While Listening to "Robots" by Dan Mangan...

I've got the stereo going and as I started writing this blog post the song "Robots" by Dan Mangan was flowing out from the speakers.  I have the volume set at a notch below the middle mark so I can still hear the occasional cry of a cicada from outside.  I think I had commented last year on Plurk in mid-September saying "That must be the last cicada I'll be listening to this year" only to have another fire up and pierce the air with its "Miiinn miiiin" cry the next week.  So I'm not going to go so far to repeat that and say "I can hear the last cicada of the year" here.

Yesterday was a somewhat busy day at work.  I had a mid-afternoon lesson cancellation so I was asked to do a demo lesson for a 3 year old boy and 4 year old girl in the morning.  The manager had written down their names on the memo she gave me advising me of the lesson...she got the girl's name wrong ("Rie" not "Risa").  The kids were a bit perplexed when I had them join me in going through the actions for the song "Ring Around the Rosie".  When I rolled onto my side when the song reached "We all fall down!" the little boy giggled and quipped "What's wrong with this teacher?".  Okay.  I should've worked more on getting the idea behind "fall down" across to them.

I strolled out to a nearby cafe for lunch.  It's located on the main floor of the Kyoritsu Building, an eight or nine story structure with commercial space occupying its lower three floors and a hotel occupying the upper floors.  The cafe is accessible via its rear door that opens into a corridor, a side door or its front door.  I chose the rear door entrance.  To get to it one has to pass through two sets of doors that lead to the shopping area corridor.  The inner doors are automated but the outside ones are hinged and have to be opened manually.  Ahead of me was a middle aged couple.  The man was a couple of steps ahead of the woman.  I hadn't noticed them until the point where I saw the outside door swing somewhat heavily on the woman's right arm and shoulder.  She was a smaller woman so the weight and force of the door pushed her off by half a step.  I glanced at the man and noted his gaze was straight ahead.  He had charged through the door without appearing to have given a single thought to his partner walking behind him on his heels.  That little scene caught me an iota off guard.  It was minor incident but it stirred me.  It reminded me of a remark by a then regional manager at our company who is close to my age but probably a few years my senior.  She once remarked that she felt justified in her choice to not seek marriage when she once heard a man introduce his wife as "the thing" (or something along those lines).  Oh.

In the evening I went out for dinner.  After eating I sat around and chatted with the cafe owner and a couple of customers.  Following that I wandered off in search of a place to get a nightcap drink.  Strolling by the cafe I had had lunch at I spied a couple of friends at a table by the window.  So I made a quick turn and headed in to join them.  Sometime later we were joined by a gentleman who, if I'm not mistaken, is the owner of a pair of local ramen shops which are quite well known.  Apparently his business has a presence in the ramen museum down in Yokohama.

One story the ramen shop owner told was worth noting:  He recounted when he had first started in the restaurant business many long years ago with a place that employed 40 staff members in the kitchen.  He started off as a dish washer and slowly worked his way up the ranks.  As a junior staff member he was subjected to a form of hazing which, if I recall correctly, came in the form of him receiving a blow from a pan or pot directed at his lower leg area and a sharp admonishment that he wasn't doing his job right.

He eventually rose to the upper ranks of this kitchen but then took up a job in another line of work which paid more.  It was a simple case of necessity.  He had gotten married and started a family so his financial responsibilities had grown.  But years later he was approached by a former senior in the restaurant.  His acquaintance had started a ramen shop and he was on the hunt for good people to work in it.  That was the start of a chain of events which saw the story teller end up as the owner/master of the establishment.

The end of the story was the ramen shop owner saying that he did away with hazings in his kitchen once he was the head of the business.  His reason for doing so was a simple "I chose to do so because it (the practice of hazing) had to stop somewhere".  Aye.  In spite of what I witnessed earlier that day, the times they are indeed a changing.