The Tim Ferriss Show - #236: The Alien of Extraordinary Ability

Starting point is 00:00:00 What do you have for breakfast? For breakfast, I had the same thing I eat every day, which was a wonderful egg omelet, including chopped up jalapeno peppers, onions, mushrooms, and spinach. Sounds delicious. Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seen an appropriate time.

Starting point is 00:00:22 What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system.

Starting point is 00:01:07 So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time,

Starting point is 00:01:29 drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time. Because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite

Starting point is 00:02:14 things I do every week. It's free. It's always going to be free. And you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to five bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it

Starting point is 00:02:54 first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Murray, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Tim. I am very excited to connect for many reasons. And number one, from the very outset, one of my fantasies for this podcast was at some point having on a master bladesmith. And we can get into why that's

Starting point is 00:03:32 the case, but I wanted that to be one of my objectives and fantasies realized in a sense. So I'm checking that box, number one. Number two is that I felt like you were somehow brought to me, not to get too woo-woo, but just in the last few months, I've had a close friend who's former special operations tell me that I had to take a class of yours, at the very least, to make a neck knife or some other type of knife to try to learn the craft. And then also spent time last week with a well-known film director whose son has become a huge fan of yours and is studying the craft. So on many levels, I think that this was in some form destined to be. And I would love to start with just a little bit of background. And I think that maybe the easiest way to jump into it is to say, cover where you grew up and how Japan entered the

Starting point is 00:04:34 picture. Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to share that story with you. I grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. And at a very young age, I became very interested in martial arts and military history and kind of the outdoors and watching movies like Jeremiah Johnson and so on gave me a great fascination for tools and knives and weapons and so on. And when I was 15 years old, I was lucky to attend a regional karate competition as a guest, as an observer, and that really piqued my interest. And so I actually enrolled in a karate dojo and did that for several years. And that started my real fascination with Japan. And then, of course, I kind of coupled that interest with reading books about the martial arts and ninjas and so on. And then of course, I kind of coupled that interest with reading books about

Starting point is 00:05:26 the martial arts and ninjas and so on. And of course, you know, samurais and samurai swords and the blades that they used. And that's kind of where the fascination with Japan started. When did that become and how did that become an opportunity to go to Japan? And in terms of age, you were what, 15 or so at the time? Well, I started karate when I was 15. That would be in high school. And I graduated high school when I was 17 and then turned 18 that summer. And I worked for a full year. Well, I worked for, I don't know, several months. And then the spring of the following year, while I was still 18, I did travel to Japan. And the destination within Japan was kind of predetermined for me. That was the prefecture called Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan,

Starting point is 00:06:21 because that's where the karate dojo was located that I was going to attend to further and continue my studies in karate. What type of karate was that? It's called Chito-ryu. It's spelled C-H-I-T-O hyphen R-Y-U. And it's a version of Shitoru, which is a little bit more well-known. I guess it originates from Okinawa. And one of the main features of Chitoru was a higher, more mobile stance than a lot of the other traditional forms of karate like Shodokan or Goj-ryu, which have very low center of gravity stances for solidity, but lacking maybe a little bit in mobility and flexibility. So when I first came across a few of the snippets of your bio, I thought to myself, okay, this is really a conversation that has to happen because one of the most life-changing

Starting point is 00:07:28 events in my life was 1992. I was in high school, 15, and I had the opportunity to switch out of Spanish class because I'd concluded I was bad at Spanish into a different language. And my friends were in Japanese class and I was always fascinated by martial arts ninjas and so on and went to then Japanese class. Six months later, had the opportunity to leave the U S on my first extended trip overseas to a sister school, which was in Tokyo. So at 15, went to Tokyo and stayed there for a year in a Japanese school with a Japanese family. And at that time, just I'm going to not really digression because I feel like I want to share this with you. So there's a little bit of common ground. I remember the first time I went to a karate school in Japan to take a class and I went to a Seido Kaikan. I went to a Seido Kai school.

Starting point is 00:08:28 And that was my first introduction to leg kicks and mainly on the receiving end. And I remember... You were the punching bag. I was the punching bag. And I remember I came in and they're like, oh, you know, they're like, oh, this was like former or at the time, current wrestler, foreigner. I was the only one in the school. They're like, okay, well, like, let's see, let's see how you move around. And no head contact. And so I'm punching this guy in the chest. And every time I punched him in the chest, he would kick me in the leg. And I said, well, that's a great trade. I'm just going to punch you in the chest all day. You can kick me in the leg as many times as you want. And I couldn't go to school the next day. Because your leg was all swollen.

Starting point is 00:09:05 Because my leg was ruined. How did you then go from, I guess, two questions. Number one is, how did the opportunity come about for you to travel to Japan to further your studies? And then secondly, where did blades come into play? at the time. I started hitchhiking when I was 14 years old, and I found the wondrous joys of being able to hike out to a highway and stick my thumb out and get to places I wanted to get to without having had to save up money to buy my own car, pay for the insurance, or pay for the gasoline. It was a wonderful experience. And I traveled all over the province of Nova Scotia doing that. And the more I did it, kind of the more obsessed and compelled I felt to do that. So by the time I was 16 years old,

Starting point is 00:10:12 I actually traveled to Europe by myself over the school Christmas vacation and spent three weeks in Europe, visiting some acquaintances and also, you know, venturing to places I had never been by myself before. So after high school, you know, I was very keen to travel. And I, although I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that, you know, studies were awaiting, and that there was an expectation both self incurredurred and through my family to attend higher education. I couldn't ignore the overwhelming desire to travel. So after high school, I started to put this trip together that really was supposed to be a round-the-world tour. When I was still in high school, one of the seniors that graduated two years before me had done a round-the-world tour.

Starting point is 00:11:08 At the time, I believe you could, through some different airlines, you could purchase a very special plane ticket where so long as you kept moving in the same direction around the globe for one set fare, it was something like $6,000 or something at the time. You could continue to keep flying to different destinations so long as you kept moving in one direction so that eventually you would end up in the same place that you started from and then your ticket would expire. So it was around the world airfare, basically. And when this senior came back from his world trip, his story was featured in a local newspaper. And I read it in its entirety and became very inspired and thought, wow, that's exactly what I want to do is emulate this round the world tour. And so I concocted a plan that would have me hitchhike across North America and then from the West Coast depart to Japan and stay there for six months where I would continue and further my education in karate and hopefully have some sort of cultural experience while I was there. But I didn't know

Starting point is 00:12:19 what that was going to look like. And from there, I was going to travel around the rest of Southeast Asia. I had planned to take a cargo ship, I think, from there to India, and then another cargo ship from India to Africa and travel through Africa and up through Europe and back to Nova Scotia, my hometown. That was the plan. And I had budgeted time for it. I had budgeted money for it i had budgeted money for it and uh you know i had i was in the process of actively trying to establish connections and links and leads uh you know so that i would know people at some of these destinations i was hoping to to get to but i probably had 30 or 40 percent of it figured out and the rest i was just going to wing you you know, wing it as I went along. It's a, it's a good ratio. I think that's actually a very good ratio. Well, just like your friends in the, in certain communities, the high speed, low drag, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:14 there's, there's a beauty to not being, uh, you know, uh, chained down with too many plans or promises. So, yeah. Well, as a, as a friend of mine, Rolf Potts, who wrote a book that had a huge impact on me called Vagabonding, who is a long, long time, long-term traveler. Ultimately, the ability to improvise is more valuable than the, a lot of the planning you do on the front end, uh, which you put differently. And, and so you get to Japan, you have this, you have this 40% figured out what happens. Yeah. So as fate would have it. So I immediately enrolled in the karate dojo, the, what they call a homebrew dojo, which is like the headquarters for our style of Chitoryu karate. And I did, I just want to say, i want to put a plug in there that that uh they

Starting point is 00:14:05 were very very kind to me and uh it was a great experience and i can't say enough kind things about that uh about the people that i met there and the the uh the sensei who was there but i digress uh i i was very keen and every morning started at six o'clock where we would uh meet and go into a special tatami mat room and uh light incense and kind of give homage to the ancestors of the of the karate sensei's family who you know kind of who started the whole thing who had passed on and then we would go to each corner of the room each each one of the participants, and sit in zazen, or basically sit on your knees with your feet tucked up underneath your buttocks for 30 minutes. It was absolutely excruciating, and your feet would fall asleep, and you were wondering

