Archive for the ‘ English Posts ’ Category

Bombay To Goa (1) – Getting a car in Bombay

Being tempted by an evil spirit, I finally started looking for a car. You may ask “Do you even have an Indian driver’s license?” Nope! So I started going to a driving school to get an Indian driver’s license at the same time.

I never had the idea of driving a car in Bombay before. Bombay roads are the craziest thing. Cars go down in the wrong direction, crazy traffic jams, street kids and beggars, dogs, cows, goats, and auto-rickshaw, auto-rickshaw, auto-rickshaw…(endless). Also Bombay public transportation is quite convenient. So I used to say “I am not in a rural area of Aichi anymore. A metropolitan doesn’t need a car.”

Things changed after I visited Mahabareshwa and Lonavara, big hill stations near Bombay by car. If you drive just one hour away from Bombay, you have everything that you can’t get in Bombay; beautiful mountains, sea, river, and villages, full of green, clear air, fresh vegetables and fruit, and animals. How nice if I have my own car to visit all places and takes photos.

My old boss used to say “Visualize, so it comes true.” Once there’s a picture in your head, you can’t resist painting it. OK, I want to get a car. I want to drive myself to Lonavara in the rainy season with my friends, or Aliberg beach and eat a king fish. I want to take a long trip along the Konkan coast down to Goa. Alright, that’s my goal in this year; real “Bombay To Goa.” We would play the movie songs with my car stereo on the way.

Only things to do are get a license, become a good and tough driver, and get a good condition car. That shouldn’t be too difficult. Life is always about challenging or not-challenging. Starting a new business, writing a book, playing a trombone, getting married or having a baby; I don’t do all those life-turning things, but buying a small car in a foreign country where I never know when the government suspends my working visa is an enough risky but exciting project. Anyway, the best strategy of life is saying “I do” by heart and then think about how to do that. It’s not the other way around.

My friend said “Yes, you may die by car crash, but at least people will think ‘Oh ok, so she had a car!’, that’s better than just being hit by a car. So don’t worry.” That’s a relief. But no, I will be a super safety driver protected by God for no traffic accident. It’s about visualization.

2011
05/08
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English Posts
Life
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New Blog Address!

Hi, I have moved the blog URL into http://bombaydog.wordpress.com/ to use the blog name in the address. I am sorry for your inconvenience, but please just take your one minutes to open the new URL and subscribe it again with the new address. I will update the blog on the new address from now on.

Thank you very much.

Ai Kanoh

2010
05/01
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English Posts
Life
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Completed Three Years

One of my old senior staff, H, said to me, “Continue three years anyway, so it will be something.” Here, I have just completed three years working for this Indian venture company, and, yeah, may I say it is definitely something to me. I don’t know what exactly it means to me, though.

This is my forth contract with the company. I sign for one year contract every year end. Foreign staff in the company basically works for a few years contract, and I always tell the company that I am comfortable not to sign for more than one year, because in this way, I can always be conscious. I keep questioning how much working for the company and living in India still means to me. Am I still in? I haven’t had an answer of “No”, yet to myself, so I am still here.

In another sense, the company is also safe as they can let me off in one year if I am not performing. It’s simpler. There are many things to do out there. There are many interests. So even though I am quite deep into my job, I try to be flexible and not stick to what I have. Knowing that I could have done many other things out of this company, I choose my work. This way, my decision is more highlighted. I can go anywhere, but I choose to be here.

Everytime my family calls me, they say “So, have you started thinking to come back?” I laugh. I keep telling them I will never come back. But they don’t believe me. But I am serious. I don’t have intention to go back to Japan, nor get a work there and make happy kids. I say to my mother, “When you get old, just come to India so I will take care of you.” They think I am joking, but I am not joking at all. I guess I just want to be away, for a long time.

Now I don’t have time to think through my life plan or whatever. There’s an exciting work and good friends. I wake up and list up works to do on the way to the office, and I sleep after taking memos of ideas on my pillow. I claim my stress and anger to people and share nice dine together. What else do I ask for? Maybe a happy holiday? Anyway, one more year to go. It’s a frontier.

*By the way, my company is hiring Japanese staff now. Check it out:

http://www.i-osmosis.jp/staff/

2010
04/20
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English Posts
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Tibetan Gyoza Stall

Two months ago, one Tibetan family opened a small food stall of momo on the street in front of my office. Momo is a Tibetan food which is very similar to steamed gyoza, Chinese dimsum.

