On the day I finally met an overseas customer face to face, I kept asking myself why the joy felt so big—and I’m still finding the answer.
Postal delays have been rough lately.
A few months ago, I received a message from someone overseas who said that when they came to Japan, they wanted to meet me in person and purchase Flower Jem’s pearl pieces directly. At the same time, she placed an order for a ring that would require my metalsmithing.
It felt like my birthday and Christmas had arrived together.
Her first message came in early July.
We had time until September, but I immediately started on the metalwork and made sample rings based on what she wanted.
Time moved quickly, and before I knew it, the day had arrived.
The night before, I packed my backpack with many pearl pieces, excited the way a child gets the night before a school field trip.
On the morning of the day—meaning today—we roughly decided on a time and place to meet.
I woke around 7 a.m., enjoyed about thirty minutes of crisp morning air on my motorcycle, and, unusually for me, ate a hamburger at a burger shop. I was just very hungry this morning.
We decided to meet around 11:30 at Tennoji, one of Osaka’s big downtown areas. Google Maps said it would take about forty minutes from my home in Kobe by motorcycle, but I’m not the type to study the route carefully in advance, so I left with an extra hour and a half.
By the time I parked my motorcycle at Q’s Mall in Tennoji, it was already 11:30. A few calls and messages had come in right as I was leaving, which delayed my departure.
I searched for a café near Q’s Mall where I could lay out the pearls, but couldn’t find a good spot. There’s a station building called Tennoji Mio diagonally across the intersection from Q’s Mall, so I headed there.
I messaged her, “I’m looking for a café in the station building at Tennoji,” and she replied, “I’m at Starbucks.” The directory showed Starbucks on the 3rd and 8th floors. When I asked which floor, she said, “Maybe the 2nd?”
I thought, “It must be the 3rd,” and went to the 3rd-floor Starbucks, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like her.
After a bit of back and forth, we discovered she was actually at the Starbucks in Q’s Mall.
Looking back at her message, she had indeed said first, “I’m at Q’s Mall.”
In the heat, I had been walking back and forth between Q’s Mall and Tennoji Mio. This sort of absent-mindedness is one of my traits.
When I finally reached the Starbucks in Q’s Mall, I spotted someone who looked like her. I pointed to my phone and gave a small wave.
It was a nonsensical signal even to me, but she instantly reacted, “Yes, that’s me!”
I gave a quick greeting and thought about ordering coffee, but the line at the register was long, so I gave up.
From there, I showed her the necklace she had asked me to hold, as well as earrings and a long necklace she had been curious about.
She liked every piece.
I can handle basic English, but once the explanation gets a bit complex, I can’t say it in English. I always have so much I want to say, yet only simple words come out.
Even so, seeing her look at the pearls in person and like them—that alone was satisfying.
She laughed often—a bright, kind person. The long necklace had taken me three weeks to finish with all-knotting. The string was so long that the thread kept tangling; the tangles were harder than the knots themselves. It was a struggle.
I had made videos and written an article about that process.
She knew about it and said she wanted the long necklace “because I know what you went through.”
To be honest, the pearl quality of that long necklace isn’t very high. I told her that, and she still said, “That’s not the point. You worked so hard to make it.”
I thought, “She’s right. Beauty isn’t everything. When I buy something, I’m often drawn by the story behind it.”
But I couldn’t express that in English on the spot. I only managed a simple, “Thank you. It really was tough. And there was always the pressure that if the thread broke, I’d have to redo it.”
I showed her several pieces. She decided on a few to purchase, and we were able to finalize the ring design and specifications together.
All the while I felt like I was walking on air. I only managed to say maybe one-tenth of what I wanted, but watching her smile made me feel, “This is enough.”
For me, simply having this chance to meet through pearls felt like the greatest good fortune.
If I were a company employee at a pearl farm, I’d probably be a failure for this. A boss would say, “Sell more,” or “Learn to explain the products better.”
But Flower Jem is a very small shop run solely by me. At first my stance was, “Pearls won’t sell easily online, but just making what I like and listing it is fun enough.” Years later, that led to this: meeting an overseas customer in person.
In reality, she was the fourth person I’ve met in five years. Once a year, if that. Even so, it’s an honor.
