
It really doesn't matter, but that's what I decided to do.
Cold Brew "Draining" Coffee
I finally started cold brew coffee this summer of 2020.
I think it's been a few years now, but the coffee industry, not to mention convenience stores, supermarkets, and even Costco, have been trying to get me to start.
The cat and the ladle are "draining coffee" and "draining packets of five".
I felt that the world was so freakishly busy with draining the water out of the machine that I didn't want to do it at my house anymore.
We also stocked up on several glass drainage coffee makers and bought a box of them, but we didn't want to do it anymore.
I stocked up on coffee equipment in advance and put them on the store shelves, but they just got dusty.
Surprisingly, sometimes the prices of coffee from the manufacturer were not so different from the prices charged by online retailers.
That's why department stores are going out of business and individual shops are getting bogged down.
But it's not because of the high cost of coffee equipment that I don't want to sell my coffee.
The question is, "Does the coffee really taste good?
In Japan, it is not possible to use the paper filtered coffee powder as a substitute for
Hand drip coffee (pour over cooffee), where you pour hot water into it, is the most popular.
Even if this was a coffee maker, the basic structure would still be in the form of a drip coffee.
And in the case of drip coffee.
The usual style is to pour hot water into coffee powder and drink the brew strained through a paper filter.
People have many different tastes, and it would be a bit rude to say that it's all just a matter of taste.
The amount of coffee powder, the temperature of the hot water, the speed of the pouring water, the...
From the time the coffee is poured into the cup to the time it is finally consumed, the taste of the coffee is greatly influenced by the choices made in each of the several stages of the coffee making process.
In the case of water below room temperature when pouring hot water into the cup
It is called "cold brew cooffee".
So, what is the difference in the pouring temperature?
In general, coffee tends to have a strong bitter and messy taste when brewed in hot water at a high temperature.
Among the customers who come to our shop
I've been making my own coffee lately, but I can't seem to get it to taste good.
If you are told that you have to be the first to
Are you pouring the coffee grounds straight from the kettle with the water boiling?
I ask.
There is a high possibility that the water just boiled at 100 degrees Celsius is poured directly into the coffee.
As a result, the bitterness and miscellaneous taste of the coffee is strong.
On the other hand, if you brew the coffee at room temperature with water, it is difficult for the ingredients that are released at higher temperatures to come out.
The other ingredients are extracted slowly and the taste can be relatively mellow and gentle.
But just because it's hot doesn't mean it's poisonous.
I'd be too quick to declare it "not good.
There are no accounting for taste.
I'm sure there must be some people who find that bitterness and messiness irresistible.
There are exceptions to this rule.
You can also use the watered-down coffee makers that are sold today, or
In the type of method where you put the coffee in a bottle overnight or so and slowly brew it.
It often ends up being somewhat watery and thin.
It's just my personal feeling.
I was the "? I'm not such a skilled businessman that I can sell the things that are tricky to sell with a lot of cleverness.
Because of that, the water dispenser was regarded low in our shop.
But this spring, a certain company's water-dispensing coffee maker came to our shop!
It takes about five times the normal amount of powder to get a satisfactory density when drinking it.
In the case of this machine, it can take up to 500 grams of coffee powder to brew 4 liters of coffee.
One of the features of this machine is that you can drip the brewed coffee with room temperature water.
Furthermore, it is designed to allow multiple brewing by pouring it on top of the coffee powder over and over again.
I brewed it with a deep-roasted Mandirin G1 from Indonesia, and the result was
It has just the right amount of bitterness, yet it is full-bodied and has no unpleasant aftertaste that stays in the mouth forever.
It has a richness that can be enjoyed even if you put ice in the glass.
It's the closest thing to the ideal brewed coffee we've ever made in our shop.
As a measure to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, we have decided to proactively suspend business at our Marunouchi store.
The operation of an outside tent stall that can operate in the open is
I've been running the coffee shop since I came back to Toyama, so I decided not to take a break.
On the first Sunday in June, the Toyama Gokoku Shrine and the Toyama Flea Market is an event that has been going on for more than 25 years.
Unfortunately, the event was cancelled in April, May and June of 2020.
Sunday, July 5, was the first time in a long time that the store was open.
For the record, the high temperature was 25.3 degrees Celsius. The record high temperature was 25.3℃ and the record low was 20.8℃. It's been 5 years since we started stalling at the flea market.
I've just met our requirement to start selling iced coffee when the temperature rises above 25 degrees Celsius.
It was the long-awaited debut of a water-draining coffee maker.
A water-draining coffee maker is a machine, but it's not as good as an ordinary drip machine.
It takes about 10 times as long to make the same amount of extract.
Since the water brewing process is not a mass production type, we have decided to sell hot water brewing iced coffee as well, just as we did last year.
This year's version is based on the Brazilian Cerrado Caramelic #18, with a core of bitterness from mandarin.
The coffee is brewed slightly thicker in hot water and then used ice.
It would be sold as iced coffee after being quenched and stored in the refrigerator.
That way, when a customer says, "I'll have an iced coffee please ♫
This one has to explain "We have two kinds of iced coffee this year" every single time.
It was expected.
It was to be expected.
The water-drained iced coffee uses a lot of powder and takes a long time to brew.
Iced coffee with hot water is 100 yen more expensive than a normal iced coffee with hot water for 400 yen, with a selling price of 500 yen.
If you do so
'Is your coffee the gold coffee? Or is it silver coffee?
It's like asking a question like.
Did you have a problem with the fries? It's a conversation that tickles the self-esteem of the target customer.
This one will have some guilt.
In fact, it's a "Which coffee would you like to have? I said, "Watering out is 100 yen more expensive~
All right, water up! Most of the time, it is returned to me.
I'm simply happy to see that water-drained coffee is the better choice because it takes more time and effort than hot water.
However, has the coffee industry's publicity over the past few years made it that popular to use water-drained coffee?
When did the public become so fond of draining coffee?
Seriously, water-drained coffee!
I don't regret the fact that I've been a natural at shunning watering out myself, but
It was amazing to see the reality of the world.
Such a phenomenon was not confined to the market at Gokoku Shrine.
A similar situation was evident at the stalls at the Ecchu major market, which is held on the fourth or last Sunday of the month.
In the meantime, for no particularly profound reason.
I've been extracting a single-only extract of Indonesian Mandeline G1
Now, I'm going to blend 25% Brazil Cerrado Caramelic #18
I decided to create a slightly milder finish by adding a hint of sweetness to the cocoa-like atmosphere.
It has been five years since Taiyo Coffee Roasting started opening stores in Otemachi, Echinaka, even before it opened a branch in Marunouchi, Toyama City.
For Taiyo Coffee Roasting, it's a home away from home.
In spring 2015, in May, I think it was at Ecchu Otei Market, the first time I opened a tent in Toyama.
By opening a tent, we were able to
I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of reaction we could get from the customers in Toyama, just like an antenna shop.
Or maybe it's a pre-promotional thing to do when you build a physical store.
There was no reason for a man who was about to turn 50 years old and make a fresh start in Toyama to not have a stall.
He had planned to set up a tent as a test run, but
Later on, even if a brick-and-mortar store is built, it's still a good way to raise awareness.
I need to go to a public place.
I had no idea that the significance of the tent stalls would change.
Then, from July this year, the University of Toyama's Gofuku campus was added to the schedule of stalls on the campus.