Work Text:
SENIOR MIYAGI RESIDENTS OFFER GOOD ADVICE AND A GOOD TIME AT LOCAL MARKET
Every Saturday morning, if you’re lucky, you’ll catch the newest group of “vendors” at the Sendai farmer’s market: a ragtag group of 70-somethings who are more than willing to listen to you and offer advice, with varying levels of success and seriousness.
After all the talk I’d heard about it, I absolutely had to grab my notebook and pen to go see what all the fuss was about.
They’re known as the “old guys giving advice,” and they are a new staple of the weekly farmer’s market. They sit at an empty table in comfortable camping chairs, sharing beers and snacks bought at the stalls around them. The sign above their table reads “ADVICE: IT MIGHT BE BAD ADVICE, BUT AT LEAST IT’S FREE”, though the residents of Miyagi would beg to differ. After all, they’ve got a line coming from their table each week just to talk.
“It started out with us just having breakfast together,” Sawamura Daichi, 70, says. “We’re all old friends from high school who never lost touch, and after we all retired, we wanted to make sure we still had time to get together.”
Sawamura is a retired fire chief from the Sendai City Fire Department, but spends his free time helping to teach local elementary school students about the importance of fire safety. “It’s nice to be back in the community and still helping out in some way, even if it is unconventional.”
So, how did this group of gentlemen meet in the first place? “We all played volleyball in high school together,” Oikawa Tooru, 71, explains. Oikawa played for the Argentinian national volleyball team for several years, including winning a bronze in the Olympics, before returning home to Sendai after a severe injury ended his volleyball career. “We were all third years on our teams together, and met like that. We had a lot of practice matches, some wins, and some losses, but I’m happy to say that I met some of my best friends that way.”
“Best friends, he says,” Oikawa Koushi snorts, butting into the conversation. “You saw me across the net and startled so bad that you dropped the ball.”
At the chiding from his husband, Tooru turns red and immediately tries to backtrack, placating, and Oikawa Koushi retains the smug smile on his face the entire time.
Even though I have never met these men before, it’s incredible how comfortable it is to be around them. It’s no surprise that people come from all over the city to speak to them about anything and everything.
The married couple bickers good naturedly for a few minutes, and the rest of the group watches on in fond exasperation. “After all these years, he still likes to push my buttons,” Oikawa Koushi, 71, explains. “He has never been able to get off of his high horse long enough to come back down to us mere mortals here on earth.”
Koushi is a retired elementary school teacher. It’s obvious to see how he could’ve been in the past: today, he’s dressed in a brightly colored cardigan and has an easy smile on his face. There’s no doubt that his students truly valued him, despite (or maybe because of) the spitfire personality he still so clearly possesses.
His commentary sets the group off again, and even the two gentlemen who were quiet before join in. Rounding out the group is Matsukawa Issei, 70, a retired mortician, and Ushijima Wakatoshi, 71, the second in the group to be a retired professional volleyball player. These two haven’t said much during the interview, but their presence has definitely been felt in keeping the peace between their more exuberant friends.
“We have varied amounts of people that join us,” Matsukawa explained, gesturing to the group around him. “We made a lot of friends around here over the years. Some join us, some don’t. But we’ve got a lot of varied experience around here, which helps the ‘advice’, I think.”
Varied experience is right. Two professional athletes, a teacher, a mortician, a firefighter, and, though he isn’t currently in the lineup (“because he’s late, as usual,” Sawamura explains), their other regular is Kuroo Tetsuro, a marketing professional.
Though it might be a little unconventional, each of these men are a treasure trove of information with knowledge of a wide range of topics. Their lives have taken them through all walks of life, learning new languages, going to dozens of countries, the Olympics, and so on. Between the group of them, they’ve done more than many people can ever hope to achieve, and they’re bringing that knowledge to anyone in the market who’s willing to stop by and chat for a while.
“We get questions from a wide range of people,” Ushijima pointed out, when it looked like the Oikawa couple wasn’t going to stop bickering anytime soon. “About a wide range of topics.”
“I’ve heard more than I have in a long time,” Matsukawa added. He’s a tall, broad man with still-youthful dark hair, pronounced eyebrows, and an easy grin on his face. “You wouldn’t believe all of the things people come to talk to us about, almost like we’re therapists. And it’s people of all ages. Kids, college students, adults, even other people around our age. It’s interesting, for sure.”