 

A young Tibetan boy opens the small stall at 2 p.m.; the stall is only 1.5 meter wide and 1 meter deep. Very small wooden counter only. He puts a triple-decker steamer on a small gas stove and lines up gyoza which he prepared at home in each level of steamer. Turns on the gas and waits for the first customer. After five when the hottest time is over, his mother joins at the stall and cooks more momos for people who are on the way home.

I found this stall a week ago. I happened to see the handwritten sign on a cardboard hanged up on the street. It said “Momo, Veg/Non-Veg, Rs. 20.” They serve 5 pieces of momo with a cup of vegetable soup. The momo, especially their veg-momos remind me the nostalgic Japanese gyoza taste (which I don’t remember exactly since I haven’t had it for more than three years). Since then, I go to the stall almost every day and have a plate of momos.

 

Everytime I go, I explain to the shopkeepers how much I like their momos and how it’s better than the fake momos sold in fancy shopping malls. The mother says “Of course it’s good because I cook it here in front of you. It’s fresh, and it’s a real Tibetan momos.” She actually doesn’t speak so much English, and I don’t speak Hindi, so a book shop keeper next of the momo stall jumps in and translates for us in between.

Before I came to India, I had never thought of myself finding nostalgia in Tibet. Tibet was a far and mysterious country that I never be related. But we have similar features; many Indian people recognize me as Tibetan. And here in Bombay, where the signs of Japan are so lack, I feel like Tibet is another blood family and Tibetan momos make me feel safe.

 

I guess Tibetan people living in Bombay also miss the country and find Japanese people as a little closer relative. They are often waiters at restaurants, local shop keepers, or beauticians. When they see me, they ask my name and nationality. Indian people also do the same thing often, but with more curiosity to things that is not familiar for them. But Tibetan people do this with more friendly gesture, and whatever my answer is, they look like satisfied to find a similar face person near by them anyway.  

Strangely, the Tibetan momo is becoming the taste of my sweet home nonetheless I’ve never been to Tibet in my life. Maybe…., one looks for a connection, especially being away.

2010
04/12
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English Posts
Life
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Mango as Happiness and Love

My two friends recently got married. They both are very important people who became my friends after I am grown up and spent time together at a turning point of my life. The best part of their marriage is that when I visit one of them, I can see both of them at the same time, anytime, for the rest of my life.

 

This summer brought us sweet yellow mangoes. Mango season in India is only two months from April and May. April is for Alphonso mangoes which is our favorite. I go to a fruit shop and buy some pieces of mangoes, and say the shopkeeper “A very little kindness would be appreciated.” He gives a smile and discount about ten rupees or so.

 

Alphonso Mangoes have less fiber. While pealing the skin, the fresh melts by the pressure, so you may start swallowing in the kitchen sink and finish it there. Indian people mash a mango fresh without pealing the skin, and open a small hall on top and swallow it like a mango shake. This is easy way to have a mango effectively.

 

Haruki Murakami repeatedly writes about the importance of memories for a person’s life in his novels. We would be caught by a disaster, unlucky fate, or pathetic loneliness. The world is a tough place. Life is not an amusement park. But even so, if we try hard to remember good memories, even if it’s very few, and save them carefully as fuel of the heart, it warms us up and helps to go on.

 

I think the taste of Alphonso mangoes will be one of my small memories which helps me long term in the future. The happy yellow color, the heavenly sweetness, the smell, the faces of friends who shared one mango together in a late Sunday afternoon. Remembering them, I feel better. Feeling better, I go to a fruit market to buy some more, or call my friends talk about the memories. Every summer. Things continue. Maybe love and happiness of my life has the form of a small yellow mango.

2010
04/04
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English Posts
Life
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Inside Out

I recently found myself wearing my underwear inside out at least once a week. People notice they wear their undies inside out when they take shower. Today I noticed it because some design of my underwear is not on the front, and I recalled I found the same thing last week, and two weeks ago…, and so on. I wonder what it means. I hope many people also do the same thing often. 

One reason is I am in a very bad mood when I wake up. Every morning, I feel like being a vampire getting up from the coffin after one hundred years. My eyes half size, my mouth dry, and all parts of my body are too stiffening like the woodman of tin. My character becomes nastier and meaner than usual. So I don’t want to see anyone I like in two hours after getting up because they hate me.

For example, my grandmother once visited me in early morning, and now strictly avoids seeing me before nine a.m. After the incident, she was so angry and said to my mother, “Ai is not her in the morning, and I am hurt by that fact.”

Anyway, I am weak in the morning, so when I am getting on cloths in the morning, I am half unconscious plus so busy for cursing the world. I often try to wear underwear upside down, but this I notice because the size of the halls is different. But I can’t notice the inside out thing at the moment.