Starting point is 00:14:56 why in the world you traveled across the globe to find yourself sitting in this excruciating position for 30 minutes every morning. After that, 6 30, the bell would, would ring much to our relief. And then we would go off and we would meet in the karate dojo at six 45. And, uh, we had practices every morning like that. And then we'd have practices three times, I think it was Monday, Wednesday, Fridays in the evening. And, you know, I was just in karate heaven and, uh, you know, I was practicing with, with some guys who would, who would progress on to be world champions. So I really was amongst some great skill and talent and dedicated folks. Uh, but what happened, the, the connection to knives was, uh, this roughly around, uh, the fourth week of practicing karate it was one of those evening practices and

Starting point is 00:15:47 we were doing uh uh let's see if i can recall what is called a a jumping flying sidekick and so you would kind of uh run up you're going to do the triple jump and launch yourself into the air and do a sidekick at some imaginary target. No one ever taught you that if you actually made contact in that position, what you would do next, but mostly it was just flying through the air. I think we were very ill prepared for actually kicking anything in that manner. You certainly wouldn't want to go running up and jump at a wall and try to kick it because I don't think the outcome would be very favorable. But anyway, uh, when I was coming down to land from that position, I didn't quite have my feet knees, uh, in front of me. And so, so I

Starting point is 00:16:33 very much had one of my legs. I think it was my left leg. I was kicking with my right leg and my left leg. When I came down and landed, I dislocated my knee. So, so it was fortunately, it was kind of a mild dislocation, uh, but it was a dislocation nonetheless. And I had to go to the hospital and, and get a bunch of liquid removed from, uh, somewhere in the, in, in the knee joint. And they, and the doctor there, uh, put a cast on my leg that basically went from my left ankle all the way up to my, you know, top of my thigh and my left leg. And he said, yeah, I had to keep it on for three weeks. And, and, uh, you know, top of my thigh and my left leg. And he said, yeah, I had to keep it on for three weeks. And, and, uh, you know, that's the curse of being an 18 year old. Uh,

Starting point is 00:17:10 you think you're invincible. So of course I convinced them to take it off, I think after one week and, uh, I never, ever fully recovered. In fact, uh, it turns out I've got a completely torn ACL and I've been living with it and managing just fine for all these years ever since almost 30 years later I'm 47 now so so now I'm immobile and I'm in the karate dojo kind of in there in the the barracks what we'll call it and not really able to practice and the karate teacher comes in Chitose sensei was his name, great man, great man. And he kind of threw a Japanese language textbook at me. And I couldn't tell like, if it was an aggressive throw or a kind toss. But either way, it really was an amazing

Starting point is 00:18:00 gift. And up to that point, I had acquired no Japanese language ability. And here was a textbook that was a very well written textbook. And I started to read it and work through the problems and started to study the language and that changed everything. And what was what was the consequence of adding some Japanese speaking ability to your skill set at that point? Well, I think you're aware because I could tell from the way you've spoken some Japanese words that you've acquired quite a level of proficiency in the language. But, you know, it opened up a whole lot more doors to me. And, of course, it opened up conversation. It opened up friendships, it opened up the I really wasn't seeing much outside of that world. But once I started to learn the language and made some friends who were outside of the karate circle, that's when everything really opened up for me and a lot of doors opened.

Starting point is 00:19:17 And that's what opened up the possibility to start studying bladesmithing? So I had a very similar experience, different domain, but not too dissimilar. I went to a school in Tokyo called Seikei Koto Gakuen, which is in Kichijoji. So for those people in or eager to visit, say, Tokyo, the Inokashira Park is right next to or very close to where this school is located. And as a student, I had to wear the uniform. It looks like a sort of a Chinese, like Mandarin collar, odd looking seifuku, as they call it. And I'm glad they had your size. Oh yeah. They need to do some special do some special work to get a first year high school student to fit this

Starting point is 00:20:09 jacket. So it was, I was actually very fond of having a uniform. It simplified things dramatically. So I had this uniform. And as part of the school, it was very much where's Waldo in the sense that I could easily be spotted as the only American in this school, 5,000 Japanese, and everyone had to do bukatsu. So bukatsu is... After school activities.

Starting point is 00:20:31 Exactly. You have to choose a club. It is mandatory, or was at least at Seikei. So I had to choose between... Well, the clubs that were eager or interested in potentially having me were rugby, because they're like, all right, you're bigger than most first years, so that'll be an asset. Kendo, which I was interested in already, and that's where I thought I was headed. And then judo approached me. And judo, I thought, at the time, was very much like, say, Aikido, where some guy comes at you with this very exaggerated faux knife thrust, and then you whip him around and Steven Seagal him to the ground.

Starting point is 00:21:04 I was like, well, it's not terribly interesting to me because from all the wrestling and so on that I've done, I'm more interested in a resisting opponent. And I was like, okay. And then the judo guys taught me or showed me very quickly that judo is very much full contact and really similar to wrestling. And when at the time I couldn't read a single kanji. So the Chinese, for people who were listening, Chinese characters adopted by the Japanese had a basic grasp of the syllabaries of Japanese. So the hiragana and katakana. But otherwise was really at a, where is the bathroom?

Starting point is 00:21:41 Thank you. Good morning level of Japanese. And it wasn't until I had the motivation to get better at judo and realized that the best textbooks were all in Japanese at the time, at least, and then had friends support me by pointing me to comic books that I could use to learn dialogue, that all the doors opened up, like you said. And I just want to speak in defense of Japanese people for a second here, which is to say that a lot of non-Japanese who visit Japan come back and they're like, oh, the inscrutable Japanese, they're so xenophobic and they're so hard to connect with. And I don't think that's actually a fair assessment in most cases.

Starting point is 00:22:25 The Japanese, this is a bit of a rant, so bear with me. But when the gods of the universe were handing out phonemes and sounds, the Japanese got a pretty short hand. They didn't get a lot of sounds. So Japanese are very insecure about their ability in other languages and have trouble, as most people know, distinguishing between L and R and so on. And they, as a result, have a very rote-driven approach to memorizing, say, vocab,, the main barrier. As soon as you speak, even you can hold a two-minute conversation or you have a dozen phrases memorized. I mean, they will literally clap their hands. I mean, you've seen this and go, the, the, the response that you get is so exaggerated, uh, but wonderful in Japan that as soon as, as, as you make the effort, like all of the doors open and it's just, and, um, so that's, I'm going to shut up now, but the, uh, I just, I, I hate to hear the Japanese described as, um, so, uh, arms distance and so on from people who have not taken the time to learn even 10 words in japanese sure uh but i so so i get very excited when and i feel like there's someone who's had a similar experience so how how did the blades then come into the picture well i just I just, just before I get

Starting point is 00:24:07 into that, I just wanted to comment on your experience in Japan. And, uh, it's cool that we were in Japan at the same time because I've been there since 1988. So in 92, uh, you know, I was, I was up, up to my eyeballs in bladesmithing and all sorts of other things. But I just wanted to say that your astute observations about the Japanese culture and the way you picked up the language and the unique experience that you had, it's commendable really because I think you understand that of the 10 other thousand people who've had a similar experience to you your your uh understanding and appreciation and comprehension of what you actually underwent and and the japanese heart and the japanese psyche uh the the the shimaguni konshin uh you you've, it's really commendable, your level of, of appreciation for what you underwent. I appreciate, no, I appreciate that. It was a complete life changer for me,

Starting point is 00:25:12 and fundamentally changed my entire trajectory. And I'm still in touch with my, my host family. I had dinner with them about a month ago in Japan, 25 years later. I don't know if you know that the day after tomorrow, I'm actually going to Japan. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. Going over for nine days. That's exciting. An appointment to buy a new power hammer and going to visit with some steel manufacturers

Starting point is 00:25:39 and then do the regular rounds of Osaka, Sakai, Kyoto, Fukui Prefecture, up to see my teacher, Mr. Yasuyuki Sakamoto in Nagano, and then back down to Tokyo. So that's just around the corner from me. So jealous. This is a nice warm-up. And so you mentioned your teacher, uh, your master. Uh, so you, your knee is taken out.