They’ve been asked about all kinds of topics: things that they don’t have any experience in, things that they know more than enough about, and, honestly, “some things we hoped we’d never find out about,” Sawamura finished, sighing.
“The amount of questions we get asked about the most random things is unreal,” Koushi laughed, apparently finished with his good-natured bickering. “Just this morning, before you got here, we were speaking with a young woman who wasn’t sure if she actually wanted to accept if her boyfriend proposed to her. Last week, we had a middle-aged couple come up and ask us what our favorite travel destinations were. It definitely keeps us on our toes.”
Out of curiosity, I asked each of them what their favorite piece of advice has ever been to give, if they could remember any.
“One time, I had a young woman ask me for driving tips, because she was going to take her driving test in the coming weeks,” Oikawa Koushi explained. He was trying to hold back his laughter, and the others around him groaned. I tried not to lean forward in my chair in excitement too much as I awaited what was sure to be quite the reply.
“I told her that she needed to drive offensively. Not defensively - offensively, ” he clarified. “Swerve between lanes, make a total and complete nuisance of yourself, that kind of thing. That way, literally no one would want to get anywhere near you, and boom! Easy driving experience.”
“And this is why you never got your license,” Sawamura sighed, scrubbing his face with one of his hands. “Why you decided to advise anyone on how to be a good driver is a mystery to me.”
According to the group, Sawamura and Oikawa Koushi have been best friends since their first year of high school. I hadn’t seen the connection at first, but this interaction definitely solidified it for me. It makes me hope that my current friendships will last this long and be as close fifty years from now, too.
“I once had a young firefighter getting ready to start his training stop by,” Sawamura adds, once he stops bickering with Oikawa. (Koushi, I have found, loves to bicker. It’s very endearing.) “I felt lucky, because I thought: who better to give him advice? I was a fire chief; I should be able to help. So he asked me about what he should do to help get prepared to go into burning buildings and deal with the smoke.
“And so, I thought I’d give some bad advice just to mess with him. I told him that he should take up smoking to prepare his lungs to deal with the smoke in the burning buildings. He looked so shocked! I think he actually believed me!”
His laugh is a loud bark, shaking his chest with the force of it, and he slaps his knee in his mirth. “I took it back afterward and gave him actual advice, but his face was absolutely priceless.”
“It’s a little crazy to think that this whole thing started because we were bored with our normal coffee meetings on Saturday mornings,” Matsukawa said. “It’s fun to sit here with old friends while making new ones, and have something new to talk about each week. I never thought that we’d get to this point, but here we are.”
None of them have expressed the thought that this might have grown to be as big as it is now. In fact, all of them seem genuinely surprised that the locals here are coming in droves, week after week, just to talk to a bunch of “old coots” about things that they might not necessarily have an insight into.
“We’ve learned that a lot of the time, people just need a sounding board. Someone that isn’t a friend or a family member to talk to, who has more of an outsider’s perspective,” Tooru explained. He’s got a smirk on his face and an arm wrapped around the back of his husband’s folding camp chair. “We might not always get it right, but we do our best to at least give them something to think about or talk about.”
It’s comfortable and content. I can feel myself smiling back.
Around me, all of the booths begin to pack up for the day. Signs come down, folding chairs being put away into the backs of cars and onto truck beds. Step stools follow, holding up people of all ages as they carefully and lovingly fold away their signs, keeping them safe until they go up again next week, and the week after.
The group of men in front of me is the same. They chat amongst themselves as they begin to clean up, picking up errant trash and coffee cups as they load everything into Sawamura’s beat-up old car. As a team, I watch as Ushijima and Matsukawa carry their table over to a nearby stall, thanking them “once again” for letting them borrow it.
As they finish breaking everything down and wish me their goodbyes, I find myself rooted to the spot, watching the group of them leave. Tooru once again has his arm wrapped around his husband, though this time, it’s around his waist. Side by side, Koushi and Sawamura chit chat, still just as close as they were in high school.
They wave to the people they pass, all smiles and cheer and good-natured bickering. They can’t go more than a few feet without being stopped, offered some kind of treat, another cup of coffee, or even just a friendly wave and a quick “see you next week!” until they’re out of sight.
And, well, maybe I’ll come back next week. I feel like I might need some more “bad advice” myself.