Đani Mohović

I was impressed by their shopping streets. They call them Motomachi. They have a certain charm, not the least bit like European shopping centres, and the shops offer everything a person can want. That’s where I saw kale flowers for the first time. Japan is a landscaped country with many flowers in parks and vases. There were large vases in the city, planted in that time of the year with kale that looks just like ours, but with leaves of various colours. The lower leaves were green, the upper ones purple and the top ones white. Today you can see them in our country, too. Having spent time with sailors who were in Japan, I learned much about it. Yet, what impressed me was their attitude toward order, work and discipline. Everyone is perfectly and properly dressed all the time, perfectly punctual when it comes to the beginning or end of working hours, or any time-related appointment, everyone perfectly performs any mandated processes and procedures. For example, in the shipyard, a meter-wide path was marked with yellow-green ropes leading from the ship’s gangway to the superstructure. That path represented a safe passage. The deck is 10 m wide and it could be easily crossed. Yet, they always walked only up and down the marked path. It seems to us that their way of life, at least when it concerns work, is boring, emotionless, robotic, as if they were programmed. At the time I was in Japan, hardly anyone spoke any English, so any communication was impossible.
It is interesting how pragmatic and well organized the Japanese are. The first time I was in the Aioi shipyard, our ship was in dry-dock for overhaul. It was huge, 300 m long and 50 m wide. My second time in Aioi was characterized by deteriorated conditions on the ship overhaul market as there was not much work. What did the Japanese do? They simply repurposed the dry-dock: granite blocks were now sewn there. The entire dock was loaded with granite. They had a large flat area, the existing shipyard cranes previously used for vessel overhauls now moved the blocks, they used a small avenue to transport the blocks or cut slabs and they had enough electricity to power the new machines. They only needed to install the required number of granite saws. I can’t even imagine something like that happening here.
It was amusing when I came to the dry-dock for the first time. The ship sails into the dock, the door behind the ship closes and the water is pumped out. And the dock is suddenly – dry. The first thing the Japanese did was to walk around the entire dock picking up fish left after the water was pumped out. There wasn’t many, and I doubt we would feel like eating fish from the middle of the shipyard. But there, they make the most of everything.