A man who married and became the 5th generation of a 150 year old Japanese historical company.

A man who married and became the 5th generation of a 150 year old Japanese historical company.

My name is Nicolas Soergel. I run the fifth generation “Umeboshi” company in the city of Odawara. This is my life in Japan. Good morning. Our guest for this program, “Life in Japan,” is Nicolas! Our guest for this program, “Life in Japan,” is Nicolas!

He is originally from Germany and married his Japanese wife who was studying in Austria. He quit his job and came to Odawara, Japan to take over her family’s business, Chinriu Honten, as the fifth-generation owner of a pickled plum shop. He also runs a website called “Nihon Ichiban”

Which sells traditional Japanese foods and crafts all over the world, spreading Japanese culture all over the world. Today, we would like to introduce his life in Japan. What time do you usually arrive at the office? I usually come here on ten and I stay until eight or 9 p.m..

Since we have a lot of customers overseas and especially in Europe, I rather stay late because of the time difference. How long do you usually work a day? 10 hours? Wow! I like working. First, let him introduce us to his store. So our company was established in 1871

By the last Chief Cook of Odawara castle and he first he was a celebrity chef. He was very well known. So he first created the restaurant chain you take, and the second generation then became an “Ume specialty store”. And that was our building at that time.

So in the background we have with our our station and our building in the front, Here you have it up front. Unfortunately, that building collapsed 100 years of the large earthquake and then the fourth generation, fifth, third generation, fourth generation and fifth generation is here now.

And when my wife and I started here, The first thing we did is rebuild the store around the topic of “Ume (Plum)”. So you will see a lot of Ume flower themes like the Lands Above the Doors to really ingrain the image all over the company.

But our specialty is products made of “Ume plum” of rich “Shiso leaves” sakura (edible cherry blossoms) because “Odawara” is one of the centers of edible cherry blossoms in Japan, and we use them to pickle them and sold to make sweets, to make jam, to make sirup.

And they are also gaining more and more popularity all around the world and in the back I have something very special. Since the very beginning, we are putting maybe in a jar every year and the oldest is from 1834, and the oldest is from 1834, so it’s just stone salt and dust.

And we keep doing this up to today. And on that side of the store we display “Umeshi” from the year of where many people who live nowadays are born and, you know, always laugh. A lot of women don’t want to tell their real age. Bring them here and we will show you “Umeboshi”

And say, oh! that’s the year I was born. So that’s how you unveil the secret of your girlfriend’s age. This is the merchandise area 　and Nicolas works in the office upstairs. So this is where our company is. Good Morning This is shipping domestic and international. And there in the back,

It’s all production pastry, pickles. And this is the office. And we’re traditional company. And to put off my shoes and now I’m going to my desk. Good morning As soon as he gets to his desk, he calls today’s client. And actually today, We’re visiting a honey company which we are onboarding

And actually it’s time to go. So let’s go. When he visits other companies, he drives to them. So he goes to the parking lot near the company to pick up his car This is his company car. It has the name of the company on it.

Odawara, where he lives, is a beautiful place where history and nature mix and the atmosphere of a former castle town remains He has arrived at the client’s company! “Asamidori Beekeeping Sales” is a company with a long history that began delivering honey for Chinese medicine by cart in the Taisho era.

The company produces high quality honey from carefully selected honey sources and delivers honey all over the world. It looks like their meeting is about to start. I would like to sell your honey all over the world on my company’s platform,

And I would very much like to taste your unique Japanese honey today! Nicolas is conducting a business meeting in very fluent Japanese. After the meeting, it’s time to start the tasting! This time he will be tasting 7 types of unique Japanese honey! It tastes very creamy! Yes, because it is slightly crystallized!

I think this honey probably has a gentler taste than orange honey from Italy or other European countries. Yes! Continuing, he also does other kinds of tastes Wow amazing A very nice aroma fills my mouth! This one is somewhat sweet. What did you note and for what?

