Japan Social Hour

The story I am about to tell belongs more appropriately on the Travelocity.com website than here on the “Originally from South Boston” site. Since I spent the first 32 years of my life in Southie, please permit me to tell it. In 1987, my EPA boss allowed me to head up a team of Engineers from the Commonwealth, the MWRA and our contractors to travel to Japan to learn the technique the Japanese used to treat their wastewater. We were in the planning and design stage for MWRA’s treatment plant on Deer Island. The Japanese had figured a way to maximize use of scarce available land, the same issue we we faced on Deer Island. In order to enter Japan I was told by our EPA headquarters that I had to go through the State Department. When I contacted them they said they would make all the arrangements with the authorities in Tokyo and Osaka and even provide the hotels we were to stay in. That was fine by me.

I won’t bore you with the technical meetings except to say we adopted the Japanese design and that is what is on Deer Island. I would rather like to focus on our overall experience with the Japanese. First when we arrived at the Narita airport in Tokyo after a very long flight from Boston we were confused by the signs. In Europe most signs are in their native language and in English. Not so in Japan. There was one sign I did recognized, ”KOTELLY”. It was held by our van driver and we all began to feel a little more comfortable.

To begin with there may have been some confusion by the Japanese as to whom we represented. Don’t forget all arrangements were made by the State Department. I began to feel after a couple of days that they may have thought we came directly from the Oval Office of the President. Why should I tell them otherwise? They assigned us an engineer who graduated from Cornell and spoke perfect English. Without him we would still be roaming the streets of Tokyo.

One night we asked him to take us to a real Japanese restaurant not generally visited by tourists. We were all required to remove our shoes and don slippers. There were no chairs which meant we had to sit on cushions around a table the size of a football field. Now you may wonder how do you reach food on the opposite side from where you sat. The Japanese have it all figured out. Of course the table rotates on ball bearings. How did we win the War? I sat next to our Cornell colleague and asked what we were eating. Several times he said don’t ask, so I didn’t. The food was fresh because it was still moving when I dipped in the hot oil that was provided. It is not courteous to pour yourself a drink. The protocol is that your neighbor offers you Sake and you do the same for him. You can see where this can lead to. It was a great experience I will never forget.

This is long winded so let me continue another day about our trip to Osaka.