But now we have a story that flows in another direction. Our host Victor Wang is from China.  He came to the US to study lasers.  He came to our town because UD has one of the top three laser education programs in the country.  On the lifepath in his native culture you pursue education as far as you can and then find professional employment.  He did that.  He’s a bright young man with a PhD.   It was all very straightforward, and he found himself working with lasers in California.  After a year on the job they gave him a first anniversary party.  When it was his time to speak he said, “Every day is just the same.  I cannot have my life like this.”  So he quit, left that cultural path and the comfort of the tech world and did not have any particular plan.  He came back to Dayton because he had a house here, one that he had rented out.  His renters took the moose head from his wall and his guitar that he had left behind.

 

His friend had a tea shop selling milky teas, fruity teas and drinks.  Victor and a partner were interested in opening a restaurant but they didn’t know what kind and they didn’t have any experience.  So they prepared food at the tea shop and gave it away to see what people liked and wanted.  It turned out they wanted noodles.  So the decision was made to do ramen.  That seemed simple enough.

 

They heard about someone known as a Ramen Master in Kansas City, so they went there right to get some pointers.  And that was a turning point.  “I was like, very arrogant when I first met The Master” Victor says.  “I told him I have a tea shop.  I’m going to make a transition to ramen.  I have two months to get ready.”  The Master didn’t laugh.  He taught them.  They stayed a few days for school, and they learned that they didn’t know anything.

 

It turns out that there is a right way of doing things.  You encounter this idea in Japanese Calligraphy, or Flower Arrangement.  We hear about the Tea Ceremony in Japan.  The cultivation of Bonsai trees involves levels of mastery.  There is Kabuki theater.  Karate belts are familiar to us denoting levels of mastery.  And so there is a Ramen Master.

 

It is no small thing to make the broth right.  It takes seven hours every day.  And that is only one of five levels involved in a bowl of ramen.  Back in Dayton they practiced for a year at home, and when they were ready to move into the shop, Victor says “I thought I finally know something, and the shop is ready. All of sudden, all the things I knew fell apart again, because, you know, in a commercial kitchen, everything is different. The tools are different, there is size difference. All of a sudden I don't know how to cook again. So okay, I said, I have to, I need to see The Master again. I drove back in March and then went back to his shop and spent a week in the shop.”

 

He came back to his location on Wilmington Pike and thought “It will probably take me another half year to get to know everything, We’ll be lucky to open the shop by Christmas.  Then one day I was sitting by the window and looking at my bank account, and I thought.  We gotta open right now.”  That was May 23.

 

Most little independent restaurants open their doors and hope for customers to come.  That path doesn’t cross here either.  “I didn’t sleep that night.  I prepared everything.  And the next day, we were crushed.  The average waiting time was an hour.  We had definitely a lot of angry customers.  I know that because a lot of them came back later on and told me they were here on that first day.”

 

He went back then to see The Master and spent many days with him.  And Victor reports that “actually he came here once, and before he left, he wrote me a huge report. Those are things that you have to change. Nice, yeah, one by one, one by one, there's no such a thing like being the best, just being better than yourself. Yeah.”

 

And there it is.  Our young friend Victor, with a PhD in a multidisciplinary field including physics, engineering, materials science and applied mathematics has found a way forward after leaving that lab in California where every day is the same.  Now he knows that each day can be better. He has a large mural in the shop and the walls are lined with figurines that are recognizable to fans of anime.  It goes without saying that you can taste that ideas and excitement in the food at Bushida Ramen – it is SO GOOD – but it’s just all the more interesting to wonder how it will improve.