I guess it’s not a serious problem. People are the existence of ambiguous. We can be stupid in some way, and we can be intelligent in another way at the same time. I believe so, and I am right. I mean I have an intelligent aspect too, while wearing underwear upside down or inside out once a week.

In the same way, other people who look clever must have many different weakness or stupid tendencies. Some people sleep with open eyes (My uncle is this, and which is really scary), or others often take face wash for teeth paste or contact lens cleaner for mouse wash. It doesn’t matter where you come from or who you are, how much you are serous or fooling around. I guess, or more like, I hope so. I feel easy in this way.

2010
03/29
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English Posts
Life
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Goodbye Prawns

My old university friend once told a story about her father’s prawn allergy. Her father is very fond of prawns and ate prawns almost every day. One day, after he finished his usual dinner with prawns, he noticed he got rush and went to a nearby hospital. The doctor announced him very shocking news. “You ate prawns beyond your limit of your body. You are now allergic to prawns and can never eat them in your life.”

My friend explained it is somewhat like pollinosis. We are exposed to pollen for a long time, but we don’t normally get any symptom. But in a long term, some people receive pollen over their body limit at a certain point of their life, and they suddenly become allergic to pollen and there’s no reversibility. The same thing happened to her father with his favorite prawns.

I thought she was talking big, and I didn’t believe it. But it seems like the same thing happened to me, too.

One Friday, I finished my work and had a drink and nice dinner with my colleagues. Usually we eat something nicer in weekends. Beef steaks, seafood pasta, pan fried big piece of fish with salad, or king prawn barbeque. They are a bit expensive, so we only eat them for some special occasion; a cerebration, or a medication for daily stress. This time, I chose the prawn barbeque. A happy Friday night.

One and a half days later, at 4 a.m in Sunday morning, I woke up because my entire body was burning and super itchy. I took off my cloths and checked each body parts. I would call it a human body map. Many part of my skin were swelled like continents. And while you are observing, a continent disappear wiped clean at a part, and then another continent appear at another part. Some kind of continental drift was happening there. They were growing and the ocean parts are disappearing.

Indian hospitals are open on Sunday. I went to see a dermatologist. The doctor is surprised and said “You ate cell fish or prawns.” I said “Yes, I did, but that was on Friday.” He explained that some type of prawn causes the allergic symptoms after two days. “Yours is very serious. It will come to your face, throat, and whole body very soon, so I will give you an injection and very strong medicines for ten days.”

Why prawns, why now? Then I recalled I had a full plate of king prawns every day in Goa one month back. I went to a trip to Goa alone, where’s famous for seafood cuisines. Most of the time, I didn’t have someone to share food, so I ate like ten pieces of big prawns alone everyday. Did I pass my entire life prawn limit? My prawn limit was coming to 99.9% in Goa, and I just passed the 100% in the very Friday night? Seafood is a very big part of my life and identity. I have no idea how I could live without the taste of prawns for the rest of my life.

Maybe after this rush is over, maybe after a few months, I would try having a chunk of prawn to prove my friend was telling a lie about her father. If I prove opposite…, I don’t know. Another story begins; my life without prawns (no one may not be interested in the story, though).

2010
03/17
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English Posts
Life
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Love of Sales

Sales is like the smell of the fresh cookies from the oven in front of a Cookieman shop. To make the effect doubly sure, they pass a piece of cookie to my hand for free. It’s a killer, a bad boy. I can’t resist opening the zipper (of my purse).

In another words, sales is like talking about the amazing trip to Swaziland I went last month. I can’t wait to tell everyone how great it was. The amazing view of the mountains, lakes. Beautiful and nice people. Unbelievably delicious cuisine. I would save my hundred pictures in my iPod and show anyone at any opportunity. Next day, some of my friends google about Swaziland, and in the next holiday, they say “I also booked a ticket to Swaziland because you said it’s amazing.”

My colleague was recently studying a successful car brand’s promotional blog. Primary, the purpose was to learn their logical flow line of the users. After she learnt something, she called up a meeting and said, “Ai san, I am shocked. What was lack was my love to our service. I should have been expressing how we love our service more.”

In the car brand’s blog, people talks about how and how much they like the brand’s car. Users, designers, engineers; they talk about their favoritism of the car from all possible directions. So she realized she has forgotten to talk out her love about our service; that’s the base of the sales.

Pureness is the place to come back anytime when we are trapped in a business labyrinth. “We have a good product that we believe other people also love it. That’s why we want to talk about it to make people understand how good it is. If they use it and became happier, we are also happy.”

