Taro's Blog

I finally got the definite answer, thanks to Mr. Kurumada, the Japanese Opera Singer living in Germany. Yes, I can love both cello and electric guitar. In doing so, I will enjoy richer musical lives,

Mr. Kurumada is a professional vocalist living in Germany, and although he specializes in classical music, he enjoys listening to his favorite popular music in his spare time.

According to him, even in the time of Wagner and Brahms, classical music (accessible to only 0.75% of the population) and popular music (folk songs) coexisted. This was an eye-opener for me.

My theory is that most of the 0.75% of classical music listeners at the time would have listened to both classical and popular music, depending on the occasion and their mood. In other words, classical music listeners had more options and led richer musical lives than the majority (99.25%) of people. For example, the music played at city festivals and weddings would have leaned more toward popular music. However, as a hobby, I would dress up and go to a comic opera concert a few times a year as an extraordinary experience.

What if you’re an Italian chef, is it wrong for you to eat a traditional Japanese breakfast, like grilled fish, pickles, rice, and miso soup at home every day? Wouldn’t it be presumptuous for an outsider to say, “You’re an Italian chef by trade, so you should only eat Italian food in your private time. Master your craft. Don’t eat Chinese food, tonkatsu, tempura, sushi, or Japanese food until you stop being a chef.” In your private time, I insist you eat what you most crave at the moment, depending on your mood at that time of the day.

Furthermore, if you want to be a cutting-edge, top-class Italian chef, in addition to regularly monitoring rival Italian restaurants, you should also actively visit highly acclaimed restaurants in other genres to try new flavors, absorbing good things that aren’t available in Italian cuisine, adapting them, and incorporating them into your own recipes. Without this kind of curiosity and ambition, it will be difficult to reach a higher level.

There are famous restaurants that, at first glance, have been serving the same signature dish for years. In fact, they adapt to the changing times and customer tastes by making subtle changes (to the point that an amateur wouldn’t notice at first glance) to the seasoning, presentation, quantity, and serving method. If you take the attitude of “Who cares? I’m just faithfully following the recipes of my predecessors,” you will be left behind by the changing times and will end up closing your eatery, complaining that “all the customers these days don’t know what real food tastes like.”