Hang in There

I and my husband had dinner at a soba restaurant yesterday near Ginza, Tokyo. The restaurant is not fancy, but the owner and chefs are all very nice. It is getting increasingly difficult to find staff at restaurants or shops who speak using their brains without referring to manuals...

It had been two months before we went there last time and during the two-month period, the neighborhood had completely changed. The building in which the soba restaurant is located was surrounded by other taller buildings under construction.

The restaurant owner said that real estate value had been rising in Japan because of the Olympic bubble economy, so the area had been targeted by condo developers. He also said that he had been approached by a travel agent last year and asked if he was interested in serving soba courses for tourists from Asian countries. Although this would have brought him a quite amount of revenue for lunch, because the number of customers during the lunch time was guaranteed by the agent, he had said no. He was more interested in having more personal time and staying healthy.  

The owner said that one of the chefs, who had been his business partner for more than 30 years, had got sick and taken an operation two days earlier. He said that the chef would not come back.

Again, it is getting more and more difficult to find someone making decisions based on the idea that having money is useless unless you are in good health and spirit and have time to spend it!

When leaving the restaurant, we promised to celebrate in two and half years, that is, right after the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, that our prophecy, i.e., those benefiting from the bubble economy would all go to hell, had come true.

We all were aware that we might have gone there before they would....

But anyway, I want the owner and the chef to hang in there.