Ramen Restaurants in Japan hr675

 

Japanese people love ramen so much. Ramen is Chinese-style soup noodles which is obscenely popular in Japan. I hear that there are about 20,000 ramen restaurants all over the country. The degree of its popularity is easily imagined by the fact that a McDonald’s closed and reopened as a ramen restaurant in my town. Chains are rampant while the majority are small restaurants run privately by individual owner-managers. In front of a popular restaurant, a long queue is formed before it opens until it closes for the day and the place is packed with customers all day long. Millions of websites, magazines, TV programs and YouTube videos feature and introduce ramen restaurants of any kind, in any area.

I like ramen but don’t eat it at the restaurant. I loathe a waiting line to begin with. And the atmosphere is a big problem. Those restaurants are clean but almost all of them are shabby. Customers sit at the counter elbow to elbow in a cramped space where they suck in noodles by slurping. Above all, the price is high. A bowl of ramen in an atrocious atmosphere costs more than a dish at a modern family restaurant. The reason why people choose ramen restaurants despite all of that is the quality of deliciousness, I suppose.

An owner-manager in any ramen restaurant is particular about his or her special recipe that is attained by a continuous process of trial and error over years, in which they have selected and contrived a mixture of ingredients for the soup, such as pork, chicken, fish, soy sauce or miso. They use carefully-selected noodles in their elaborate soup for which they begin to prepare the night before. Because they spend enormous time and effort to make ramen, profit is little in spite of the high price setting. I think that is why their restaurants are small and tacky. To me, it’s always a mystery why they wouldn’t spare just a tiny bit of their passion for the taste, to their place’s interior. But there’s one bigger question. If they can’t be rich no matter how popular their place becomes by their time, effort and elaboration, why do they run that kind of business?

Come to think of it, I take years to complete my song with persistent, rather obsessive elaboration although it doesn’t sell at all. I know I can earn money if I make many songs like recent hit ones that are catchy and arranged with loops efficiently done by copying and pasting on music software. Yet, I wouldn’t do that. Since we have limited time from birth to death, I want to spend mine for what I can enjoy as much as possible. From my experiences with my wealthy parents and my rich friends’ parents at the private school I went to, I learned that living in luxury gives more enjoyment is an illusion. I would rather have time for doing what makes me feel deeply satisfied and truly happy than for greed and a shallow delight given by looking down on others. After all, I feel happy by elaborating my music into perfection itself, which is more appealing to me than money.

I suspect that owner-managers of ramen restaurants may feel the same way I do. Even if that’s the case, I won’t enter their unrefined restaurants. I would definitely get in if there were a delicious, low-priced ramen place with a sophisticated atmosphere and no queue. However, the possibility that I come across that restaurant is as low as I become a successful musician. I would never say never though.

An Earthly Paradise hr596

When I lived in California, the apartment I rented had an outside Jacuzzi. I liked taking it at night, seeing the sky above. Under the palm trees, I watched an airplane’s small dot of light blinking and moving through the stars. It was the moment that I felt like a winner who obtained a life in paradise by getting out of not only Japan but also my family to which I had been a bound successor. Prices in the U.S. were extremely low compared to Japan back then because of the strong yen. It seemed to me that everything was on sale and I literally lived in a bargain country. Sadly, my life in paradise didn’t last long, though. The Japanese economy crashed and yen turned weak. Inflation had edged up in the States as well. Price hikes assaulted me in all directions. I became unable to pay the rent even if I had moved into a cheap motel. I was practically kicked out of the States and the plane brought bitterly-discouraged myself back to Japan where I returned to a life of reality in a teeny-tiny apartment. Time went by, and I had benefited from technological advances like the Internet and computers, and also from the fall of housing value in Japan. Those benefits let me live in a condominium that has a communal spa. I take a Jacuzzi there watching a beautiful view of the mountains with lingering snow out of big windows. One day, I felt so euphoric that I thought this wasn’t real. I thought I may have already died from that northern Japan’s severe earthquake or from the subsequent meltdown of the nuclear plant, and must be in heaven now. That reminded me of the sensation I had felt in a Jacuzzi in California. I had never expected that I would experience an equally enraptured life here in Japan when I parted with it there. If I traveled back in time with a time machine, I could talk to my other self who was in despair on the flight to Japan from the States. I would say to her, “Years from now, you will get another chance to live in paradise!” I would tell her that she wouldn’t give up music and would have completed two songs back in Japan that had quality she had been craved for and entirely satisfied with. How easier the flight would’ve been if I had heard those words there. I was too hopeless to imagine so much as a speck of the possibility. I always find myself foolish in hindsight whenever I look back later. There are tons of things I have to say to my past self beforehand. The question is, what would my future self tell me now if she looked at me taking the Jacuzzi here. Would she say, “Embrace the moment. It’s the pinnacle of your life”? Or would she say, “Prepare yourself. It’s just the beginning”? I desperately hope for the latter…