Starting point is 00:26:08 You have a book kindly or aggressively tossed at you. Not sure, but nonetheless, uh, is the, is the Tinder for getting you to dip your toe in Japanese communication? Sure. Well, I like the Tinder, I like the Tinder, uh, example because it certainly, it certainly ignited quite a passion in me and it certainly ignited that fuel. So what happened was I think the first day I was at the karate dojo, one of the fellow students there, Chikahiro, I think his name was, he had a little scooter.

Starting point is 00:26:45 And, of course, the ubiquitous scooter all over Japan, the little 50cc scooters. And he was kind enough, since I had an international driver's license, it was licensed to drive it, even though I didn't have much experience on two wheels. He let me borrow that scooter for a day, you know, in between karate, the morning and the evening karate class. And I just, you know, bravely, it's kind of crazy because I have no sense of direction. And it was prior to the days of GPS, but I just, uh, intrepidly took that scooter and started driving around. And I was probably into the third or fourth hour of my adventure, wondering if I was ever going to make it back to the karate dojo uh that I drove past a very intriguing and interesting building and I only caught it at the corner of my eye because I was probably driving too fast and uh it inspired me to uh to put on the brakes

Starting point is 00:27:38 and kind of think what did I just see and then I uh you know checked both ways and did a U-turn and drove back to this building. And it was kind of like a – it was kind of like a mall. It was kind of like a gate, an archway where there was an entrance, a driveway entrance into an inner courtyard. And beside the gate was a display window with this huge – it's what they call a kujira bocho so it's like a huge whale meat filling knife and it was a display piece because of its monstrosity because because of its size and so it was pretty clear to me that there must be some knives beyond this gate so i i kind of uh curiously went inside the courtyard and parked them the uh the little scooter and uh and then there was these glass doors into a building and i kind of peered

Starting point is 00:28:33 through the glass doors and i can see more knives on display shelves and so i think i probably knocked and then i and then i it was one of those squeaky you know those squeaky doors on the on the rollers the sliders doors yeah of course they're all squeaky, you know, those squeaky doors on the rollers, the sliding doors. Yeah. Of course, they're all squeaky because they say that the squeaky hinge gets the grease. But that's not true in Japan. I just see it leaving squeaky. So I ventured in and I just kind of became just mesmerized by all of these wonderful blades in three directions.

Starting point is 00:29:03 There was just knives everywhere in two or three shelves all the way up to the ceiling there was a sushi knives and there was deba buchos for you know for breaking apart the fish and there was thin filleting knives and there was vegetable knives there was paring knives and then there was all sorts of agricultural tools there was comma sickles and there was axes and there was different hatchets and different types of hose for like digging up the yamaimo and, you know, all sorts of fascinating things, tools I'd never even seen before. I couldn't even identify. And kind of, I was always there looking at all these blades and I don't even know how much time passed by i'm

Starting point is 00:29:46 guessing it was probably only a few minutes but i mean it could have been hours i was so lost and thought and just kind of just trying to absorb everything i was experiencing uh a man came in from the other side of the building and he he looked at me and he he saw i was a gaijin and he said hello and uh and i I guess we talked for a few minutes, and I tried to communicate. Because at this point, you see, I hadn't had the textbook tossed to me yet. This came before that. This was before I injured my knee. It was literally the second day I was in Kumamoto.

Starting point is 00:30:23 And we talked for a few minutes, and his wife brought out a couple of glasses of cold mugicha which oh it's my favorite thing in the world oh you like i'm not too i'm not too fond of i'm a huge fan yeah but okay this was in the summer buckwheat tea because it was summer so they serve it cold and this was literally uh this was literally in uh june yeah the late part late part of june so very hot and after a few minutes of dialogue because he could speak a word or two of english and i think i asked hey can i come back sometime and i think he said dozo dozo it's rashi, he said, come back whenever you want. So that was like one of my first impressions of Japan.

Starting point is 00:31:12 And so weeks, and I didn't visit him for many, many weeks. And then when the textbook was tossed to me, I think something must have clicked because I thought, that's the kind of person that if I could have deeper conversation with, I think it could be really rewarding and so that was one of the you know as i said before it was the tinder that fueled this desire and passion to to be a communicator of course the irony is having grown up in uh nova scotia canada in the 70s, we were all spoon-fed the French language as Canada's second language, basically from grade one. And I had developed quite a complex about the French language because I never really learned much because I was the class clown and I was always

Starting point is 00:32:04 standing down in the hallway while all the other kids were in the class actually learning something. So I managed to get myself kicked out of so many French classes that I really didn't pick too much up. So when I was headed to Japan and people said, oh, Murray, you know, you should really try to learn Japanese when you're over there because when you come back, you could get any job you want. And of course, that was in an era where everyone thought Japan Inc. was going to take over the world. And Japan was the focus of all the movies. And of course, Die Hard was all about the Nakatomi building and the decadence and opulence of these rich Japanese corporations where they had lifelong employment. And it was really quite an enigma. And the world was fascinated by Japan.

Starting point is 00:32:46 And everyone thought that Japanese was going to be the, it was when everyone had a Sony Walkman, right? And they thought that Japanese was going to be the trade language in the world. So people said, oh, you're going to Japan, learn the Japanese language, you'll be set for life. And I would agree with them, but it went in one one ear or the other because I'm mumbling to myself under my breath, like, yeah, right. I can't even speak a word of French and I've been exposed to it for 12 years. You expect me to learn Japanese? That's such a foreign language with a different alphabet. I mean, come on, get serious. So, so I really didn't have any expectations of learning the language. And that turned out to be the blessing in disguise in so much that I just thought, well, if I could just learn one word today,

Starting point is 00:33:30 just one word, just how to say thank you, or to say, actually, no, thank you. I remember when someone tried to feed me raw fish liver, and I couldn't say no, thank you. So I had to eat it. And I thought, I'm going home tonight, I'm going to open up that textbook and find out where it says how to politely refuse raw fish liver. So, and it was from a fugu nonetheless. Oh, God. Yeah. So yeah, blowfish.

Starting point is 00:33:55 You got to be careful with the blowfish. Yeah. So because I didn't have any preconceived notion of what I should or shouldn't be able to achieve in the language, I just literally took it one word at a time and took great delight and great pleasure in the new word that I would learn each day. And so you now, flash forward, you have this textbook. When did you go back to visit the knife shop again? Or what happened when you went back? It's a great question. And of course, I ended up spending a lot of time there. So that's a

Starting point is 00:34:30 question I should be able to answer. I'm just going to make it up because I can't remember exactly. But I stayed in Japan that first stint for nine months. And first it was with karate. And then I met the Japanese bladesmith. And then I delved in a whole bunch of different things. And then I went back to, uh, to North America and enrolled at, uh, advanced reading and writing Japanese at the university of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. And I took four years of study in 12 academic months. And then I went back to Japan and And that's when I immediately went to Mr. Sakamoto and said, I'm back. I speak the language now. And I really want to learn about bladesmithing. I may or may not have met him a couple of other times during that first nine-month stint. But honestly, I don't remember. Okay. So I want to hit, hit pause to dig into one thing that you just said, because it's fascinating. Did you just say you took four years of academic course, course load in, in 12 months? Yes, exactly. Okay. So just, so former class clown,

Starting point is 00:35:37 is that a superhuman feat? Did you just go to class all day, every day? How did you go about, what were the keys to getting that done? Sure, sure. So when I went for an interview with the dean of the Japanese studies program, Mr. Hiroso at the time, who had actually also written most of the textbooks in the day, I immediately took my interview with him in broken Japanese. And I said, please, please, please, let me take the 200 level classes, both the reading and writing and the conversation.

Starting point is 00:36:11 And he said, and as I was, as I was trying to have a conversation with him, he was correcting every second word I said, he said, he kept telling me grammar is everything. I said, come on, you understand what I'm saying? He says, yes, but, but the big difference between I want to eat and I've eaten. And, and, and so tense is everything. So we came up, so he was very gracious and he said, listen, if you study through the first year or a hundred level textbooks in the next month and bring me evidence that you've done all the exercises and pass some verbal examinations, then I'll also let you enroll immediately in the second year classes. So I immediately enrolled in 200-level classes while on the side I was also completing all the course material for the 100-level or first-year classes.

