Where does Mama’s warmth come from?
There is so much I can learn from her.
She is bright and innocent — almost as if cheerful, carefree innocence had simply put on some clothes and started walking around.
She is so different from me.
Sometimes her easygoing nature makes me think, “I wish you’d be a little more careful.”
But I know that probably comes from my own overly serious personality.
At the same time, there are many things about her that I admire.
Sometimes I think,
“I wonder what the world would look like if I could be a little more like her.”
She is innocent, cheerful, pure-hearted, and almost entirely made of positive thinking.
I tend to think and think and keep thinking.
Mama is different.
First, she acts.
She has that kind of power.
Could I ever become like her?
Well…
Sometimes I think I couldn’t.
Or perhaps I should say I wouldn’t necessarily want to. 😅
But there are also many times when I think that if I could become just a little more like her, my world might look very different.
When it comes to running chiduru, of course, there would be little point in having two people with exactly the same personality.
I mainly take care of the accounting.
If I allowed myself to be as generous as Mama is, the business might fall over very quickly. 😅
So perhaps this is our balance.
One of us is carefree and generous.
The other is cautious.
That may be necessary when running a small business.
But when I think about the kind of person I would like to become, Mama is still one of my goals.
I’m still studying. 😊
Although we are close in age, our personalities are completely different.
So one day I began wondering where that difference came from.
I started thinking about our childhoods.
Thanks to my parents, I grew up without having to worry very much about money or everyday necessities.
Looking back, I think my family was relatively comfortable.
Mama’s childhood was very different.
Perhaps because I grew up without experiencing much hardship, there are feelings I simply cannot understand from experience.
I naturally judge things through the limits of the life I have lived.
And when I listen to Mama, I realize how different those limits can be.
Mama can say quite casually,
“When I was a child, we couldn’t even pay my school lunch fee!”
She laughs when she says it.
But I never had an experience like that.
So although I might have looked at a child whose family couldn’t pay the school lunch fee and thought, “That’s sad,” I don’t think I could truly understand what that child was feeling.
The embarrassment.
The frustration.
The pain of boys in the class calling out,
“Poor! Poor!”
I could feel sorry for that child.
But feeling sorry for someone and actually imagining yourself standing in that person’s place are not always the same thing.
Perhaps those painful and humiliating experiences slowly helped form Mama’s ability to think about other people’s feelings. 🤔
But poverty alone cannot explain it.
Many people of our generation grew up in difficult circumstances.
Not all of them became like Mama.
I have also seen people who became deeply attached to money because they wanted to escape the memory of poverty.
Some learned to take from others.
Some became concerned only with protecting themselves.
So I don’t think a difficult childhood automatically makes a person kind.
It isn’t that simple.
When Mama talks to me about her childhood, one thing appears again and again.
The people she met.
Mama often tells me that she hated lunchtime on school excursions.
Her lunch would sometimes be only two large rice balls.
And they were wrapped in newspaper.
Imagine being a child, surrounded by classmates, and having to open a simple lunch wrapped in newspaper.
She didn’t want anyone to see it.
So she would eat alone.
And again, some of the boys would tease her.
But one day, while she was feeling terribly embarrassed, a girl who was her friend stood up for her.
“Stop that!”
She told the boys.
I think encounters like that helped shape Mama.
That girl was apparently from the Goto Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture.
Many years later, after Mama came to Kagoshima, she tried to find her again.
But so much time had passed that they were never able to meet again.
Even now, Mama speaks of that girl with enormous gratitude.
She has told me that part of the person she is today exists because of that friend.
Mama was shy as a child and was often bullied.
That girl was apparently the one person who remained her friend.
Perhaps because someone protected her kindness when she was young, Mama was able to grow up without losing that part of herself.
Even today, she doesn’t say cruel things about people.
She doesn’t seem to think that way very often either.
Sometimes she really does seem like a child who simply grew older without losing the child inside.
Which is probably why I need to be the sensible one and support her properly. 😊
There are many people who help Mama now.