Huge Absence hr581

I went to the Tulip concert the other day. Tulip is my lifelong favorite band and the reason why I became a musician. They are making a national tour commemorating their 45th anniversary. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been to several concerts every time they were on tour. They used to tour every six months, which made the number of my attendance soar. Most part of my monthly allowance was spent on the ticket. Among the five members, I was an avid fan of the lead guitarist of the band, Toshiyuki Abe. I was always enchanted tremendously by the sensuous sound from his red guitar in my youth. After I grew up and the band broke up, they reunite every five years to make an anniversary tour. I had been to several venues each time by spending costly transportation fees and staying at a hotel when the venue was too far to be in time for the last train back home. That had been my usual pattern concerning Tulip until their 40th anniversary tour was wrapped up. Although I had waited anxiously for their 45th, the wait ended abruptly two years ago even before the tour started. Mr. Abe, who I believe is the best guitarist in the world, suddenly passed away. Tulip’s 45th anniversary tour turned out to be a memorial to him, which I’d never, ever pictured happening. I wasn’t going to go to their concert this time. I didn’t want to see the band without him who had been my idol for such a long time. It would be too sad. Whenever something related to Mr. Abe popped into my mind in my daily life, my eyes easily swim with tears automatically. I couldn’t imagine how sad it would be that I actually saw Mr. Abe missing in the band and realized again he was gone. On the one hand, I thought I’d better not go, but on the other hand I was curious how the band would play without him. They announced Tulip would become a four-man band without having a new guitarist. Who would play the guitar part then? Would they change the arrangement and have the keyboard cover the part? Or, would one of the members switch to a lead guitarist? Or, would a robot stand with a guitar? I had thought of possible alternatives every day and couldn’t stop thinking about it eventually. To solve mounting questions, I decided to face the sadness and go to the concert. After I got the ticket, though, I still felt hesitant to go. I couldn’t believe I was holding a ticket of Tulip in which Mr. Abe didn’t exist. I had asked to myself what I was doing for three months. But about ten days before the concert, I began to feel excited and my heart leapt up. I was headed for the concert hall on that day with odd rapture. The minute the concert started, all my questions were answered in an unexpected yet totally reasonable way. In the back of Tulip, there were three supporting players. A supporting guitarist was understandable, but there were a drummer and a keyboardist that made up the band of twin-drums and twin-keyboards. The sound was different accordingly and for some reason, wasn’t good as it used to be. They also lost edge on vocals with no reason. The loss of Mr. Abe has had effect on the band much greater than I thought. It reduced the quality of Tulip. It didn’t sound or look like Tulip. I was disappointed and felt so sad. I witnessed the band suffered a massive vacuum. Mr. Abe’s trademark red guitar that I’d watched and listened since I was a teenager was placed on the stage and made me cry instead of exult this time. His song was played while his pictures were shown and I bitterly missed him. As the concert went on, I realized how hard the members was trying to fill in the big hole that they knew couldn’t possibly be filled in. With their desperate attempts, they tried to carry on at all costs. Their strong intention to sustain the loss and to survive as Tulip was conveyed from the stage. I was deeply moved by their effort to continue. Before I knew, I was jumping and sang myself hoarse along to their songs with other audience as I had always done at their concert. Looking back, I became a singer-song writer to be like Tulip. Now I will do anything I can to keep on until I die like Tulip is doing. Just one thing I will not follow them is to accept that the quality of my music gets poor. I wouldn’t, I hope…