Chapter 1
My name is Peter Edwardes and this is the story of an amazing weekend I had in Tokyo.
I had been working in Tokyo then for about five years. I had come over to see an Exhibition and just stayed on, originally working as a language teacher but in the last couple of years I had set up a small business, mainly in the name of a local colleague named Showie. Well actually Shoichi Hadazo but Showie is what everyone calls him.
I had started the part-time importing of foodstuffs for expatriates that the shops rarely stocked. I started with a dozen jars of mustard and then the same of pickle and then of tea. Silly really. Nobody needs those sort of goods when local versions are completely adequate but there is still an ex-pat demand.
When I needed larger supplies to put in shops rather than deliver personally I needed a local name, a delivery-in base and help with the accounts and local taxations. Showie supplied all this for 70% of the profits. I just placed the goods in the shops or continued to deliver direct where appropriate. We had moved up from just British goods to American, French and even some German sausage and sauerkraut. We were doing okay.
One of our problems in spreading our distribution base fairly widely was that we had a few little shops that somehow never got round to paying us. We gave them 30 days but then I would go round and demand the money or try and take the goods off the shelves if they hadn't sold.
One way and another, this was a bit of a pain.
Eventually with three or four really bad payers we decided to go to a debt recovery agent who would pay us a small percentage immediately and up to fifty percent of the value if they reclaimed the money themselves.
And that's how I managed to find myself on Tokyo station on a Friday at around four o'clock meeting Yuki Honda. We had met a couple of times before, strictly on business. He was one of their senior collectors, our contact at the company. We had got on rather well I thought. I had joked about whether he was a member of the Car dynasty to which he looked a little bemused until I explained. It transpired that Honda is really one of the commonest Japanese surnames.
On behalf of his company Yuki had invited Showie to a customer's weekend down near Shimoda, a coastal resort just outside of Tokyo, just to a simple Japanese Inn. Showie was unable to go and asked whether he could send his senior partner, me. He told me that I would enjoy it and to make sure to take my golf clubs along.
So there I was, at Tokyo central Station, golf clubs and a bag of casual weekend clothes, standing under the clock looking for a small dark haired guy with glasses similarly equipped.
Things went like clockwork, as they always do in Japan, and before I knew what was happening I was seated on a bullet train with Yuki heading for the coast.
We had a beer or three, well I did, Yuki didn't drink a lot and we talked mainly about golf. What the local course was like, handicaps, what sort of competition we would play? How many people were in the group? Idle chatter. It seemed that there were twelve of us up for the weekend leaving tea time Sunday. We were certainly playing Saturday and maybe Sunday, probably a simple Stableford competition. What did surprise me was there were six members of the company, all fairly senior and six guests, one each from a customer.
I guessed it was a good way of getting perks for the management.
We would be staying at a Ryokan, a traditional Inn, often with hot spring baths with tatami mats and usually ten courses of raw fish plus some cold porridge for breakfast. I always found that the evening meals were magnificent but raw fish and cold porridge at breakfast was too much for me. I would always ask for just coffee but often ended up with only green tea. I just hoped that I had a room of my own because quite often the larger rooms were used as dormitories.
They had organised a bus for the eight of us that were on the train. I assumed that some had driven down or possible gone down earlier.
The bus was pretty quiet. Certainly nobody spoke to me so I had had no reason to show that I spoke Japanese. I could see some of the others giving me odd looks. I usually found it better to surprise people, perhaps put them on the back foot if they said something about me, which I had obviously understood. I guess I understood their reticence to talk to me. There is still quite a lot of Gaijin (foreigner) phobia around particularly in rural Japan. As it happens my Japanese was absolutely fluent with no specific accent. I am told that on the telephone you could not tell that you were talking to a Gaijin. I guess I would be classed as a bit of a nerd generally, so while I had not found studying the language particularly easy it had absorbed me to the extent that it would have been the only really decent thing on my CV. I was certainly good enough to put people at their ease once we had started talking. Perhaps tell a political joke or two on the golf course.
Anyway here we were just before seven, our golf bags had been left for the hotel to store and our clothes bags had been whisked away to our rooms. The first of the alcohol was laid out on trestle tables in a room that was obviously going to be used for dinner. There was the usual choice of beer, soft drinks, sake and at the back whisky and sho-chu, a sort of plum brandy. There would be some unsteady heads on the golf course next day.
A line of low tables had been put out in the normal way, six on one side six on the other. I am very comfortable sitting on the floor now, I have got used to it, particularly as there were cushions to sit on.
We all had a few drinks and I did at least get to meet most of the people, including their Chairman and their Finance Director. They were nothing but charming as soon as they realised that I spoke fluent Japanese and was comfortable with small talk and business shop-talk.
After nearly an hour we were advised that we should be off to our rooms to change and freshen up and would be expected to be back in the dining room for dinner at eight thirty and that the dress code for dinner was the yukatas, or dressing gowns, that were supplied to the room. This was very informal and pointed to a short evening and an early start in the morning. I was delighted to be shown to a small, but traditional, tastefully decorated room, looking out over a scrupulously neat little garden with its own bathroom. Wonder of wonders.
We gathered and I was seated toward the middle with Yuki immediately opposite me and their chairman in the other middle chair to his left. All we guests were on the one side as is usual. We started off with beers and before long I was drinking the sake as well. It is normal to keep the person sitting opposite you topped up with alcohol from the bottle or flask so Yuki had a full-time job on his hands.
We had a really good meal. The works, sushi, sashimi, tempura, a soup or two and a shabu-shabu, effectively as a main course. It is an unusual main even in good restaurants and I wondered how much the fact that they were entertaining a Gaijin had affected the menu. It really is quite a touristy dish where you cook the meat yourself, in this case wafer thin pieces of wagyu beef, in stock mixed with vegetables, noodles and chillis. Whoever it was for, I really appreciated it and made sure that our hosts knew.
It was nearly eleven o'clock and I was ready for sleep in order to have a cool head on the golf course in the morning.
It was then that I realised by the actions of the others around me that we were expecting some form of entertainment. I wondered whether it would be in order to miss it but decided that would be too rude.
Sure enough in a few moments, there was a nod from a guy at the back of the room where a full length curtain fell over what appeared to be a low stage.
