Off Script with the Governor
Governor Suzuki of Hokkaido came to visit us, and my propensity to go entrepreneurial, off script put weeks of forward-planning to the side. Or did it?
Hey, I’m Casey. Thanks for reading our newsletter, sharing the startup journey of Kamui Whisky K.K. We’ve been busy, but when we aren’t overwhelmed, we’ll share a story as we craft up a whisky distillery on a remote, volcanic island in the most northern part of Japan.
To kick off the week we had the Governor of Hokkaido make a special visit to us here at Kamui Whisky K.K.
It was a big affair.
This had been in the planning for weeks. But, it was thoroughness, and sheer number of bodies thrown at the planning, that was so impressive. In the picture above, it looks like the Governor is all alone, but there was an impressive entourage who would soon file out, and would barely fit in our distillery. The Governor rolls deep.
Several groups - from the local city office, from the governor’s office - had stopped by the distillery multiple times to plan the visit. A great deal of effort was made to ensure things went precisely to plan.
We had a down to the minute schedule:
So Quickly Off Script
From almost the first moment I went off script.
At 15:10 I launched into the tour (scheduled for 15:17). It seemed the natural thing to do. As I walked the curious Governor through the distiller why shouldn’t I explain all the things we had going on? This cascaded the whole time schedule into the wrong sequence, and some scheduled items just didn’t happen (sorry).
Similarly, we had a detailed plan on where we should be as we discussed things:
Once again, I threw this to the wind. I ended up on the other side of the Governor with everyone scattered to very different places.
What we did do right was have a fun, lively discussion. On the romance of our whisky. Our unique location here in Rishiri. The quickly growing Japanese whisky industry, particularly in Hokkaido. How we are continuing to source more and more of our ingredients locally in Hokkaido.
It wasn’t until 15:28 that someone roped us back into the scripted schedule for the photo session. We were back on track for the first time since the Governor stepped off the bus.
One of the VIP1’s cheekily got in a solid sip of our Genshu.
Right Back Off Script
After the photo shoot we quickly reverted back to the mean. We (rather I) went off script again 😜.
The Governor was supposed to exit to visit our neighbors at the Sea Urchin center next door. Crack open and eat some super fresh uni2. Instead of going right, we went left. Excitedly we all rushed over to the warehouse to bathe in the smells our aging whisky.
The Governor, with cameras in close-up, drinking in a full whisky bouquet:
Laughs were had:
A new team was formed:
The Moral of the Story
Scripts are great and all but the experience, the feelings, are most important.
I’m guessing Governor Suzuki walked away with a memorable experience. Not only the happy, interested emotions experiencing our remote, volcanic distillery, but it was fun, relaxed and he had the full sensual experience from the smells3 to the tastes of the malt, hopefully, happily stored away in his hippocampus.
With deep apologies to the forward-planning teams for taking all of your rigorous work off script. But, I think, we arrived at the same destination. We just took a more entrepreneurial path than planned. A great, deeply human experience was had by Governor Suzuki and the other VIPs.
fin
Local Fireworks on the 23rd
If you are in the neighborhood come visit! Special memories should be had. This is the first Kamui Whisky K.K. hosted festival:
We are located here (if you didn’t know 😜):
They shall go unnamed.
uni = sea urchin
Smell being most primally linked to memory.
One day I will get to taste the whisky!