This article originally appeared in the September 2006 issue.
Thanks to Honda Marine, a few months ago I had the opportunity to visit Japan. It was more than just a cultural tour; it was an eye-opening experience. I learned a lot from this trip, including how to find clothes in Tokyo when you’re 6-foot 5 and a biscuit shy of 300 pounds.
In Japan, an XXL-sized shirt is what they use to cover small rice fields. Unfortunately for me, this just happens to be the size I normally wear. So after surviving a flight to Japan that was slightly longer than a Hollywood marriage, I was left in an interesting position when I discovered my luggage didn’t make the same trip.
Finding clothes the night before I was scheduled to meet Satoshi Toshida, the CEO of Honda Marine, was more than a little challenging. It was like trying to find a brownie at a Weight Watchers seminar.
I recruited two guys from Honda to help me with my search. John Fulcher from Honda’s Georgia office and Ryo Matsumoto, who asked that I call him “Roy” since he got tired of me butchering the pronunciation of his name.
John went along for the ride since he didn’t know the area any better than I did, but it was Roy who was the real hero. He was the local who knew where to go. The three of us took to the streets of Tokyo in search of clothes that could fit Godzilla. Added to the equation was the lack of time. On most Sunday nights, stores in this area generally close at eight, which meant we had less than 30 minutes to pull off this Donald Trump Apprentice-like task.
We hopped on the train and we were off. I couldn’t read a thing. It might as well have been in Japanese, so I was glad that Roy was leading the way. After the train we then leaped into a taxi that was being driven by a man wearing white gloves. For the first time in my life I was actually in a cab that didn’t smell like, well, a cab. He took us to Takashimaya, one of the largest department stores around. We sprinted to the front door, knowing that the store would be closing in less than ten minutes.
Within seconds we had the attention of at least seven Takashimaya employees. Roy explained the lost luggage part and our dire need to find clothes for our meeting the next day. I was expecting a response that would be typical at most department stores at closing time, but I didn’t get that here. The sales associates started scouring the store as well as the basement in search of anything that might fit me.
They would gasp in amazement when the shirt they offered up proved to be too small for this big man. By now even more employees were stepping up to help. They found the largest pair of pants in Tokyo and they hemmed them up while we searched for shirts. I felt like Julia Roberts in the movie Pretty Woman or something, other than the clothes I was finding weren’t exactly my top choice. The biggest shirt they could find had a penguin on the front. John told me that penguins were popular here, but to me it looked like a uniform for a zoo keeper.
As I would emerge from the dressing room each time, I would get a few smiles mixed with the gasps from shocked faces. But the employees came through for me. If anyone was complaining about us staying past closing time, I didn’t sense it. In fact, after ringing up the two shirts and a pair of pants for 42,000 Yen (roughly $365 US dollars), one of the Takashimaya employees even snagged us a cab.
Since I had never been to Japan before, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought at first that it was just a coincidence that the department store people were really nice and so was the taxi cab driver. But after spending a week in this country, it really is true that you can go a long way with just a smile. Japan has some of the friendliest people that I’ve ever met and I hope to return soon. But of course next time I won’t be checking my luggage at the airport.
