TAKE THE BULLET TRAIN

TAKE THE BULLET TRAIN

Yesterday, over a “few” beers I told my friend Dennis about one of my stays in Japan.

In the mid seventies, I was working at Kawasaki Steel in Kobe Japan. I was installing a Zenzamer rolling mill that would be making transformer steel. The mill itself was built by Waterbury Ferrel in Waterbury Connecticut. A zenzamer mill is a complicated machine that rolls extremely precise cold roll steel. I worked for LFE Corp who built the control system. It was a non-contact gauge that used a radioactive Americium isotope gamma source that could penetrate steel. The gauge also automatically controlled the gauge, thickness, of the steel in real time.

Working in Japan was a real adventure. I stayed at the Hotel Newport, what would be called a boutique hotel nowadays. It was a real Japanese hotel, not at all like a Holiday Inn, with tatami mats and in the evening after dinner your little Japanese bed was laid out on the floor with a hot rock to help keep me warm..

I and the guy from Waterbury worked all day in the extremely clean mill. Japanese factories are much different than most other plants. Not only are they clean but if a Japanese foreman tells a worker to pick up a hose, or something, the worker doesn’t say not my job, he bows and then runs over to the hose, or whatever and coils it and hangs it up.

My Waterbury cohort was actually a pilot in the Luftwaffe in WWII. He was drafted near the very end of WW2 at the tender age of sixteen. He had about four hours of flight training and then was shoved into a Messerschmidt. He was happy to have survived his three of four missions before the war ended. One evening, after work hans and I went to a local bar and had a few Kirins. Hans made a benjo call. When Hans was out of ear shot two round eyed guy s at the next table wanted to know if Hans had been in the Air Force. He said to me that he had been a pilot in the Air Force and he had never heard of any of the airplanes that Hans was talking about. I said the question should be who’s Air Force. He asked who’s and I replied Hitler’s.  

When the job was done, I tried called our trading company’s office in Tokyo. I had no idea on how to use a pay phone to make a long distance in Japan. Besides, my Japanese language skills weren’t up to the task. I ended up standing in front of a bank of green payphones looking very pitiful with my hand extended a handful of Yen saying Kudasai dingwa.

A Japanese guy with short beard walked up to me and said in English “Don’t you know how to use a pay phone in Japan? No, I did not. 

 

 

Back then, at least, while you were talking, when you heard a tone in your earpiece, you had to feed the beast more coins. I talked to someone in the Tokyo who instructed me to buy a ticket on the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train, and then call back and tell them what train and what carriage I’d be riding  in and someone would be waiting for me on the platform. Right now I should explain two things. The first is if the ticket says that the arrival time is 2:32, the train will arrive at 2:32. No sooner and no later. When you board, or get off of, the train there will be a big colored square painted  on the platform precisely where the door to your carriage will be. The second thing is should you get lost in the Tokyo train station, you are screwed. You’re a goner. It is below street level and is massive. I did get turned around one time and I had to go up stairs to get my bearings and then go back down again.

As for the guy who came to my rescue, I said that I was very lucky that he came along when he did and asked him where he was from. He replied “Chicago”. I asked if he was here in Tokyo on a vacation or on business. He replied a little of both. He explained to me that he had a Japanese restaurant in Chicago and the price of the wooden one use chopsticks that you break apart was getting very pricy. The chopsticks were made in Japan but there was no real timber so the wood had to be imported from another country. Manufactured and then re-shipped to the USA and elsewhere. He knew there were a few manufactures in the Kobe area and his family was from Kobe so he thought he’d come over and visit his long lost distant family and do some business. He went to a manufacturing plant and looked at their machines. He told them these were beautiful machines but they only make bamboo chopsticks. He wanted to buy a machine that made wooden chopsticks. He told me the guy looked at him and said “They make those in Chicago”.