2023.11.28

Journey man

While on a business trip to Tokyo, I was planning to go to the Inoue tools shop to buy a chisel to sharpen spoons, and as I was talking with a friend over lunch before boarding the plane, I happened to receive a call from Mr. Inoue on my cell phone.

He said "There's a girl coming from Germany and she's going to Hokkaido, so could you please show her around?" I told him that I was about to go to the shop and would ask him for details then, and headed for Tokyo.

When I arrived at the store, she was waiting for me. I heard that she was traveling for three years to obtain her German craftsmanship and Meister qualification. I had heard that Germany's Meister system includes a period of travel, but this was my first time meeting an actual journeyman.

There are various rules during the three-year journey, including the following.
You must not go within a 20km radius of your home for three years.
Don't use your own money for transportation. (Getting paid by someone you know or hitchhiking to get around)
Traveling while working at a destination (German government provided a visa to work in any country)
Cell phones are prohibited (borrow someone's PC or tablet to send e-mails)
Clothing: Black jacket with seashell buttons. (The color varies depending on the type of job, such as black for woodworkers and blue for ironworkers.)
Wear a black hat. (In the first year, wear a hat with a long brim and gradually shorten it. In the third year, you can wear a hat without a brim.)

Recently, there seems to be a way to become a Meister without traveling, but she seems to have chosen to travel in a traditional way that has continued since the Middle Ages. She told me that it had been three years since she started traveling, and that she had just been to Japan for the last time, and that there were currently three journeymen in Japan.

A while later I received an email. It said that she had arrived in Hokkaido as planned, and was apparently working as a live-in worker at a blueberry farm near Lake Toya.　　I was told that she would be able to go to Asahikawa the following week, so we decided to meet at Asahikawa station at 4pm.

On that day, she had successfully hitchhiked from Lake Toya to Asahikawa. I asked her to stay at a guesthouse in a detached house from my home, and I spent a day showing her around the ateliers of Asahikawa's leading woodworkers.

After traveling for three years while being helped by people, I wonder if she has become better at dealing with people or getting better at being helped. I could feel the humility that she had cultivated through her travels, and I felt very comfortable guiding her around.

Craftsmanship qualifications place emphasis on acquiring skills, but looking at her demeanor, I felt that in order to become a Meister, one must mature as a person. Her journey will end this year, but her journey as a master will continue beyond that.

Then I realized that I too was a journeyman on a journey.