We have also been fortunate to meet customers who support chiduru.
And because of them, I am able to continue too.
When I think about why this little place has survived, I don’t think it is because Mama possesses some sophisticated sales technique.
It is much simpler than that.
I think it is because of the way she cares about people.
Some people who read this blog may think that everything a business does for a customer is ultimately a form of marketing.
I understand why someone might think that.
But when you actually watch Mama closely, it becomes difficult to explain her actions only in those terms.
Something a customer says in an ordinary conversation may suddenly remind her of her own childhood.
And then she starts thinking about what she can do.
Because I handle the accounts, I sometimes tell her,
“This customer may only visit us once a month, or even less. Wouldn’t it be better to provide an appropriate level of service rather than spend that much?”
Mama barely listens.
“People help each other when they’re in trouble!”
Or,
“We’ve already started, so let’s see it through!”
That is usually the end of the discussion. 😅
If we wanted to define everything strictly, perhaps these actions could still be called part of running a business.
But if they were truly calculated sales activities, I doubt many people would continue doing them even when they lose money.
When I return from delivering something to a customer, Mama never asks me,
“Will they come back to the shop?”
Instead she asks,
“Was ○○ doing well?”
“Were they happy?”
Those little questions probably tell you more than I can explain.
This was another thing that began simply because Mama started worrying about someone.
She is always asking,
“What might be troubling our customers?”
I hear that question again and again during our morning conversations.
Especially when it concerns someone who has supported us for a long time.
One customer lived alone and was extremely busy.
Mama had heard that he often ate something very simple for lunch.
She began worrying about whether he was eating properly.
Then one morning, during our usual discussion, she suddenly said,
“Order a lunch jar for me.”
I assumed she wanted to use it for a picnic.
I was completely wrong.
I still had a long way to go before understanding the way Mama thinks. 😅
When the lunch jar arrived, she looked at it happily for a while.
Then she immediately made a meal and said,
“Let’s take this to ○○!”
There is something subtle here that is difficult for me to explain.
It isn’t simply,
“I want this person to be happy.”
That sounds almost as if the action begins with an intention to produce a particular reaction.
With Mama, it often feels earlier than that.
She thinks about someone.
And then her heart simply makes her move.
That is the part I still need to learn.
Money is important to us.
Very important.
chiduru is a small business, and we certainly do not have endless resources.
In fact, because Mama’s ideas strongly influence how we use our profits — and because the economy is what it is — chiduru never seems very far from financial trouble. 😅
And yet, I have come to think that perhaps this is all right.
One of Mama’s favorite sayings is:
“A person truly lives by living for other people.”
We survived the extremely difficult years of the COVID-19 pandemic without taking on debt.
That was possible because customers continued to support us.
And I think it was also connected to this way Mama sees people.
If people who understand that heart are the ones who have helped keep us alive, then perhaps our own time and profit should sometimes come last.
We should do what we can for the people who understand us.
We should continue returning the kindness we have received.
Perhaps that is the only method of survival that two people with very little power were ever given.
Please stay with me just a little longer. 🙇♀️
Because chiduru is run by people like us, I don’t think it always feels like the image many people have of a Japanese snack bar.
Customers have said things like,
“What exactly is this place?”
“This doesn’t really feel like a snack bar.”
One person even called it a karaoke box. 😅
So yes, we probably sit quite far outside the typical image people have of a snack bar.
We show photographs of the interior on our website and timeline.
There is almost nothing luxurious about it.
It is a rather inexpensive-looking, slightly strange little place.
So someone visiting for the first time may very well walk in and think,
“What is this place?” 😅
And the things I have written about today are not necessarily things you would notice on a first visit.
Perhaps they only become visible after spending time with us again and again.
Maybe they are not impressive things at all.
Still, every evening, we try to help our customers have a good night.
And then, if possible,
a slightly better night.
That is what we continue trying to do.
Perhaps this is simply Mama’s way of being Mama.
And perhaps, little by little, it has become part of what chiduru is too. 😊
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