Starting point is 00:37:00 So by the time, if I enrolled in September, by the time the end of October came along, in two months, I had finished all of those 100-level class workbooks and passed his expectations, and I was getting A's in my 200-level classes. know, the reading and writing and then the conversation class from September until probably April when the university academic year ends. And then I enrolled in the spring six weeks intensive 300 level classes. And then when they finished, I took the six week intensive 400 level classes, which was, you know, reading Japanese newspapers and, you know, conducting business in Japanese and honorifics and so on. So that's, that's how I managed to do all four year study in 12 calendar months. So this was before you really took a deep dive with the bladesmithing. So what was driving that, that motivation to do so much and to really get after it? Was it the, hey, Japan's going to take over the world?

Starting point is 00:38:10 Was that an element of it? Was it an inexplicable having caught some type of idea virus that you just couldn't kick related to Japan? Did you know how you were going to use it? I know I'm throwing out a lot here, but what was driving that studiousness? Because that isn't how it sounds like your academic career started. So what was driving that? Well, I want to be cute and say that Japan had taken over my world. I wasn't so concerned about it taking over anybody else's.

Starting point is 00:38:40 When I went to Japan, something very, uh, magical happened, you know, the, the advice or the adage for, for youngsters for decades or even centuries has been, you know, go out on your own and find your own fame and fortune, you know, and I, I certainly hadn't found fame nor fortune. What I did find in Japan was, uh, a part of me that I never knew existed. As I mentioned before, I had grown up with a tremendous complex when it came to languages. I had never really excelled at sports. I felt in many ways that I probably hadn't lived up to my own father's expectations as the only boy because I wasn't doing baseball or soccer or any of the other things that all the other boys were interested in. I spent most of my

Starting point is 00:39:30 childhood inside watching TV and playing with Lego and just wanting to do things with my hands. So when I went to Japan and then found out I had this latent skill for languages, and I made all sorts of new friends, and nobody was judging me based on what I had this latent skill for languages and I made all sorts of new friends and nobody was judging me based on what I had accomplished thus far in my life. And it was just all new, fresh relationships. I really was in many ways able to reinvent myself. And it wasn't so much as I was reinventing myself as I was discovering parts of myself that I never knew existed. And, uh, I think that for any young person, you know, whether it's, uh, a musical instrument or a language, uh, or a sport or really anything that they dedicate themselves to and gain a certain

Starting point is 00:40:21 proficiency in that, that kind of skill can give a young person so much confidence and open up so many other doors for them and really be one of the greatest stepping stones from which you know to launch the rest of your life you know to step out into life on so as i was learning the japanese language and getting tremendously positive feedback as you mentioned from japanese people because they were just, and this is in the 80s, before, you know, foreigners had really penetrated every corner of Japan. And I was down in Kyushu. And I remember if I saw a foreigner on the street, I would go, ah, gaijin da, gaijin da, because I never saw them there. I mean, now you see foreigners everywhere. But back in those late 80s, it wasn't so common.

Starting point is 00:41:06 So, you know, I got tremendously positive feedback from the people around me. I started new friendships and they encouraged me in my language study. And I think for the first time in my life, I remember having feelings like, wow, you know, I've got some skills. I could really be somebody. This is great. I really want to see how far I can take this. And it gave me drive and kind of passion and dedication that I never knew I possessed before. I, in fact, I thought I was kind of a quitter growing up because I mean, that's whatever all the adult influences around me said, I was a quitter and that I'd amount to nothing. So, uh, I was

Starting point is 00:41:45 quite delighted to find out that might not be true. Yeah. What a great story. I, um, I think I'm not gonna say the exact same, but I'm very, very parallel experience. And I really shudder to think what my life would be like had I not had that year abroad, which is very uncommon, or I should say less common in the US than many other places where a gap year is encouraged. And I've thought, I don't have kids, but I've thought about if I would have any non-negotiables that I would insist on if I had kids. And the only two that I've really been able to come up with in terms of experiences are sports of some type, and could be something

Starting point is 00:42:27 that is thought of as unathletic, but let's just call it sports. And then a gap year or a year of traveling in a foreign environment because of everything that you just said. I think it's just such an incredible opportunity to find yourself and find your own confidence. So let's, I'd love to jump to, now you mentioned honorifics. So for people who don't know what that is, there are many different levels of, many different ways to speak or write or communicate with another, I was going to say another Japanese person, but let's say a Japanese person, depending on how old they are, depending on where they rank relative to you, even in say a school environment, you would have a senpai, like the upperclassmen above you,

Starting point is 00:43:17 and then the kouhai below you and so on. And it determines what type of grammar in some cases you use. And I was going to ask you, could we, I'd love to hear when you then came back to Yoshimoto-san. Some people have heard san before, S-A-N. And then above that, you would have, let's say, sama, right? And then below that, let's say you're talking to a friend or a younger kid, you might say kung, or you could even use chan, which is kind of similar to that. What is the proper suffix for a master bladesmith? Would you formally refer, is there sort of a master suffix that you would use for Mr. Yoshimoto, or is it simply Yoshimoto-san? Well, most commonly, we just use the word sensei. Sensei. Okay, Yoshimoto or is it, or is it simply Yoshimoto-san? Well, uh, most commonly we just use the word sensei.

Starting point is 00:44:07 Sensei. Okay. Yoshimoto-sensei. That's right. So, so school teacher or politician, uh, or professor at university, uh, or, uh, you know, master in the forage is sensei. And for, for, for people who are language nerds,s, just because I don't get a chance to explore this very much on many of my podcasts. So sensei is a really interesting word to look at, or suffix to look at literally, because you have sing, which is before, and then se, which is before, and then 生, which is born, in effect. But in Chinese, it's totally different.

Starting point is 00:44:50 It's literally, it means mister. So you would say like 常先生, 先生 is mister. So you don't use it for, say, a woman. In the same way that, oddly enough, like 手�ami, which is kind of hand paper, means letter in Japanese, but in Chinese or in Mandarin, shojir. Shojir is toilet paper. So there are a lot of things that are the same in both and a lot of things that are very, very different. So how did Mr. Yoshimoto-sensei, how did he re-enter the picture for you? Well, first of all, yeah, I want to clarify one thing, that I am 17th generation Yoshimoto sensei, how did he reenter the picture for you? First of all, I want to clarify one thing.

Starting point is 00:45:26 I am 17th generation Yoshimoto bladesmith, but my teacher's name is Sakemoto. Ah, okay, got it. And just for your listeners' pleasure, if they're interested in the content of this podcast, they can go to youtube and see the history of the yoshimoto bladesmiths uh by on carter cutlery's channel and you can see how yoshimoto became sake moto because that in itself is a very interesting story but my teacher's name is uh sake moto sensei i got it okayakemoto sensei within the umbrella or later than becoming, or how that became Yoshimoto, we might delve into that, but so Sakemoto sensei.

Starting point is 00:46:11 Yes. Uh, let's, uh, could you tell us more about like when it clicked, what, what happened? Like when did, how did you, because ultimately I don't want to give away the punchline, but we're talking about, uh, I want to say, see if I can get this part right. Uh, 18 years in Japan. Yes. All right. Is there 18 years? So I apprenticed with Mr. Sakamoto for six years and then basically I was asked by him to, uh, take over the family business. He had two daughters and no sons and no hopeful apprentices apart from myself. And I guess I had demonstrated a certain attitude and aptitude for the family trade that he asked me to assume the position of 17th generation Yoshimoto bladesmith. He was a very, he is, because he's in Nagata I'm going to

Starting point is 00:47:07 see him next week he is a very extraordinary human being and uh very uh untraditional in the way we uh had a relationship of apprentice and sensei and And he was not strict, as you would imagine. People think of, you know, the karate kid, wax on, wax off, and standing there for hours on end doing things that menial tasks that the apprentice thinks must be meaningless. And he's just being tested, and he's just having to sweep the floor, you know, to do the grunt labor for the teacher and starting to feel unappreciated and abused and so on. That was not my story. Mr. Sakamoto was very gracious, and he would share with me all of his skills up front. And of course, I could only comprehend so many, so I would go and practice things he showed me, and then he would show me more things.

