Samurai Chiffon Cake

When I had just started working.
It was nearly 20 years ago.
I worked with a samurai.


That year, I was told by my company to become the operator of a certain massive machine.
It was just as confusing as being told to become the Pirate King.

Since it was the first machine of its kind introduced in Japan, they thought someone like me, with no prior knowledge, would be easier to train.
Due to that arbitrary decision by the president, I was suddenly tasked with working alongside a giant machine.

That was so unreasonable.
Even that guy who plans to be the Pirate King probably started by admiring it first.
I certainly don't remember ever saying, 'I'm going to be an operator!'

This giant machine was about the size of four tatami mats, and I didn't just have to open and close it; I had to use two computers to operate it while configuring this and that.

It might be expected, but all the settings were in English.

My English skills stopped at the junior high school level!
And I had aspired to be an office lady!

As a fresh graduate, I didn't know where to vent that painful cry, so I just did as I was told and underwent training for that machine.

Well then. The systems engineer sent from Tokyo. He was in his 40s, short, thin, with neat hair, a meticulous face like something out of a picture, and he almost never smiled. That was Mr. Tanaka (a pseudonym).

What a character...!

To me, who was sheepishly saying, 'Please teach me from the negative,' he would push up his glasses without even a smile and say, 'Understood. To what extent is it negative?' He looked like nothing but a two-dimensional character.

Before I could feel intimidated, I was excited by Mr. Tanaka's character.
I wanted to try and make him laugh...

However, I wasn't given any time to think about such things. I was handed a massive manual, exhausted by being told to open and close the machine, and every time I asked, 'What does this error mean?', he would preface it with, 'In Japanese, it means...' and I would frantically scribble down the meaning with a red pen, saying, 'Wait, wait!'

Why am I doing this for a foolish little girl?

I thought he was thinking that, since he never smiled.
Even so, I had no choice but to hang on; I was desperate, thinking that if I lost to this guy, I wouldn't have a place here.

One day, while listening to an explanation like, 'When this balances well with that...', I said, 'Oh, it's like miso soup!' while taking notes, and Mr. Tanaka chuckled for the first time.

'That's a good way to put it. Yes, the balance between the dashi and the miso is important,' he said in a slightly cheerful tone.

H-he laughed!!!

From that day on, I felt like Mr. Tanaka had acknowledged me just a little bit.

A few days later, the training ended successfully, he returned to Tokyo, and I began full-scale operation of the machine.

It was a few weeks later.

No matter how many times I reread the manual, an error wouldn't go away.
I called Mr. Tanaka in Tokyo and desperately tried to explain the error content and display in broken English.

'That's strange... in that case...'
'Understood, I'm coming over there now.'

Wait, right now!?

It was already evening. Considering the travel from Tokyo to Ibaraki Prefecture, and then having him look at it, there was no way he would be home before the middle of the night. I want to go home!!
I couldn't say that.
Perhaps I had been describing the error message incorrectly.

Two hours later, Mr. Tanaka appeared with a flourish, and with barely a greeting, he began typing away at a screen I had never seen before with incredible intensity.

Having absolutely nothing to do, I played the Evangelion angel attack theme—den-den-den-den-de-de♪—in my head and watched over him like Misato Katsuragi.

After a while, he shouted, "Ahhh!! I knew it!!"
Suddenly, Mr. Tanaka started yelling things like, "Oh my god!" and "Why didn't I notice this until now?"

What, did the angel split? Did it fly away? Was the AT Field breached!?

While my mind was completely elsewhere, Mr. Tanaka began to apologize profusely.

"I am so sorry...! It seems there was a mistake in the settings at the initial stage. Why didn't an error occur until now... In my opinion, blah blah blah..." (I didn't understand).

With a level of polite apology and explanation that I wouldn't expect to be directed at a young girl, I
just smiled sheepishly and said, "No, no, as long as it's fixed, that's fine."

Then Mr. Tanaka said,
"No! I am truly sorry for wasting your valuable time and causing so much trouble for you, Ms. Tokita (assuming that's her surname)!!"

If I had blue eyes,

Jesus!!
Harakiri!? Japanese Samurai!!

I would have been tempted to shout that, as he bowed his head so low he looked like he was about to perform a dogeza.

No, no, no, no, really! It's okay!!

I had never been apologized to so sincerely by an adult before.

I realized for the first time that he hadn't thought of me as just a young girl from the start, but had been treating me as an equal professional partner.

"Next time, I will come by with a gift to apologize...!"

Y-you don't have to do that!!!

I saw him off after saying that, but a few days later, he really did show up with a large box.

"It's homemade."

The contents of the box that Mr. Tanaka handed me with a serious face was a beautiful chiffon cake.

"Wow, amazing! Did your wife make this?"

When I said that, he chuckled just like he did before and said,

"Who decided that a man can't make sweets?"

Mr. Tanaka made this!?

I was incredibly delighted imagining Mr. Tanaka making sweets in a fancy apron, pushing his glasses up with a quick motion.

I mean, his character is just too strong...!!

The chiffon cake was delicious.
It had a fine texture, was fluffy yet moist and springy, and the browning was so even that I wouldn't have doubted it for a second if someone told me it was sold in a shop.

When I asked him lightly, just to keep the conversation going, "How do you make it?" he replied,
"I'll send you the recipe sometime," and "If you follow it exactly, you will definitely be able to bake it well."

The chiffon cake recipe he went out of his way to mail to me was as thick as a manual.

Moreover, I thought there would be various types, but it was only for a plain one.
There were photos for every single step, and as for the color and sheen of the meringue, or the stiffness of the peaks, or what "whitish" meant when the egg yolks turned whitish, his instruction was not to judge for myself, but to check if it looked exactly like the photos.

W-well, that's Mr. Tanaka for you... his character never wavers...!!

Mr. Tanaka smiles when talking about making food.

Having realized that, I started throwing topics about homemade food at him every now and then, and I happily grew as an operator.

However, a few years later, the company went under, and I stopped seeing both that machine and Mr. Tanaka.

What remained with me were Mr. Tanaka's recipe and the skill to bake a delicious chiffon cake.
Even so, it is a great regret now to remember that the recipe went missing during the chaos of moving when I got married.
I can no longer bake that one.

That chiffon cake made by a samurai.
I haven't encountered anything that surpasses it, and although I've tried making it a few times by looking at Cookpad, I still haven't found a recipe as reliable as that one.

Is that samurai still somewhere in Tokyo, baking sweets with a serious look on his face?

I think it would be interesting if he opened a shop with a completely humorless samurai aesthetic, wafting a fluffy, sweet scent.