March 5, 2020 • 19 mins
Follow Malcolm Gladwell, a self-described car nut, to Lexus headquarters in Japan. There he discovers cars covered in fur; why flowers are essential to engineering; and how a motion as simple as a closing window tells you everything you need to know about omotenashi, the philosophy that informs every aspect of Lexus design.
--
This podcast is brought to you by Lexus and may not be reproduced or redistributed, in whole or in part, without prior permission of Lexus. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guest(s) and/or host(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Lexus, a division of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. Malcolm Gladwell and Pushkin Industries were compensated for the production of this podcast on behalf of Lexus. Please note that Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc. is not responsible for any errors or the accuracy or timeliness of the content provided. Used with permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. When I was a kid, my father would take
me to the Big Art Museum in Toronto. He would
go inside and I would stay outside the whole time,
sitting on the steps so I could watch the cars
go by. At the age of ten, I would much
(00:35):
rather look at traffic than Rembrandts. I'm not sure anything
has changed. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. I'm a Carnot.
When I go online in the morning, my first stop
is bring a Trailer dot com, where people like me
auction off their cars to other people like me. Just
so we're clear, I read the comments I'm bring a trailer,
(00:57):
which is one level of obsession beyond the standard bring
a trailer obsession. I have on a shelf in my
office every issue of Car magazine, the British Vogue of automagazines,
going back to April of nineteen ninety nine, with the
exception of the June and October issues of two thousand
and one, which for the life of me I cannot find.
(01:20):
And I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how many cars
I've owned over the years. A nineteen seventy two Mercedes
two eighty in original factory lime green, a bunch of
VW golf rs a push of Boxter gts and Immaculate
E thirty nine BMW M five And once many years
ago Alexis I s to fifty, a delightful little Japanese
(01:45):
sports Dan fantastic gearbox. I loved it, but then the
lease was up and I replaced it with a Golf GTI.
In my memory, I somehow filed away Alexis has just
another kind of luxury car, like an Audie, only from Asia.
Then one day Alexis called me up and said, Malcolm,
(02:08):
we'd like to prove you wrong. Lexus is its own thing.
My first thought was, oh wow, they're going to give
me a free car, which, by the way, I would
totally be fine with. But no, it was better than that.
They said, come to Japan because we think what it
(02:29):
means to be Lexus is something that you can only
understand firsthand in its home country. Go and see, so
I said what any self respecting carnut would say, twist
my arm from Lexus and Pushkin Industries. This is go
and see. My producer, Jacob Smith and I packed our bags.
(03:03):
We flew to Japan. Jacob actually went a little early
because he's also a car nut and he wanted to
spend a few days thrashing a sports car up and
down Japanese mountain roads. We met up in Tokyo and
took the bullet train to Nagoya, which is in itself
an experience. Checked into our hotel, which had I should add,
(03:24):
the greatest breakfast buffet in the history of breakfast buffets,
because this is Japan, a country dedicated to getting even
the smallest details perfect. And then we drove an hour
north to Toyota City, a town of about half a
million in Naichi Prefecture, where all things Toyota originate. And there,
in a discrete set of buildings, is the home of
(03:46):
Toyota's luxury division, Lexis HQ. Over the course of the
next six episodes, I'm going to tell you what we
learned there. Yeah. Yeah, that's great, fantastic. That was one
of the most fun I've had as a passenger in
(04:07):
a car, maybe ever, getting brief by race car drivers,
testing sports cars, making microscopic adjustments in a simulator, and
listening to the general manager of Lexus International hold Forth
on Star Wars and why he loves the shape of
the ones controversial Lexus front grill DA's bedder is an
(04:28):
atom the Batman and the first movie. People doesn't like
it Tout Beta, but finally he is a most famous
a hero in the Star Wars. The Lexus grill is
in the shape of a spindle, wide at the top,
wider at the bottom, and cinched in the middle. That's
the same story Lexus spindle. I hope, Oh it reminds
(04:53):
you mean the grill reminds people of Darth Vader's mask, right, Yeah,
though he was asked, you know, in an interview, some
people will say that it looks like I have the
idea of Star Wars. I liked because also Toast Beta
is inspired a Japanese although Sumlise so yes Star Wars
(05:14):
to Samuraize to the sound and engine Max and much more.