Starting point is 00:48:05 But once we got to a certain point where he felt he had shared all of the essential bladesmithing and sharpening techniques with me that he regularly practiced, he did something out of the ordinary. If you really want to learn about forge welding, I'm going to arrange for you to go down to Kawashiri and spend some time down there because that's their area of expertise. And so I would go down to Kawashiri. And in fact, I kind of went off and on down to Kawashiri for a couple of years and mastered the technique of forge welding. And I would always come back to Sakimoto's forge and use it as my home base and always apply and put into practice what I had learned there and elsewhere at the home forge. And then he would say, you know, you really need to learn about the traditional Japanese fishmonger's knives, the kataha, the debobocho, and the sashimi knife, and all those two-layer special kind of chisel ground blades so you should go to osaka uh you know a little special place called sakai where they specialize in that skill and so off i went to to sakai for for several weeks and and i would be hooked up with some some very again gracious bladesmiths there and i would learn their trade and I'd come back to Kumamoto to Sakimoto's shop and and and then light the fire and try to emulate or put into practice the things I'd learned

Starting point is 00:49:31 and I'd show them to him he's okay you know you're now you're getting somewhere and I think now you you need to learn a little bit about uh marketing and the overall you know financial aspect of running a business making knives so you need to go to Seki City, Japan, because those guys are really savvy businessmen when it comes to the cutlery industry up there. So if I would go to Seki City, Japan and learn what I could up there, and then again, always come back to Mr. Sakamoto and then apply what I had learned. So he, he was, he taught me many important things, but he also coached me and he was a very gracious coach and never cruel or strict or punitive, even when he probably should have been. But very, very kind and the most tolerant and understanding and patient sensei you could ever have asked for. That's such an amazing opportunity. Just

Starting point is 00:50:27 incredible. What, what for people who are listening and I'll be honest, I would say I'm in this group as well, who don't, uh, don't know the steps involved with, uh, say Japanese bladesmithing, uh, don't even know what forge welding is, which I would certainly raise my hand, uh, as it relates to that. Could you describe, uh, what makes Japanese, uh, bladesmithing, Japanese bladesmithing? So people, people, there's a, There's certainly a sort of prized quality that goes along with Japanese knives. I wrote a book related to cooking and learning some time ago called The 4-Hour Chef, and I spent a lot of time with high-end chefs around the United States, in San Francisco, New York City, and so on. And almost every single one has at least one Japanese knife that they treat like a Lamborghini. It's only taken out for special occasions.

Starting point is 00:51:28 It's meticulously cared for. Could you describe the steps in making a knife in the Japanese style and what is unique about it? Sure. You know, there's so much to say on that topic. I'll just try to keep it concise and interesting for your listeners. First of all, there's kind of a fundamental philosophical difference between what I'm just going to loosely term Western cutlery and Japanese cutlery. Everybody knows from movies like Kill Bill and so on just how revered the samurai sword can be people even know that often they were christened with their own names uh and you know considered by their owners to have legendary

Starting point is 00:52:11 qualities uh some of the big philosophical differences are that uh you know western culture uh puts a high value on something being kind of durable and strong and tough and robust. And as a result, as that kind of extends to cutlery, we end up with a lot of Western blades that are kind of sharpened tools and they're robust and they're durable and you can use them for a multitude of different things. But fine cutting implements, we would not call them. We would call them sharpened tools. By contrast, the Japanese blades, at least the best Japanese blades that come from Japan, are considered to be precision cutting implements. They are designed and built and forged and quenched and tempered with cutting

Starting point is 00:53:07 performance utmost in mind at the cost of everything else so because of that philosophical difference there's a lot of mechanical differences in how the blades are made and the mindset of the bladesmith making them from the materials that are chosen to forge the blades, from the fuels in the fire that's used to heat the steel to forge it, the manner in which it is forged, the medium in which it's quenched, the dimensions to which it's ground, the effort to which the final cutting or primary edge is honed, is all affected or influenced by this philosophical, ideological difference between what the blades are supposed to be able to do in the end. And could you describe some of these steps?

Starting point is 00:53:59 For instance, I don't actually really know what forging is or involves or quenching or tempering. I really don't know what that looks like. Could you describe the process from ground zero when you're considering making a knife? What does the process look like? Sure. Well, I'll try to share with you what I've learned in having forged and completed over 24,000 blades in my career. And a lot of the things that I've realized have, have, have come about at certain times of, of my, uh, of my experience. And I'm sure by the time I've made 50,000 of them, I might have a slightly different

Starting point is 00:54:35 outlook altogether. But, uh, so one of the primary differences between a Western blade and a Japanese high-performance blade is the use of laminates. Most Western blades are homogenous in construction, meaning they're either all carbon steel from the spine all the way down to the cutting edge of the blade, or they're all stainless steel. But throughout, they're the same kind of steel. They're all manufactured from one solid billet of homogenous steel. In contrast, the Japanese blades are almost always a combination of two or more different

Starting point is 00:55:15 kind of steels. And so you've heard the expression, have your cake and eat it too. Well, if you combine a hard and a soft steel together in the same package or in the same blade, the hard steel can be really hard and contribute to superior cutting performance. And the soft steel can be left soft so that it's super tough, shock absorbing, avoiding breakage, and also easy to sharpen. It's very difficult to get the qualities of soft steel and hard steel out of a homogenous blade because it's all the same. So right away, we're starting with a different blade construction, and that's a laminate. The most common blade construction in Japanese cutlery is a three-layer blade construction, often referred to as a sanmai, which means three-layer or three-sheet style construction, where the center of the laminate

Starting point is 00:56:18 is the hard steel that's going to become the sharpened cutting edge, like the lead in a pencil. And the outer laminates are a softer, either mild steel or a soft stainless. And they strengthen, toughen, cushion, and make the blade easy to sharpen and very much act like the wood on the outside of the lead inside of the pencil. And they support it. That's the most common. There's two-layer construction and then there's a sword construction which is where the hard steel wraps around a soft center core and then you can have damascus style construction where you've got hundreds of different layers all in different uh different kind of constructs for either visual effect or metallurgical effect. But the laminated blade does give you the best of both worlds.

Starting point is 00:57:08 It does allow you to have your cake and eat it too, because you can have a really high Rockwell hardness core. That means it can take a razor sharp edge and hold that edge for a long time, but avoid the pitfall of being brittle because the outer softer laminates support it and keep the whole blade from fracturing. Right. And how does one make such a knife? What are the steps involved?

Starting point is 00:57:38 Yeah. So you achieve a laminated blade through a process called forge welding. And everyone knows if you hear the word welding, you think of like a Meg or a TIG or an inert gas welder and a big spark and bright light. But there's literally, you know, there's lots of different types of welding. There's ultrasound welding, there's welding with explosives, welding through friction and so on. But forge welding is the oldest form of welding known to mankind. And that's when you take two metals that have similar temperature ranges, and you heat them up until the molecules on the surface of each metal start to liquefy. And then you join the two, you press the two together.

Starting point is 00:58:28 And if you're at the right temperature and you have clean surfaces, you can actually get the molecules from each surface of the metal to intermingle and fuse together. In layman's terms, it's like taking two candles that are cold and hard, and you would heat up each end over a flame source until the end of the candle just started to liquefy. And then if you touch the ends of both candles together at the same time, in an ideal situation, you would end up with one big long candle once it cooled down because the wax would intermingle and mix. It's different than melting, or fusing is different than melting the metals together,

Starting point is 00:59:09 where you would basically make the two dissimilar metals molten, and basically mix them up in a pot like you would stir chocolate milk powder into a glass of chocolate milk. It's not that kind of mixing. It's, it's fusing them together in such a way that each unique layer still maintains its original characteristics. Right. And so that's done in a forge. Uh, and a forge is a source of heat. We have gas forges, we have electric, uh, forges, and then we have what I use, which is a solid fuel forge. What does solid fuel mean? So I burn up Coke in my forge, spoonfuls at a time. And as funny as that sounds...

