This is 3Bits & Change, an email about building a service and retail knife shop business. This one was written to some Taylor from my iPhone speaker in a hotel in Tokyo.
Good day,
I landed in Tokyo and smelled terrible. Like really bad. You know the feeling of 14 hours on a plane, right? I walked the 15 mins of squiggly lines at the border and filled out a few forms. On the other side, meat sniffing dogs paid no attention to me. They must not have had good noses.
I attempted to get a train ticket from a kiosk and then remembered, I’ve been here before. I walked up to the reader with my NFC Passmo card pulled up on my phone and gained quick access to the rails (beep) and made the express trip to the hotel. Easy.
Welcome to Japan. Welcome to Tokyo.
8PM was the target
I made it to 6PM before I could not stay awake anymore.
I had Ramen at a place at 5PM while reading a cliff notes version of the book, The Toyota Way. So much of what I’ve observed in this country is like that book… and a whole bunch of it is not.
The fried oysters were lovely. The sauce made it. The chef was making many little skewers of meat. I bet the dogs at the airport would have gone nuts! He used a double bevel 7 inch western style slicer on the chicken. He was left handed - something I’ve heard is very unusual to be as a chef here. The overhead jazz was fantastic! The whole thing was something like 1,684 yen - not more than $12 USD.
Upon returning to the room I realized I had not picked up cash. So I went back out to grab 50,000 on Thursday so I could get more Friday.
Learn by doing
Momentum is tricky. I need to remember that once in motion coming off a long international flight I need to stay in motion. If I stop… it’s an enormous amount of will power to get going again. And I’ll pick a different part of town to stay ing because of what I want to see in the future… not because it was easy.
I was so excited to shower. The hotel seemed great. It was easy to walk to from the train, etc. Then I realized there are no coffee shops here, no art, no night life, no cooking things, no knife shops, etc. There was very little shopping. This hotel is a water park attraction with rooms that make getting to the rail lines easy.
I’ll plan to stay near the stuff I’d like to explore in the future, not just where it’s easy.
I forgot… there is bery Little coffee before 10AM
Observations from my last trip remain in force. There is no eating or drinking in public, including on commuter trains. Folks are super orderly and organized.
And, there is no coffee for hours when wake up at 4:00AM local time. Get to 7-11. Those white bread egg sandwiches are fantastic. And I prefer them over Family Mart’s
Change
While school lunch is being paid for in 8 states this year the 12 or so years of debt many districts keep on their books remains. Senator Fetterman has proposed a bill to eliminate them. Link to S.2876.
On Your Way
Hope you had a great Friday. It was good here.
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