Before working for a pearl company in my late twenties and thirties, I held various sales jobs. Among salespeople, there are many who, even with good numbers, choose methods that make it hard to keep facing customers after the sale. In other words, they say only what’s convenient at the time of sale and then avoid seeing the customer afterward.
If you want an ongoing relationship, you have to tell as much of the truth about the product as you can. But doing that can reduce your sales.
Maybe because of that—or maybe because my sales skills were simply poor—my results as a salesman were generally not great. On the other hand, at every company I tended to get unnecessarily close to customers.
I was often invited to dinner. I often received food as gifts.
My bosses would say things like, “You don’t close many contracts, but it seems like you’re doing good work,” which sounded half like praise, half not.
Ten to twenty years ago, Japan was in a deep economic slump, and I think many firms used slightly questionable sales methods.
“Just get the contract.” “We don’t care if it becomes a complaint.” “Keep pushing until the police are called.” Some companies were like that.
Because of those experiences, I am genuinely moved that I can meet customers face to face and do business.
For me, meeting a customer is proof that I am doing business sincerely.
That said, I’m not sure I can convey this well to others.
If someone asked, “Is it really that moving that a tourist to Japan happened to meet you and bought pearls?”—I’d have trouble explaining it convincingly.
And if someone already keeps up good long-term customer relationships, meeting directly is natural and unremarkable.
Even I don’t fully understand why I feel this much happiness.
Maybe it’s that in this tiny, one-person Flower Jem, something physical happened—a real encounter with a person.
Some might think, “That took a lot of roundabout words to say not much.” But I can’t explain this feeling well, so I’m pleasantly muddled.
Like a high schooler finishing a clumsy first date, I parted from her.
I was so happy my steps felt like they were floating.
And for such a giddy me, the gods were watching.
I had parked my motorcycle in Q’s Mall’s bike lot, but I spent thirty minutes wandering Q’s Mall trying to find my way back to it.
“Plant your feet on the ground. Cool your head.” Perhaps that was divine instruction.
I asked the information counter and several shop staff, “Where is the motorcycle parking?” Everyone kept pointing me to bicycle parking. Unless you commute by motorcycle, you probably don’t know where the motorcycle lot is.
There are several bicycle parking areas, and I ended up visiting almost all of them.
A phone shop staffer handing out tissues gave me one, so I asked him too.
“Parking? I’m not sure, haha.”
I passed him about five more times after that, and he made a point of never engaging with me again.
I thought from the bottom of my heart, “I don’t want to be that kind of merchant.” If it were me, I’d help look together.
Between that sour mood and the thought, “What if I never find my motorcycle and the day just ends like this,” I finally made it to the right lot.
I left Tennoji around 1:30 p.m. and reached Kobe at 2:30. In Kobe, a wholesale client of mine was vending at a cat-themed event, so I went to help.
There were about a hundred booths selling all sorts of cat things.
Apparently some famous TV actors were appearing.
From accessories and fabric wallets to “cat food that looks like human food” and “human food that looks like cat food,” I chuckled to myself. “There must be people who go home and the cat eats human food and the human eats cat food, and neither of them notice.”
There were T-shirts and cat toys and every kind of item.
Some attendees were unmistakable cat people—cat patterns on their tops, pants, hats, and bags—head to toe.
Given the vibe, my phone’s wallpaper—my beloved dog Lulu—felt a bit risky, so I turned my phone face down.
“There’s a dog person among us!”
“Seize them!!”
Anyway, it was fun to be a booth attendant for the first time in a while.
A girl of about five looked longingly at a cat plushie at our booth. She whispered to her mother, and they seemed to be discussing.
After a while, they reached some kind of conclusion.
She picked one cat out of the many.
I said, “They look similar, but each face is just a little different.” She began carefully examining each cat’s expression.
I tried talking to her, and she would lift her clear, limpid eyes to me, but she didn’t say a word. Sometimes she whispered to her mother. The mother would bend down to put her ear by her daughter’s mouth.
Next to the five-year-old were two older girls—probably both under ten—watching with gentle smiles.
In my experience, even one woman can be noisy, and two or three can be quite boisterous.
But here were four, and it was so quiet. That surprised me.
Eventually the little girl chose one cat and gave me a small nod.
She looked so lovely and refined—almost like royalty.