Here’s the matter for marketing staff. Believing we work for a good product is the single real motivation of ours. When we find any tiny evidence that our product is not good enough to recommend to people, our identity and existence value breaks down at the moment. We don’t want to be a liar. A service and sales should be as close as a cookie and the cookie smell.

2010
03/11
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Upgrading Me

I am from Aichi, where TOYOTA dominates the economy. In Aichi, you can see everyone drive TOYOTA cars on the street, because they are not allowed to buy other brands’ cars. Pretty high percent of people have a friend or relatives who work for TOYOTA in a way (even if they are not TOYOTA employees, they work for affiliate or outsourcing companies of TOYOTA).

For example, if I buy a non-TOYOTA car, it put my relative who works as a sales manager in TOYOTA in a hard position in the company. It’s somewhat like he has a Christian in his family in Edo era of Japan in which everyone has to be Buddhist by the government rule. It’s a crime. It’s out of the law. We don’t want to ruin our happy family life. Besides, TOYOTA should be doing good to keep the Aichi economy and, actually TOYOTA makes good cars for sure. So, why not?

There, people buy a new car more than five times in their life. Typically, one family has three cars for father, mother, and a grown-up child. You can tell the financial status of the family if you check the garage. Upper middleclass family buy high speck cars, middle class family have compact cars, and lower middle class family have minicars which TOYOTA doesn’t produce.

So, that means, we don’t have choices. If I live in TOYOTA Corolla life style, I buy the same TOYOTA corolla every ten years. Also, if one gets used to driving one type of car, they want the same type of car for convenience and safety reason. For this cycle, TOYOTA does model changes very frequently for the loyal customers’ satisfaction in changing and not-changing. No one wants to buy the exact same car, but they don’t want to buy a total different car, either. If there’s the same, but much evolved car, it’s worth to buy.

Imagine you love your wife. You don’t want any other woman. This woman is actually from outer space and gets old much faster than you and she has to replace her appearance (this situation is not realistic, though). Isn’t it nice to have the same her with the same identity and charm, but a bit younger, little cuter, having nicer body, knowing more variety of recipes and techniques? It’s like that, in my understanding.

Upgrade is the basic biology of a car company. They know their husbands very well. If they don’t do model change, but launch new cars with different names often instead, they kind of give the clients the opportunities to change the car brand itself, which shouldn’t be the case. To be a beloved wife forever, just as we are, we have to be changing or upgrading ourselves every now and then. “I am still me who you loved, but am just a bit better than before.” Maybe that’s the way for a brand or even for myself.

2010
03/04
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A Mature Consumer Culture

The moment I miss Japan at most in India is when ripping a plastic bag of snacks. It’s because it doesn’t open by hands. I concentrate all my force on the cut line where’s supposed to be open, get exhausted, even get a headache, and finally find myself looking for a pair of seizers. If it’s a Japanese product, we don’t get one single defective package in like ten years of your life.

Twenty years ago, when I was child, there were many defective snack bags. I remember I often take a snack to my father to ask open it. Sometimes my father also couldn’t open it, and said “Why don’t you use your brain and bring me seizers?” People didn’t care. Those were actually not categorized in defective products. A cut line was just an additional service those days, and the consumers believed they paid for the snack inside the bag, and not for the convenience of the package. Simple, old days.

Now, people even pay for the convenience of package more than for the inside. If a customer is forced to take three minutes to open one potato chips bag, she may throw it to a dust bin and buy another maker’s one. The values have changed, and there are more and more choices. There, people think this way; if you can’t maintain the factory to produce proper, 100% user-friendly packages, how could you produce tasty and safe potato chips? Competition is severe in Japan, and 1/100,000 of defected product may kill the potato chips company.

Although Mumbai is a commercial city in India, I feel the competitions for local consumers are not serious at all. People don’t demand more than quality of content. If a bakery makes tasty bread, it doesn’t matter if the bread is wrapped in an old newspaper. Practical and ecological. And that’s everything we need. An Indian anti may say, “If the potato chips bag doesn’t open, what’s the matter to use a pair of seizers? What’s wrong with you fussing about such a small thing?” I know, I know, it is a small thing. But I am a spoiled Japanese consumer.

Some may say Japan has a mature consumer culture. Potato chips makers compete for even a small difference of chemical material of the plastic package day to day, and struggle to produce a product which is a little easier to rip than other makers. Consumers don’t need to use their brain. They don’t need to be clever. They can only think which maker’s product they should buy, and that is the only point to show their creativity.

Why don’t we just use seizers instead?

Hmm, I don’t even know which a more matured consumer culture is. It might be the matter where this “mature” has more strong relation; to consumer or to culture.

2010
03/01
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