We're going to cover a lot of ground in this series,
but this first episode is about something very specific, something
that happened right at the very beginning of our visit
to the Toyota City campus, which, even given my massive
jet lag, kind of blew me away. Are we going
(05:37):
to go to the Japanese worked for visitors. Every corporation
has a taikon. The kaikon is a big open showroom
on the second floor of a glass office building. There's
a Toyota Sienta in one corner, wrapped entirely in white
faux fur with two giant puppy ears attached to the back,
(05:58):
which is like Japanese car, not humor. We took like
twenty pictures in it. Next to it is a race car,
the famous Lexus LFA. This particular LA I'll point out.
So this LFA is one that we've raced in the
Endurance Racing Series in Germany. Our guide is a guy
named Paul Williamson, big bushy, white mustache. Alexis Lifer, our
(06:23):
president of Occultota drove an LFA in two thousand and
nine and I think they finished fourth in Plass, So
you know, kind of a big deal to have a
company president that actually drives. Toyota is actually what the
Japanese call a master driver. Oh here we are just
the centry. They don't sell the centry outside Japan. It's
a totally old school limousine, very Japanese circa nineteen eighty boxy,
(06:48):
understated white lace curtains on the side windows. The seats
are covered with a soft woolvlure used to have a
v twelve engine. They are basically handbuilt. We can build
about one hundred or so per year. It's always a
tough one to come out with a new one because
every CEO has to have one the first year, but
only one hundred can get him. The other CEO's got
to wait till the second year, you know. Paul then
pointed to what's called the C pillar, the panel just
(07:11):
behind the passengers window. I'll point out one of the thing.
The m the vertical panels get a lot of handstanding
before the painting. This particular panel gets most attention because
this panel is a mirror for the VIP who just
got out of the back door before he turns around
and faces the cameras. It's like, what Human Center designed?
This is CEO Centers Center design exactly. That's right, that's right.
(07:34):
Then we came to the LS, the top of the line.
Lexus starts at seventy five thousand dollars. Lexus is answer
to the Mercedes S class or to seven series BMW.
There is an LS five hybrid, so this is the
new flagship sedan for the corporation for Lexus in Japan.
(07:55):
You know. In the LS, a very artistic interior so
you can see the details of how the lighting is
designed on the pleats of the door, this effect of
sort of floating handle on the door, the herringbone. Would
we do a lot of artistry on the ls. And actually,
you've got to sit in the back of this car, Malcolm,
(08:15):
because this is the long wheelbased car, and you've really
got to appreciate the backseat. Did you hit the sound
of that car door? The clunk? People like me live
for clunks like that. Not quite as luxurious as a
century but pretty darn good place to spend a couple
hours if you have to. It's not bad. Yeah. And
(08:36):
then I reached up and I hit the button to
roll up the window, and that first time I have
to confess I missed it. I missed the small, subtle,
quintessentially lexasy detail about the windows because it's the kind
of thing that you wouldn't consciously notice unless you know
what to look for. But after a few days talking
(08:59):
with all kinds of people at Toyota City, I was like, oh,
I get it. Now you will too. There's a concept
in Japanese called omotanashi. Amot means public face, the way
(09:19):
you choose to present yourself to the world. Nashi means nothing.
Amotanashi means public face, without pretense, without equivocation. Amotanashi is
the heart of the Japanese notion of hospitality, mindful hospitality.
It means can you anticipate the needs of your guest
(09:40):
and address them without your own ego getting in the way.
At Toyota City, this idea amotanashi kept coming up again
and again, Like one time we were talking to Yasahiro Sakakibara.