It was as if there were a rule: “Do not speak directly with the people of the lower world.”
The event closed at 5 p.m., and I went home. I was very tired and napped for two hours.
That night, I went to the neighborhood public bath.
Soaking in the hot water, I thought again about how happy I’d felt meeting a customer in person today.
I still couldn’t find a clear explanation or logic for it.
Then I recalled her words about buying the long necklace “because you struggled.”
I’ve had a few chances to ask people why they chose a piece.
“Because your diary-like description in the listing was fun.” “Because it said the pearls were chosen from 20,000.” “Because I found it charming that you treat pearls like people.” “Because your essay about Japanese salarymen’s complaints was interesting.” Things like that.
Once again—beyond surface beauty—customers find something extra and buy for that.
Then I thought: If I over-script stories for each piece, it might become contrived. Something important could be lost.
So I decided: as always, I’ll just write what I felt and thought at the time, and what I want to say, as-is.
My brain isn’t very high-performance anyway, so better not to force it.
Ah, and one more thing.
Someone once wrote about Flower Jem on a site called Pearl-Guide.
People who read that article occasionally show up and buy my pearls.
And some of those buyers write their own reviews on Pearl-Guide.
As more of them appear, I feel very grateful to the person who wrote the first article.
The way she looks at gemstones felt to me exactly like a child opening a Christmas morning present. I sensed that from her Instagram, and I felt it when I met her too.
I don’t know how best to say this, but her expression wrapped in happiness is etched in my mind. The impression she left has become one of the forces that move my heart and body when I knot a necklace or polish a piece of metal.
I want to make pearl pieces that are cherished by people who truly love gems. That’s what it is.
The other day, someone who had read her article messaged me wanting to visit my workspace.
She called me a “craftsman,” but I don’t really think of myself that way. She said “your workshop,” but in reality it’s just a corner of a small one-room apartment.
I told her that.
She wrote back:
“It doesn’t matter what the space looks like.”
“A place where art is born is a place where magic happens.”
“Such places are worth visiting.”
“You have the eye, the technique, and the vision to transform materials into artworks that women will love for a long time.”
It was to the point I thought, “Is that really me? Maybe she’s mistaken me for someone else.”
Just as I don’t consider myself a craftsman, I hadn’t been conscious of art or of pursuing beauty.
At the bathhouse I thought, “Maybe trying to knot neatly, to polish to a mirror shine—in my own way that might be called a pursuit of beauty. Maybe that is art.”
Walking from the bath to my motorcycle, I caught myself murmuring, “So I have been pursuing beauty.”
Maybe because it was something I hadn’t realized, or maybe out of embarrassment, I laughed a little at myself.
At the same time, I felt a slight unease about consciously thinking this way. So in the end, I’ll keep doing as I have—making pearl pieces and findings that fit my own ideal.
I’m embarrassed, but I’m also very grateful for those words.
Weekdays I have a physically and mentally tough job. Precisely because of that, every weekend I feel lucky to have the time and environment to touch pearls.
So, once again, this turned into a floaty, abstract piece that doesn’t directly discuss pearls. Lately I’ve been writing a lot of this kind of thing, and I keep telling myself I should write more practical, useful articles about pearl farming—yet here we are again.
Personally, I’d be happy if, five or ten years from now, people said, “Flower Jem? Oh, the person who sells words, and pearls on the side.”
Like when you pick up a letter from a friend or parent from twenty years ago and memories flood back, I want to craft pearl pieces that, the moment you hold them, bring back the story and background behind them.
That thought just came to me.
When I shop or eat out, for better or worse, I like places that are a little unusual.
Not just buying what I need, but liking the kind of purchase where later I can say, “This? The shopkeeper was such-and-such a person…” and the memories resurface. I think many people feel this way.
Why do we feel like that? Digging deeper into that could be interesting.
Anyway, I’ll stop here.
In conclusion, if you visit Japan, please consider adding Flower Jem as one of your destinations. I can also introduce a talented friend of mine who works as a tour guide and holds simultaneous interpretation credentials.
She and I studied Brazilian Portuguese at university. She’s aiming to guide not only in English but also in Brazilian Portuguese—a rare skill set. I’d be grateful if you keep her as one option.
See you again.
Pearl Bless You
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