niime 百科

Encyclopedia of niime

As the company has grown, Tamaki and Sakai have spent days going through repeating pondering and experimenting. And their minds have set up at their original starting point what “niime tamaki” belongs. For a new year; the beginning of the new cycle, we will send you a very open honesty talk without time limit holding at the end of a year and a new beginning year as part 1 and 2.

Tamaki

We had an incident recently, didn’t we?

Sakai

What did we have?

Tamaki

Well, you know.

——Sounds like you had something fun.

Tamaki

Yeah, there is a coffee shop where Hatsuko, Sakai and I had a talk and decided to go for making shawls.

Sakai

Yes, three of us, including my mother.

——You used to work as three of you.

Tamaki

There, I suggested we should go for shawls, and you agreed with it.

Sakai

Yeah.

Tamaki

That’s how we focused on the single of shawls. That became our turning point.

Sakai

Yeah, it was absolutely our turning point.

Tamaki

That idea made us get into the zone to grow us. The other day, we went to the coffee shop, after how many years, I wonder?

Sakai

I think it’s been about eight or nine years.

Tamaki

We went there after a little less than ten years. And we were surprised that the shop was still there with nothing has changed. We had a second meeting with two of us at that time.

——Wait a minute! You may bring a new era again for your company.

Tamaki

We discussed where the future “niime tamaki” heads for.

Sakai

Yeah.

Tamaki

What did we talk about?

Sakai

I don’t remember.

Tamaki

What??

Sakai

I will remember if you tell me.

Tamaki

We talked we should go back to our original starting point, didn’t we?

Sakai

We need returning to our basics.

Tamaki

Comparing ourselves to the time when we had only three of us, we were more hungry for spirits and passions. We are feeling halfhearted now.

——Is that so?

Tamaki

Extremely saying, we are just on a ship going on. We already figure out what we should do. We don’t have any adventures at all. We can do anything, but we don’t have any particular feeling. We can do whatever we want, but we don’t care if we should challenge or not. Do you know what I mean?

—-Do you mean both Mr Sakai and Ms Tamaki feel that way?

Tamaki

That’s right. It’s nothing about our staff. I wonder where our passions are that we two used to have. Our ages may relate to how we feel now.

—-You think you had changed yourself from when you were young?

Tamaki

I noticed one of the reasons is that I have become a vegan.

—-What?

Tamaki

I feel so exhausted lately.

——Which means…?

Tamaki

I’m not in good condition. Well, I’m not sick. I don’t have to lay in bed, but I am not energetic.

——That’s very serious, isn’t it?

Tamaki

Yeah. I’m tired and unbalanced. Since I’ve been a vegan for three years, my body may have been feeling limits for missing nutrients. When I became a vegan, I was suggested by people around me that it would happen. Now I understand what they said.

——You were predicted how your body condition might become.

Tamaki

Even though I have been told, I didn’t believe I would become like this. Eventually, I have become like this, and my thoughts are becoming more like veggies.

——Because you haven’t had meat?

Tamaki

I think so. That’s the result of my experiment. My feelings and answer.

——I see.

Tamaki

However, I should not eat meat physically yet. So, I ate a delicious egg in instant ramen noodles the other day.

Sakai

It was salt flavoured noodle, wasn’t it?

Tamaki

I craved for eggs in salt flavoured ramen noodles which I often made in college. We talked about returning to basics and connecting to how passionate we were before. Then, why did we lose our passions? It is because we humans are made by foods we eat, relating to our food lifestyle. I thought losing energy may be caused by my meals, and I thought of the foods from my days when I was young. And I tried to cook one by myself and ate it after a long time. I could only make simple cooking of salt flavoured ramen noodles. (laugh)

——( laugh)

Tamaki

I cooked and ate it, and it’s fantastic! Guess what? I don’t say you could be a Goku being at Ultra Instinct but could be a Super Saiyan having immense energy by eating eggs.

—-Wow!

Tamaki

I feel distinctly different when I wake up in the morning.

——Was Mr Sakai there at that moment?

Sakai

I can’t see her difference objectively, but she had it in herself.

——She doesn’t look differently?

Tamaki

Because she has no hair, her hair doesn’t stand up like Goku.

——Flames didn’t come out around her? (laugh)

Tamaki

My thoughts got changed internally.

——Oh, yeah?

Tamaki

I had been very conservative in the last few years. I restricted this and that. Do you understand what I mean? Everything had to be either good or bad since I made up my mind that meat was no good for me.

——Ummm.

Tamaki

I had to teach myself that I shouldn’t do this and that. I am the type of person who wants to try anything, though. As I start counting forbidden things, I began to have more negative thoughts.

Tamaki

Oh, I see.

Tamaki

I thought it was dangerous. As we eat eggs, eating them is not bad at all, if we eat thankfully, it will give us energy. Anyway, if we eat the lives of animals, if those animals were raised healthy, we could gain health. In that logic, I don’t think any meat is ok. In my life now, if I list up the things I reject repeatedly, I would end up hating my business after all.

——You would become negative…

Tamaki

Yes, I would!

