Cake? Economic Outlook

 

 
Last night Decoboco fell asleep again—totally passed out.
So I didn’t get to bed until 4 a.m.
Not feeling sleepy, so I rode my bike around the Toyoko Line station area checking out shops until about 3 a.m.
Nothing was open.
Daybreak comes early too.
Today we’re transporting a vehicle to an event, so I have the day off—yay★
Got woken up by the alarm, all groggy. They say drinking water in the morning is good, so lately I’ve been keeping up with two glasses.
Ugh.
So we’re on the second floor, and lately I’ve been creeping down the stairs real slow to head out.
Why?
The lathe shop next door keeps saying “Oh! Another bike!” and “That’s nice!”
It’s a hassle first thing in the morning…
Heh★ Today the old man seems to be inside too, so I’m creeping along.
Whoa! He was hiding in the shadow of the wall waiting for me★
Decoboco: “Oh, good morning★”
Old man: “W-w-well, how’s business been lately?”
Decoboco thinking: What’s up? He seems pretty nervous…
Decoboco: “Huh? We’re doing fine. We never had big jobs to begin with, and I work solo, so not much has changed.”
Old man: “Yeah, well, we used to make small parts for Nissan, so we’re down to less than half.”
Old man: “We’re scraping by with a few other jobs here and there, but it’s not working—it’s hopeless.”
Old man: “These days we’re already closed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but we might as well stay closed even more.”
Old man: “And I’ve got employees to worry about—it’s really tough…”
Old man: “Maybe I should just hang myself?”
　
Decoboco: ·······················
Hard to know what to say first thing in the morning… I can’t really argue with that. It’s depressing.
A lathe shop that’s been running for decades.
Because they can’t adapt, it’s sad to see fine precision machining shops like this fade away in times like these.
Last year he was happily saying he’d bought a new lathe—that’s ancient history now.
This isn’t an age for reinvention.
I wonder what’s going to happen…
It’s truly a story of “dead money” distributed worldwide…
Better get those inspection documents ready.