Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "The Life of an Old School Japanese Cafe Owner" video.

  1. Great job Bobby, and again Greg with the great editing in a more behind the curtains role! xD Really felt the style coming through. This video made me reflect a bit on my own family, particularly grandparents. I dunno how it is for other countries, but small family run shops nowadays, at least where I live, are kinda rare. It's either small shops entirely run by hired staff, which are often just doing a job they don't really care all that much about just trying to make a living for themselves or as a step to something they really want to do in the future, or big chains and big business that implemented all sorts of rules and whatnot so that it runs to a certain standard and never strays from it - for the good and bad. But I remember my own grandparents because they ran a small bar/candy shop/coffee shop mix business in a tiny rural town where my mom grew up in. It's really small, always fluctuated between 2000 and 5000 inhabitants. My grandfather always prided himself about some stuff that he took great care in the shop. I got to enjoy some of it when I was a kid, along with cousins of the same age. The business was entirely family run, and it was actually an extension of the house they lived in. My great grandparents had a small ranch relatively close to the town. Long gone memories because everything changed. When my grandparents died, the then already almost abandoned small ranch got sold to the usual owners of large tracts of land for big agribusiness because my uncles who still lived closeby just had no way of doing anything worth with it, my grandparents too old to do anything with it too. There was no reason to keep it, because a small ranch like that couldn't compete with anything as a business. The town business itself also closed down, as one of the few last remaining businesses that attended that portion of town, which used to be the central part of town. But at that point, it was already mostly abandoned because of a change in demographics. My uncle at that time was, if I'm not mistaken, working as an immigrant in Japan. He came back when his parents, my grandparents, health was worsening, and just stayed here as the conditions for immigrants working in Japan also weren't as great as when he initially went there. He spent I think almost 30 years of his life working there, mostly industrial work like making and installing shoji panels, among others - together with brothers, and at one point a few of his daughters, my cousins. Though my cousins only stayed there for a couple of years or so. As for the change in town, the kids of families who had a business there mostly moved away to neighboring bigger cities in search for work, education, better health infrastructure or some other reason. Eventually, entire families also moved, as they aged. The core original inhabitants and families of the town just moved away or passed away over the years. Newcomers into town were mostly poor families searching for jobs in the agricultural sector, lots of them were temporary work, or people who worked at neighboring bigger cities looking for a cheaper place to live. As they moved into the town, they mostly went to live in the opposite side of town where new neighborhoods were popping up. This resulted in the town center shifting away, all the commerce either moved close to that side, or just closed off and newer shops opened up there instead. Small city like that only needs a few markets, drugstores, and whatnot. When older commerce started either moving or shutting down, the entire city center went with it. The bar portion of my family's house converted into a garage. Old furniture and general furnishings of the bar either got back into the house or were sold, gifted to family members, or just trashed. I think one of my cousins still has an old wind up all wooden clock like the one Ohkuma-san has in his Cafe. Then after several years, my uncle passed working in a painter job. Too much heat, he had a stroke, it was very sudden. His wife still lived for more years in that house, along with a couple of my cousins until they married and also moved away. Then, because of ailing health issues my aunt also ended up moving with one of my cousins to a neighboring bigger city just a couple of years before she also passed. And their old home, a multi story ancient house that my uncle had built portions of it by himself, is now there, left as inheritance to my cousins. It's too old, a lot of it was poorly built, it has foundation problems, and it's in a part of the town that is largely abandoned nowadays. There is a huge part of the extended family that loves that house because it was the place everyone gathered in end years festivities since the family is all spread around the country, so there are lots of memories there. In my childhood, we made visits bi-annually, and then later at least once a year - we live quite far off. It's the home, town and environment my mom grew in. But the reality of it is that other than sentimental value, the house isn't really worth anything. Hard to rent, hard to sell. Probably the reality of several of the inaka houses in Japan. It's too big, it's setup in a multi story fashion, and no one wants to make a family business like that nowadays, particularly in that side of town. So it's been abandoned for several years now. Along with many things that used to be from the time it was a bar/coffee shop/candy shop. It'd likely already been sold if it wasn't for the fact that no one wants it. I think it briefly got rented for a while, but the tenants were criminals doing some bad stuff there, which happens a lot in these types of situations. Cousins were worried about people invading and occupying the space, which also often happens in these cases in my country, but thing is that the town is so small, and the house in such an abandoned part of it, that it never happened so far. There is also a dispute between cousins wanting to sell it and not wanting to sell it because of financial reasons... it's all complicated, as you'd expect. And I think the story of my family reflects a bit the changes in society. It might reflect the story of some family owned businesses in Japan too, and some situations with inaka homes. o/
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