DAYS
STAY SALTY ...... means column
Coffee +
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
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.