——You mean, by not taking animal food products, you lost aggressiveness in proper meaning in your case, Ms Tamaki?

Tamaki

I have become lacking in spirit.

——You become vegetal. Like, you prefer a less active role.

Tamaki

That’s right. I get more conservative, choosing safety without challenges.

——You become more defensive?

Tamaki

Yes. You could say that with my business style, too. If I had to take risks, I would rather not to challenge. I used to say that I would give it a try because it looked interesting. I found that I have changed. So I thought my judgement may have been wrong and noticed I need correction during our meeting at the coffee shop. That’s how I tried to eat eggs and noticed I could feel the difference in me. And one more thing…is it ok for you if I keep talking?

Sakai

It’s ok.

Tamaki

What should I do? I have many things to say…the first thing is my food recognition has changed, and I decided to keep chickens.

——It is good, isn’t it?

Sakai

Yeah.

Tamaki

I wish to keep water buffalos. In collecting black series, I want to add Limo-chan’s (* Toy poodle. Tamaki’s pet) family.

——Black series?

Tamaki

I want to keep black chickens.

Sakai

It is Crow bone chicken, isn’t it?

——Mr. Sakai, you like animals, don’t you?

Sakai

I don’t like birds.

——But you could keep chickens.

Sakai

I don’t like cows, either.

——……..

Sakai

I like Limo-chan.

—— ( laugh)

Tamaki

(looking at Sakai) He doesn’t like most animals.

Sakai

I also like Parakeets.

—-It is a kind of bird.

Sakai

I like hamsters, too.

Tamaki

You are ok with many animals.

——You are ok with small ones, aren’t you?

Sakai

Yes, I am. When they become larger, I don’t like them. And I don’t care for chickens much…but I like Crow bone chickens, they are cute.

Tamaki

I’m not asking your preferences.

Sakai

Yeah, and what is it? …you said you once were very weak, but later you gained so much energy.

——And is there one more thing you need to talk about?

Tamaki

You know what? We lived with an income of about 85,000 yen ($800) a month.

Sakai

It was 24,000 yen before that.

Tamaki

Yeah, his salary was much less. We had time to live with 24,000 yen earning by making orders from customers. Until breaking through inventing shawls, we lived with 85,000 yen earnings.

Sakai

Yeah.

Tamaki

So we could make a living with 85,000 yen.

Sakai

There is no problem to make a living with 85,000 yen.

Tamaki

You could live with that for a limited time until you set up a self-employed business.

—-As the training period, it is the “time to wait for success” while you learn how to do your business.

Tamaki

While we had spent some such years, we really enjoyed ourselves. Having risks in a sense, we were nervous about living each day, but we had felt alive.

——I see.

Tamaki

However, since we have been carrying so many duties, we became an organization, not individuals, we had to have so much responsibilities to deal with. I thought being parents must have been feeling like this. My awareness of responsibility for protecting my company led me to choose to be a vegan.

——Ummm…

Tamaki

The awareness that we have to prosper the company put on our shoulders as a “heavy-duty”. As a result of winning of responsibility awareness, we couldn’t enjoy ourselves.

——Your responsibility and sense of duty, bound yourselves.

Tamaki

Not just me. Sakai as well. As a result, we’ve lost an appealing quality about being the company and brand. Oh, it’s awful…that’s what we were talking about.

Sakai

Yeah…

——I don’t think your company has lost an appealing quality (from outside).

Sakai

I think you feel it inside of yourself?

Tamaki

I am sorry, that’s in my head. I struggled in myself between having a desire to make “tamaki niime” enjoyable and my ideal to have a business that’s grounded.

——You had mixed feelings in yourself.

Tamaki

That’s why even though we had many more exciting ideas came up, we denied them and ended up not doing them.

Sakai

Yeah, we had.

Tamaki

We stopped many things because we couldn’t agree with the staff.

Sakai

Majority decision system is crap.

Tamaki

We used to try anything that seemed to be interesting, but now, we are not in the factory at present. Going through the majority decision system tends to let us go to uninteresting directions. Realistically it makes the company move to limit expected ideas. That’s why we have started struggling to break through the issue recently. So what can you do? We’ve been asking our staff to make things interesting. We thought about what they could do, and forcing them to do it amusingly. (laugh)

——I could tell Mr Sakai was not happy for a while.

Tamaki

He looked unhappy, you know?

——Actually, you told me you were not excited.

Sakai

Yeah.

Tamaki

But you have changed a little after the meeting.

Sakai

I felt like having a symptom of burning out, being lethargic.

——Is that so?!

Sakai

It is not a matter of money. Our income now is more than ten times our first income, which fact doesn’t make anything meaningful. The profit of 85,000 yen or 24,000 yen was not the matter, and we were just so excited to have this business, that was very different from how we are at present.

Please look forward to the last half of a new year talk for aiming at 2020 by Tamaki and Sakai, whose minds are set at the original place.
They will introduce a new year event “Medetama” held newly on the third to the fifth of January.

Original Japanese text by Seiji Koshikawa.
English translation by Adam & Michiko Whipple.