Starting point is 00:59:55 What is Coke? Were we talking Coca-Cola, cocaine, something else? Yeah, and I just purchased four tons of Coke the other day. Coke is, all joking aside, it's coal as they dig it up from the ground, and then it's heated once in the absence of oxygen, and it drives off all the impurities, namely phosphorus and sulfur, which are combustible gases, but that are very undesirable when it comes to heating steel to make knives. So coal, excuse me, coke is to coal what charcoal is to wood. I see. Got it. It's purified carbon because all the volatile gases have been driven off. How is that spelled, coke? C-O-K-E.

Starting point is 01:00:42 Oh, it is. All right. Yeah, I was going to say a couple of tons of coke. Unless you have a very sophisticated drug smuggling operation and a huge budget, it's probably something else. Yeah. So that is solid fuel. That's right. That's solid fuel forged. So you're fusing these different layers together and maintaining the integrity in the sense that the separation of these layers, so you can design a knife that allows you to have your cake and eat it too. What happens after that? into a blade shape. And some blades are wide and short, and some are narrow and long, in the case of a slicing knife. Some are thicker and some are thinner.

Starting point is 01:01:32 And you can set out from your billet to forge, really, any kind of blade you desire, providing you've got enough material to make the blade you're setting out to make and it involves heating the steel to a plastic state which is usually around 800 degrees celsius and i always i taught because i was in japan and i was in canada for me everything's celsius that's okay that's all i don't translate to fahrenheit very well but i think it's something like 1350 degrees fahrenheit but it's it's it's what steel look it's what When you're at a campfire and you see the orange coals down at the very bottom, they're not bright yellow. They're just kind of like a really bright orange color. That's about 800 degrees Celsius. And that's the color we want the steel to be when we start hammering it. It's very pliable in that state. You don't want to heat the steel hotter than that because you can literally burn the steel and ruin it.

Starting point is 01:02:29 And you start hammering it. And if you have enough force with a hammer, you can force it into different, you can coax the steel into different shapes, obviously. I mean, blacksmiths have been doing that for millennia. The big difference is, as a new bladesmith, one is overly focused on getting the right shape. Somewhere along the line, somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 blades, I realized that something more important was happening when I was forging the steel, and's cooling, you're actually refining the grain in this steel, which can result in a higher performing blade. So even if you start out, if you make two different blades,

Starting point is 01:03:34 even out of the same steel, how you heat the steel and how you hammer it and how sequentially you heat the steel will result in two entirely different quality of blades and when you say grain i'm thinking of cutting against the grain or with the grain in say cutting steak is is it a direction of fibers in the steel itself or how what's the best way to think of refining grain yeah so uh if you've ever fractured a piece of metal and looked at it it's quite likely even if it was aluminum whatever you you look at the the metal fractured surface and it looks like little grains of sand it looks granular and sometimes it looks very very like fine finely granular and you have to look very closely to discern different bumps in the fractured surface.

Starting point is 01:04:30 And sometimes it's very coarse. And basically, steel has grain, which you can think of like marbles or BBs or grains of sand. And the finer they are and more evenly dispersed they are throughout the steel matrix or throughout the billet, the finer of a cutting implement will result. Got it. The reason is, it's not the grains themselves that make steel strong, but the grain boundaries. So where one grain touches another grain, there's something about that boundary complexity that increases the strength of steel. So the finer grain you can achieve in steel, the more grain boundary that results and therefore a better end product. Now you have, as you said, forged or produced somewhere along the lines of 24,000 blades and you spent 18 years in Japan.

Starting point is 01:05:34 And yet this is, this is another part of your story or life that really grabbed my attention. You hold classes or workshops where people can come in and over the course of a week or a few days, walk away with a blade. Is that fair to say? Oh, yeah. I've been doing that for five or six years now. So after putting in the amount of time to master your craft that you've put in, what does the curriculum look like for, say, a two- or three-day class? Because you've clearly put so much thought into this. How do you teach this? And I always think about sequencing, right? When you're learning a language, how you provide positive feedback, but balance that with some kind of logical progression that is, that is graspable.

Starting point is 01:06:27 What is, what does such a class look like when you're teaching, when you're teaching it? Sure, sure. Fair enough. Because the way we've talked about 24,000 blades in 18 years, it sounds daunting and impossible to learn anything important in such a short time frame as one week. But fortunately that's not true. Bladesmithing is not rocket science. And a lot of the mystique and lore of bladesmithing, uh, is simply because, uh, a lot of the obvious things about blades are, are hidden in plain sight and not often revealed and not often taught. Now, what I mean by that, let me quantify that. The main skill that I teach or confer in a short amount of time is I teach students how to use their eyes and how to see what's actually there. Now, obviously,

Starting point is 01:07:26 we were talking earlier about grain and steel and so on, and we don't actually get out microscopes and look at that. But I teach them to see if blades are straight. I can teach them to see if the blades have the profiles that they're looking for as they grind the blades. I teach them to pinpoint area, trouble areas, and then pinpoint the remedy for that, like with grinders or a hammer or a file or whatnot. But I teach them, and through repetition, I teach them to start to rely upon their eyes and to trust their eyes so that when they actually see something, they know what they're really looking at. And in terms of the metallurgy, after we forge and anneal and quench and temper blades and then grind them, I teach them simple things like how to test to see if an edge – if the edge of the blade or if the whole blade actually hardened by cutting into other metal objects. I teach them to do a rudimentary test to see if they've got fine grain and if they quenched it

Starting point is 01:08:31 at the right temperature and tempered it properly. If they push a thin edge against an object like a brass rod, they should be able to see the edge flex. And then when the pressure is removed, they should see that flexed portion spring back to a true edge again and then last but not least uh you know part of what we do is we always we place a lot of emphasis on hand sharpening of the knives on sharpening stones and i teach them to pay attention to how the blade that they forged and he treated, how it feels on the stone when they're sharpening it. So between a sense of touch and feel and using one's eyesight, it's actually a remarkable testament to the human condition to report just how much the average student can learn

Starting point is 01:09:24 in the space of a week. It's really remarkable. And if you were looking back at the students you've taught, the people you've encountered in the process of teaching and making knives, certainly, if you were in charge of talent scouting, let's just treat it as like the Oakland Athletics money ball type approach. Your job is to put together a slightly different, but you're trying to put together a team of people who have the potential to be great bladesmiths. What are the

Starting point is 01:09:58 attributes that you're looking for to put together that team? How would you try to spot the potential for someone who can be great at this? What are the patterns you've noticed or things you've observed? Well, that's a very timely question, Tim, because we actually are actively growing Carter Cutlery. And as we spent the last week hiring our 10th employee. So very timely question. I look for two very specific things. I look for aptitude and attitude. And the aptitude is somebody's ability to acquire new skills or to use the skills that they already have. And I look for attitude, which is a willingness to learn, a willingness to be humble, a willingness to stick to something once you've decided that that's what you're going to do. So stick-to-itiveness and a willingness to work in a team environment. So those two qualities specifically are what i'm looking for so on the i suppose the aptitude side of things the ability to learn the ability to be humble the ability to stick so the stick-to-itiveness and the teamwork how do you test for that in other words

Starting point is 01:11:20 uh how do you determine if someone has that or not? The attitude? Yes, exactly. Any of those things. In other words, if you're looking at it as a hiring process, so some people use interviews, some people use test projects for hiring for many different skills. How do you determine if someone has the capacity to learn the ability to be humble, stick to something and work in a team? Yeah. Unfortunately, uh, I found that the only accurate way to make that assessment is to put the candidate in the actual work environment. Because two things can happen. People who claim to have great aptitude and attitude will reveal that they actually aren't that equipped for that position.

Starting point is 01:12:22 And conversely, people who think they might be once they get into that environment and encouraged in their right way and surrounded by the right kind of people uh and with the right you can actually develop a healthier mindset that they then they better than they even came into the interview with that that can be be nurtured. So I think the, the, the best solution is to get the applicant in the, uh, the, the working environment and then just work with them as closely as possible and encourage them in every way you can and, uh, be in constant, uh, uh, you know, communication with them. And I think usually within a week or two, you have a much better idea than just simply an interview or viewing a portfolio or reading a

Starting point is 01:13:14 resume alone can provide. For sure. Yeah. And for those people listening who would like to explore this aspect of business, meaning hiring or even more specifically auditioning people. Matt Mullenweg, who's been on the podcast, CEO of Automatic, thought of as the lead developer of WordPress, has a very, very fascinating process for auditioning people, whether they are the entry-level customer support or a CFO. The process is remarkably similar. So that's worth digging into. I have a couple of questions that are really not organized by any particular theme.

