同じ釜の飯を食う🍚
ABOVE: Oceanbridge CEO, Akira-san, interviewing Surfly CEO, Nicholas Piël, in Tokyo (2019)
Last week we had OceanBridge Inc., our subarashii bijinesupātonā (excellent partners) from #Tokyo, visiting us in #Amsterdam 🇯🇵🇳🇱
It was really so good to see Akira-san and Norikazu-san in person after 4 years 😊
They also bought so many tasty snacks, sake and whiskey from Japan - ARIGATOU 🙏🏼
We managed to catch a beautiful sunset from the roof of our office over looking the city centre 🌅
Of course we had lots of fun and shared some good times together - proost was replaced with KANPAI and used in abundance 🍻
“The literal translation of ‘同じ釜の飯を食う’ (pronounced as onajikama no meshi o kuu) is ‘Eating from the same rice pot’. The ancient Japanese proverb means you strengthen your relationships and sense of belonging by eating from the same pot. Sharing a meal shows that you are friends and are in the same boat. If you think about it, not a lot of people get to share the rice from a single rice pot; it’s either your family or a person who lives with you. An equivalent English proverb would be ‘breaking bread together’”
I still remember when we met all of those years ago the wisdom that OB's CEO, Akira-san shared with us and has stuck with me to this day 🦉
His "Taketombo" Theory 🚁
A Taketombo is a bamboo-copter, or dragonfly, a popular Japanese children's toy helicopter rotor that flies up when its shaft is rapidly spun 🆙
His universal theory states that happiness is when the three equal-lengthed axes (representing the rotary wings) of "family," "work," and "time to yourself" are in balance ⚖️
The shaft of the bamboo-copter, which is the most important part, represents "health" ❤️
We value the work of your incredible Team and we are proud of our partnership 🤝🏼
Thank you for your continuous support and wishing us many more years of success together 🚀
It was also very nice to welcome our awesome new colleague Pedro, who was also in town from São Paulo and will be our Implementation Manager - bem-vindo amigo 🙌🏼
You can visit Surfly’s Japanese page here 👀
The story continues...
BONUS: Here’s a mixtape produced by one of my favourite hip hop producers of all time, the Japanese Nujabes (Jun Seba). Sadly Nujabes passed away in 2010 but his music lives on and continues to deliver good vibrations across the universe.
