The park and it is getting colder in the mornings. As Neil Young sang ‘The World is turning, I hope it don’t turn away.’

Well it is turning — away from the sun — but hopefully it will turn back in a few months.

The cold morning brought on talk of hot food for the evening’s dinner and, if there is one dish that the Japanese love to eat in cold weather it is ‘nabe’. (Nabe refers to the recipe and to the cooking utensil used to make the recipe.)

Basically a large earthenware pot is simmered on a portable stove at the table and a multitude of ingredients are added and cooked in a stock. These are then eaten with a variety of sauces and seasonings until everyone is suitably warmed and satisfied. The remaining stock, which is by now quite thick and heavily flavoured from the ingredients is used to cook noodles or is added to rice to make a kind of savoury porridge.

Nabe is far from my favourite Japanese dish and I do my best to resist whenever eating it is suggested. However this particular morning when the subject came up I proceeded to tell my wife about the oldest clay pot in existence, which is dated to roughly 7000 years ago and which came from Japan (something I had recently discovered). This pot was made by the Jomon people who lived in Japan as early as 14,000 years ago (during the last Ice Age) and up until 5000 years ago.

I learned about the Jomon pot as it is one of the 100 items chosen by The British Museum for its wonderful ‘A History of The World in 100 Objects’ exhibition, book and podcast (link below in Musings).

I suddenly realised that our earthenware pot which we use to cook nabe serves exactly the same function the 7000 year old pot in The British Museum. Namely to apply heat to meat, fish, vegetables and roots to such an extent that they become soft enough to eat and digest with a minimum of effort — the principle objective of all early forms of cooking and one of the main reasons we have have become such a dominant species.

Prior to the design and making of earthenware pots the only way to cook food would have been by direct exposure to flame. The pot allowed a greater variety of food to be cooked with more control, would allow different flavours to emerge and be mixed and could be used to preserve, store and transport food and most importantly facilitated easier, faster digestion, thereby allowing nutrients being processed and absorbed more efficiently by the body and the inevitable consumption of a far wider variety of ingredients; all necessary to support the rapidly developing human brain.

And here we are in modern Japan proposing to make dinner in exactly the same way that my wife’s 7000 year old ancestors would have done.

Now the interesting thing is that even though I am not especially fond of nabe — after tracing the origins of the method of cooking and cooking vessel used, pondering on how this new technology worked in tandem with the soon to emerge art of farming (7000 years ago people were still very much hunter-gatherers but that would soon change) and simply imagining those Jomon people lowering a piece of meat, mushroom or some leaves into simmering water in exactly the same way as we would be doing — I found myself actually wanting to eat nabe that night.

In fact I was very much looking forward to eating it and, I largely attribute that desire to the fact that I had just connected all those
dots: the ‘story’ of nabe, the history of the Jomon pot and what all that actually meant in terms of culture, the past and the development of the human species.

That knowledge and understanding made me see the dish in a very different way and more importantly created a desire in me to cook and eat it.

And we did and it was good; and because all that knowledge came together in one meal, the nabe was quite possibly better than ever.

Storytelling | 2

I talked about ‘nabe’ in the above section as it illustrates a point that I try to make time and time again with clients. The point is to collect knowledge — then use that knowledge to tell stories. The most interesting and often most successful people that I have met in my life invariably have one thing in common; their breadth of knowledge. They know a lot, an awful lot about many, often seemingly unconnected, disparate, subjects.

They collect knowledge, they collect things and they collect experiences. And they are expert at weaving all these elements together to make stories. Stories that at the time of hearing endear the teller to their audience by deeply engaging that audience and at the same time enriching them with often knew found knowledge.

As the ‘nabe’ story above illustrates stories can transform everyday things into things of far greater significance and meaning.

And that new found meaning and significance can and often does create a strong desire to ‘buy into’ or become a part of that story.

David Bowie was a great story teller. So many of his works were stories: ‘Heroes’, ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Life on Mars?’ ‘Ziggy Stardust’… in fact it is difficult to think of a Bowie song that does not have some element of story telling.

The linked Dispatch connects Bowie’s song-writing/story-telling to the notion of collecting knowledge which in turn is used over time to create even more stories. And the process described in the Dispatch is very similar to the idea explained above — simply collecting seemingly unconnected, disparate bits of knowledge and trusting that in the future they will somehow all start to connect and grow into something meaningful; which they invariably do.

The trick here, to begin with, is simple to be open to any form of new knowledge and to allow that new knowledge to lead you on to more — call it ‘knowledge foraging’, if you will.

If you take this approach to knowledge you will then be able to use story-telling to transform whatever you are talking about into something rare, novel, precious and possibly transformative and you will leave your audience wanting to hear more and remembering everything.

Even a simple hot-pot can become an expedition 7000 years back in time.

Staying with David Bowie and story-telling watch this clip of him preparing to preform one of his less famous songs. 

Notice how he draws the audience in with very personal story going back to his early teens. How he references great artists, says something about what they meant to him and explains the origins of the song name ‘Thursday’s Child’ — he is sharing something that only he can share, something intimate and connected to his development as an artist and something that cannot fail to draw the audience to him.

Going back to the Jomon ‘nabe’. Here is the original podcast episode from the BBC podcast ‘A History of The World in 100 Objects’.

It is a fabulously interesting series of broadcasts covering thousands of years of human design told through the stories of 100 objects in the museum’s collection.

These objects are, in many cases, what once were simple everyday objects.

Things that most likely would still be everyday objects, irrespective of age or provenance, but which are now forever transformed by the stories we attach to them.

Nicholas Raistrick | Communication Strategist, LABtokyo

Nicholas founded LABtokyo 10 years ago with the express commitment to helping people communicate to their highest potential.

We work with private individuals and corporate groups by delivering training and coaching programmes specifically designed to enhance all facets of interpersonal communication.

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