Starting point is 01:13:51 I'm just curious to know the answers. The first is, in many knives that are supposedly Japanese style that you can buy easily in the West, you find these dimples on the sides of the knives. And sometimes they're called santoku. Sometimes they're called something else. What is the function of, what are the functions of those dimples? Do they matter? Are they done well? How should, how should someone think about those if they really have no familiarity with knives? Okay. Well, I, I think what you might be referring to are kind of like a hammered texture into the upper surface of the blade. And sometimes what you might be referring to is, I think is what's called a Grayton

Starting point is 01:14:34 edge where the steel is actually scalloped out. That's right. Yeah. So it looks like a, I think it's concave. I think I'm getting this right, say, ellipse or a semi-circular carve-out. Yeah. And Henkel's is well-known for that.

Starting point is 01:14:52 They put out a kind of a Japanese-style santoku-shaped blade that has a grating edge where right behind the primary cutting edge of the blade are these scalloped out depressions. That's right. That's right. pushed up by subsequent slices to the top of the spine of the blade and then being bopped off the blade and rolling off the table and onto the floor the idea is as you're cutting the cut material will separate more easily from the uh from the secondary edge of the blade in concept it's it it it can work i don't like it for several reasons. First of all, if you have a blade that is thick enough behind the cutting edge to grind in scalloped indentations, for me, that means the blade is simply too thick. Right. Because the thicker the blade, the more resistance it blade, there's actually two phenomena. There's the primary edge,

Starting point is 01:16:08 which is the part of the blade everyone thinks of when we think of sharp, that initiates the cut. It's the part that goes into your finger first before you see the blood. And then there's the secondary edge, which is the geometry of steel behind the primary edge. And the secondary edge is what becomes consequential when you're actually trying to push the blade through things, whether it's an acorn squash or a big, thick rubber stall mat, you know, like that you might be standing on in your shop to say wear and tear on your feet. If you're trying to or thick shoe leather, if you try to push a blade through things then what's going on in the secondary edge is absolutely important as much if not more important than the sharpness of the primary edge and in cooking we often need to push the blade all the way through things whether it's cucumber carrot apple potato

Starting point is 01:17:01 whatnot so the thinner the blade, the better. So if you've got a blade that's got great on edges on it, your blade's simply too thick. And one of the first things we do to remedy that when blades like that come into our shop for sharpening, refurbishment, or repair is we grind the blade down by a certain percentage and remove some of those great on edges. But the resulting thinness of the blade greatly enhances the cutting performance. The other thing I don't like about those is they're not necessarily sanitary. That's an area where bacteria and food particles can hide out in. And in an ideal world, a blade for culinary use is very clean on both the primary

Starting point is 01:17:48 and secondary services. So once you're finished using it, you simply put it in a cloth and with one swipe, you can get the blade completely clean. So it's very low effort to keep it clean and sanitary. Makes perfect sense. Okay, so having spent so much time in Japan, I would love to know if you have any favorite, any Japanese sayings or mantras or anything that have really stuck with you. of, uh, Proverbs, for instance, like Koto Waza. So there, there are some great ones in English as well, of course, but you have, uh, like Sarumo Ki Karoichiru, right? So even a monkey falls from a tree, which means it doesn't really matter like how, how good you get, you can still fall on your face. In effect, there are other uses also, but then you have something that is actually pretty similar to, uh, tall pop syndrome in, say, New Zealand and Australia, where people who stick out too much can be pulled down.

Starting point is 01:18:49 And that's derukui wa utareru, right? So the stake that sticks up gets hammered down. So if you stand up, you could be criticized. One that is great that I really like also is shiranu ga hotoke. So the not knowing is Buddha literally, but it's ignorance is bliss basically, or what you, what you don't know can't hurt you. Is there anything, are there any sayings in Japanese or principles that have really stuck with

Starting point is 01:19:19 you? You know, Tim, you and I are really two birds of a feather. We share so many similarities and, and K kotoaza was one of my areas. I was kind of considered a nerd during Japanese language study at University of British Columbia because I loved coming in with new kotoazas to share with everybody. But one of my favorites is isogaba maware, meaning when you feel yourself in a great hurry and a kind of a panic to get things done, that's the time to take a moment and regroup and take a deep breath and to really get your footing and make sure that you're making good decisions. So I really like that one. Like Ishibashi-o-Tataitewataru, being very proceeding so cautiously as to tap with a stick every single stone in the stone bridge as you cross it, just to make sure the stone bridge isn't going to fall down while you're on it. So it's used often to illustrate an extreme level of caution and prudence.

Starting point is 01:20:31 And do you apply that in your life to knife making, to other things? Where does that come to mind for you most? Making business decisions. I got it. Okay, right. So definitely measure twice, cut once. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Except that would be, this would be like measure 10 times. Right. Sometimes it's used to sarcastically for someone who's so cautious that they become petrified from doing anything. I also like,

Starting point is 01:20:54 Awatezu, aserazu, isoge. This is a special one in the cutlery industry, which is, don't panic, don't be in a rush, but get the job done. What was the first one that you mentioned? The when you feel... Isogaba maware. Isogaba maware. That's such a good one.

Starting point is 01:21:22 Yeah, when you feel rushed, when you feel like you have to get everything done this instant, that is a great time to hit pause. And lastly, sometimes when we're in the blades shop and you think you've seen it all and done it all and suffered every single setback that there there ever could be in the blade shop sometimes we we uh become uh which is a different uh version of your uh meaning that anybody can fall is uh is uh when you become kind of bereft by some kind of unexpected setback, you know, such as being run off by your wife or something like that. So when something in the shop goes awry in such a way as no one ever saw it coming, we can be the ki kara ochita saru. I love it. Well, I know that we are coming up on time shortly, so I'm not going to ask too many more questions, but we could talk for days and days and days, I am sure. So maybe we'll do a round two at some point. Maybe we'll actually get to talking about bladesmithing and knives. Well, yeah, I think that, uh, I think that the people who are with us at this point in this conversation are already converted and fascinated. They are

Starting point is 01:22:53 interested, more interested in knives now than they were when they turned this on. So I think we've, we've, yeah, we could, we could talk for, for days about many different, uh, aspects of knife making and the shared DNA that we have through Japan. But let me ask just a, just a handful more and, uh, and I'll be, I'm already happy with the conversation. I'll, uh, it's a, I'll, I'll use this to round it out. What books have you gifted the most to other people or reread the most yourself? Yeah, as a child, I was fascinated with the book Ivanhoe. And I love the story of knights and heroism and altruism and fighting for a great cause.

Starting point is 01:23:39 So I kind of have a romantic notion of right and wrong and good and evil. But in terms of the book I've given away the most, of course, that would be Bladesmithing with Murray Carter. Of course, the book that I first authored, it was the first of three books that I've authored. And it's a great instructional book on bladesmithing techniques in general, but more specifically, the application of traditional Japanese bladesmithing techniques. Besides your own books, which I also recommend people check out for sure, any others that you've gifted to people that come to mind? I would say I'm probably delinquent in the fact I've not given many books as presents

Starting point is 01:24:17 in my lifetime. Thank you for the idea. I know how next year's Christmas presents figured out. Wait. All right. Well, what, let's, let's look at it differently. When you gift, uh, are there any items that you routinely give to people? And if the answer is knives, what is your go-to gift knife? What type of knife, what characterizes it? I have probably most noteworthy is the fact that I wear a knife daily, usually in the form of a neck knife. It's a kind of knife that we hang around, hang from our neck, inverted upside down very securely in a thermoplastic sheath called Kydex. And it's a really handy blade to have. It's the alternative to a folding knife in the pocket, and there's no mechanism to break, and it's easy to sharpen, easy to maintain, and very strong for its size and excellent cutting potential.