I take notes to write product descriptions later. Customers who buy products through the Internet cannot taste them, so I go back to the company later and write a detailed description I then prepare the customer service representative to answer the customer’s questions. I’m going to try honey! This is “Sakura honey” Oh~

The smell is totally different from the mandarin honey I just had! Let’s eat It smells like cherry blossoms! This is interesting! The scent of cherry blossoms spreads in my mouth! We listened to the explanation together! This channel produces the following four types of videos! The first one is various interviews related to Japan.

The second one is the Day in the life of Japanese people, The third one is the Reaction video on various topicks and the last one is about how the lives foringers are in Japan. This channel is definitely the best channel to learn more about Japan in general!

If you find this video interesting, don’t forget to “Like” and “Share”, And Subscribe to our channel! After the tasting, he visited a nearby apiary. Very nice view! We can see the ocean too! Do you put stones on top of the hives so they don’t fly away in the wind?

Yes, we put them there so the lids won’t fly off. When the temperature is around 15 degrees Celsius, the bees are very active! How did you first encounter traditional Japanese culture? My Japanese family was in the food business. So they introduced me to a lot of good makers.

And then I understood, you know, the beauty of umami. Also, we first lived in Kansai, where you have the a lot of umami culture. So that’s why I got interested very much into the food. And through the food you then get to lecture where and being in awarer. and being in Odawara,

Also exposed me to a lot of crafts because it’s a coastal city, so it’s a city with a lot of history and therefore a lot of old companies and being kind of a local now, a lot of people were happy to show me what they’re doing… you know, the production side.

So then I understood how deep the stories are and how deep the how long the history of these companies is. And I wanted to share that with other people around the world. What are some of the challenges of running a company in Japan? One of the biggest challenges was

Most of our suppliers were analog, so we still get handwritten invoices in the beginning, you know, all the purchase orders had to be sent by fax. This significantly changed with COVID because a lot of companies started to become more digital then,

But we still get probably about 5% of invoices and delivery notes, handwritten. And of course, most products don’t have barcodes, so it’s hard to identify some types of the right option. So that was a bit difficult and it took us a while to get all these processes right

So that you can deal with these customers and the vendors. At 3 p.m. Nicolas visited his second client company of the day. The store is called “Odawara Ejima” and has been in business for 360 years, selling mainly Japanese tea and washi paper.

So “Ejima” close by, they have a line up of various tiers locally from Shizuoka, from Ashigara, but also from all the country. And we come here and buy we made a selection and sell these teas on our website And on the other side you will see a really nice place

With lots of Japanese papers which we occasionally use for gift wrapping. That’s why we can do very Japanese style gifts. And “Ejima” is 5 minutes walk from our company so we basically don’t keep stock of tea when we get orders, we order them here and I come and pick them up.

So we always have the freshest possible stock for our customers The owner brewed us some tea for tasting as well! Such astringent and bitter teas are generally popular in Japan! The owner of this store thanked Nicolas for making it possible to bring tea to the world!

Back to Nicolas’s store, for a little interview What’s your vision of future? And there are 33,000 companies like ours with more than 100 years of history, and many of them face challenges of succession. So every year we lose one or two of our suppliers because they closed down.

And each time it kind of hurts, you know, to see a little piece of Japanese culture disappearing forever. So our dream is to create a fund, I call it the “Shinsei Fund”, which is the name for all companies in Japan,

which acquires such companies at an early stage and revitalizes them and keeps them alive. So this is where from my dream is, and it might take ten years or 20 years, I don’t know. But this is what we are working for and which drives me every day.

OK, Then we gonna try thier “Umeboshi” This one is still salty, Oh~! Oh~ I think it’s milder yes! Later, a little bit of sweetness coming. You’re getting the fruit? Yeah, coming through. Now, back in the office, the task is to edit the brand page for the honey maker

And to add the products and write the descriptions. And we do everything in-house. The shop development, the writing and in our new event shop, you will find 8000 products from 200 Japanese authentic brands as we have visited today. So please have a look and let’s see if there is something you like.

Now, I’ll probably keep working until eight or 9 p.m.. When it’s quiet. I can concentrate, work on the store and then go home. It’s has been a long day today. Thank you very much and have a good time.

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