Starting point is 01:25:16 So I've been carrying neck knives for my whole career as a bladesmith, and I typically will meet some person who inspires me in some way they might be a young child uh might be the son of a good friend uh you know might be a housewife who i think would could could could use some protection while walking in the park but i have given more knives off of my own neck that i've used for several weeks or months or years that I know are really good, high performing, uh, great cutting knives. I've gifted a lot of those away. That's a great answer. I love neck knives. This is, this is also something that I've been somewhat obsessed with in the last few weeks. So that's, that's a, to be continued.

Starting point is 01:26:03 So when are you going to come and take a class? You know what? When we hit stop on this recording, I want to talk to you about that because it's something I would like to do ASAP, ideally before the time that this episode comes out, or at least get a reservation in. And so the last two questions, this one is if you had a gigantic billboard, and this is more of a metaphorical question, but you could put a short message on that billboard to get it out to millions of people that is non-commercial. What would that or what might that message be? Well, I mean, I could put something cliche on there like don't give up. I could put stick to the plan. I had written on my walls over in my Japanese shop, stick to the plan. And the other one under that was concentrate on the task at hand. You know, it's so easy to get distracted, you know, from new stimuli that focusing and concentrating on the task at hand is often, even though it's a simple concept, it's difficult to execute. So those are some kind of like truisms or sayings that I live by.

Starting point is 01:27:14 What does stick to the plan mean to you most often? Why is that one of the two that you chose? Well, in quiet moments, we always sit down either alone or with loved ones or people we trust. And we we we we we plan humans plan. They say, first, maybe we have these three things that probably need to happen. We should do this first and then this second. And then lastly, we'll achieve this. And as is so common in life, people sabotage their own plans. They get to a certain part of the plan and it becomes monotonous or tedious or difficult or challenging and and all of a sudden

Starting point is 01:27:53 instead of sticking with the plan and seeing it through to completion they think oh what i need is a new plan right and so you have people who who who who uhually, chronically are in the process of making new plans and never actually execute a single one of their existing plans. Is that something that you've struggled with? Or is that – it sounds like you have that pretty well handled. So I'm wondering, is it more a reminder for your employees? Or what is – how have you used that reminder in your life or what, what is, uh, how, how have you used that reminder in your life or for other people? Uh, you're right. I am. Uh, I've been, uh, lucky to have stuck to most of my plans and achieved the goals I've set out for myself because I've constantly reminded myself

Starting point is 01:28:39 to stick to the plan. Good answer. Very good answer. All right. Do you have any parting? And I'm going to also ask you before I wrap up, of course, where people can find out more about you and so on. And I'll put those links in the show notes for everyone, but any parting comments or requests, thoughts for the people who are listening to this? Well, I'd like to thank everybody for, for, for listening. And, uh, of course I can find out more about our knives at cartercutlery.com C-A-R-T-E-R-C-U-T-L-E-R-Y.com. And, uh, you know, we, we do strive to make the finest knives in the world, high performance blades that are also very easy to maintain. And we've encouraged, we've successfully encouraged and mentored tens of thousands of people to learn the very easily attainable skill of sharpening knives. And we've kind of revitalized that essential skill and given great people, given a lot of people the great feeling of mastery and satisfaction over their cutlery and being able to maintain it and sharpen it and use it to their heart's content. teaser, could you name one thing you wish more people did related to knife sharpening or one

Starting point is 01:30:08 thing you wish people would stop doing? I'll give a little freebie out there for everybody. And that is that when they get a new piece of cutlery, especially one for the kitchen, if they will just keep that cutting edge from touching anything other than food, meaning don't drop it in your kitchen sink, don't let it touch other plates and pans, don't let it touch the other silverware in the drawer. And that will preserve the cutting edge, the primary edge of that knife far longer than they ever thought possible. It's the clanging around of the knives, the misplacement of the knives in the kitchen that really dulls them.

Starting point is 01:30:46 So that's a little freebie for everybody. So they shouldn't use their kitchen knives for opening boxes from Amazon, in other words. They can do that after they master sharpening and then what they use their knife for, because it's only a couple of minutes until they can refresh both the primary and secondary edges of their knives. All right. Well, Murray, that's the real freedom. That is the freedom when you can, when you can maintain and master your own tools and everybody listening, you can also find Carter Cutlery on Facebook, facebook.com forward slash Carter Cutlery, Instagram, fantastic Instagram, Instagram,

Starting point is 01:31:21 also Carter Cutlery. And I will put all links to everything we've discussed in the show notes as usual. So everybody listening can find all of that as well as more resources and so on at tim.blog forward slash podcast for this episode and every other episode. And Carter, Carter, I always want to call you Carter. I have a good friend named Carter Murray. Thank you so much for taking the time. There's an expression in Japanese, which I'm sure you've heard before, which is saisho de saigo. So when you do something and you never want to do it again, that's saisho de saigo. I have the exact opposite feeling with this conversation. I hope we have many, many more. So thank you for taking the time. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:32:14 And, and as my, some of my Japanese friends said to me with this bewildered face, uh, in high school, they would say, Oh, so I have that feeling with you, which is that you are secretly part Japanese, uh, which I mean is the highest compliment. So to be continued, and thank you again. And to everybody listening, as always, thank you and continue the experiments. Be nice and be safe. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off.

Starting point is 01:32:51 Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend.

Starting point is 01:33:29 So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. I reached out to these Finnish folks, young entrepreneurs, very talented,

Starting point is 01:33:49 after a acrobat introduced me to one of their products, which is mushroom coffee. This specific one includes chaga and lion's mane. And it knocked my socks off. I highly recommend if you try it, you start with half a packet. It's very strong and lights you up like a Christmas tree in the best way possible People are always asking me what I use for cognitive enhancement and for right now. This is the answer I try to force this on all of my houseguests It is a hell of a thing if I have employees or people come over who are working on projects with me

Starting point is 01:34:23 I always try to feed it to them because I'm going to get the limitless effect and get a lot more out of them. The first time I mentioned this product and Four Sigmatic on the podcast, their products sold out in less than a week. So you may want to check them out soon if you're listening to this. And the coffee tastes like coffee. It takes just seconds to prepare with hot water. And oddly enough, only includes 40 milligrams of caffeine. So it has less than half of what you'd get in a regular cup of coffee. I don't get any jitters, acid reflux, or any stomach burn, any of that. It's very unusual and very, very cool.

Starting point is 01:35:05 So if you don't like caffeine, they also offer very strong but caffeine-free mushroom elixirs, which I will sometimes have in the evening. I find Chaga specifically to be very, very grounding and earthy. So that is another option. And I have a cupboard full of their products at the moment, which is right around the corner of my kitchen. You can try something. You can try a sample pack, which is great also. Right now, by going to foursigmatic.com forward slash Tim, that's foursmatic F O U R S I G M A T I C.com forward slash Tim and use the

Starting point is 01:35:31 code Tim T I M to get 20% off of your first order. And they're not that expensive anyway. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you'll be disappointed. So try them out. This episode is brought to you by Headspace, the world's most popular meditation app. I have it on my phone. I use it all the time when I'm in Ubers, when I'm in airplanes, when I'm in those in-between spaces, and I want to do some good for myself. Across all of the guests that I've had on this podcast, more than 80% have the common behavior, the common habit of some type of meditative practice. It does not have

Starting point is 01:36:05 to be complicated or expensive. Headspace is meditation made simple. I've used it for hundreds of sessions myself. It provides guided meditations that you can use whenever you want, wherever you want, whether on your phone, computer, or tablet. They have sessions that focus on everything from decreasing stress and anxiety to eating healthier, sleeping better, and even being more creative. But I suggest you keep it simple, simple, simple. This has had a huge impact on my life. Try their Take 10 program. It is fantastic.

Starting point is 01:36:36 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It costs you nothing. Try it out. And I promise, and I don't do this very much, that you will see a significant benefit from it. Download the Headspace app and train your mind for a happier, healthier life. Learn more at headspace.com forward slash Tim.

Starting point is 01:36:57 That's headspace.com forward slash Tim.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #236: The Alien of Extraordinary Ability

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #236: The Alien of Extraordinary Ability

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.