Sakakibarasan works on the lexus es and is obsessed with
eyesight and with driver fatigue. He's an engineer, so he's
(10:02):
super technical. But then in the middle of some complex
engineering speak, he started talking about how he's thinking about
design revolved around the five senses and their relationship to omotenashi.
You do it also, you gokantka, And my study is
(10:24):
actually um you know, focused upon those five senses as
well as um the Japanese omotenashi spirit, the hospitality spirit.
And for me to deepen that knowledge, I immersed myself
in traditional cultural experiences. Casing point was a flower arrangement.
(10:49):
I went to a master of a flower arrangement and
learned the spirit of omotenashi culture in flower arrangement. Now
let's be clear, Sakaki Barisan is an engineer. My favorite
engineer joke is the optimist sees the glass half full,
the pessimist sees the glass half empty. The engineer looks
(11:12):
at the glass and asks, why is it two times
larger than it needs to be. The engineer is supposed
to be rigorous and unsentimental. I guarantee you that automotive
engineers in Munich and Stuttgard do not go and consult
with masters of flower arrangement. A German engineer's idea of
flower arrangement would be to line up the flowers in
(11:33):
a straight line and number them one through ten. How
did that impact the way you think about cars? Well, um,
flower arrangement really roots back to about seven hundred years
ago here in Japan. So then Sakakibarasan starts talking about
the three tiers of flower design and its connection to
(11:54):
esthetics and omotanashi everywhere we went to Toyota City that
same words, Yeah, what does that mean to you? Yeah,
it's not because we had jumpan is a kind of
a nature our behavior It depends on personal of course,
(12:18):
but you know when we make up some product, we
already think about cut customer's life. There's a famous story
from the beginning of Lexus's time in America. Late summer
nineteen eighty nine, Lexus had just launched the original LS,
the LS four hundred, to great fanfare. Cars were flying
(12:38):
out the door. But in late September, Alexis owner called
with a small complaint about the housing for his center
rear break light. Then another new owner called to say
that he had an issue with his cruise control two cars,
maybe three, out of the eight thousand that had been
sold by that point. So what should Lexus do. The
(12:59):
easiest thing would be to fix the three cars with issues,
because chances are these were isolated problems. This happens with
new cars all the time, one or two have and bugs.
But no Lexus recalled every one of the eight thousand
cars they had sold to that point, send every new
owner a detailed letter of apology, said that Lexus would
(13:20):
come to their homes, pick up the car, leave them
a loner free of charge, make the repairs for free,
and then return the car washed detailed with a full
tank of gas. Oh and when you got your car back,
there was a gift waiting on the front seat. That's Amatuanashi.
So the Lexus LS, the flagship Lexus luxury sedan. You
(13:46):
look at it in the showroom and you walk up
to it and sit in the front seat, and you think, oh,
it's just like a Mercedes S Class or a BMW
seven Series, the Outi of Asia. No it's not, because
it's conceived in the spirit of Omatanashi. Okay, we're in
(14:09):
a a brand new Lexus Ellis. This is the flagship
of the Lexus brand. It costs like a kajillion dollars.
It's safe to say this is the nice Lexury guard
that I've ever driven. We are just to be appropriate.
(14:30):
We decided Jacob and I to drive around Brentwood, the
Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, one of the most expensive
neighborhoods in America, the kind of place where very discerning
Hollywood types drive their Lexus is. We're not out of
place here in this car. We're not out of place.
(14:53):
No one's gonna no security guards are chasing us a
way in our ls and we're gonna head up into
some of the when Jacob and I got back to
the States. We borrowed an LS from Lexus, took it
for a spin in some fancy neighborhood in Los Angeles, Brentwood.
We wanted to test out something in the wild, that
(15:16):
thing i'd first noticed back into Kaikon, I'd Toyota City
the way the car welcomes you. When we walked towards
it and opened it up with the key fob, the
car rose to meet us. We got in, however, so gracefully.
Then it gently settled down again. The wheel itself, the
(15:37):
steering wheel comes out and up into your preferred position
for where you want your hands to be and your
high level and all that. And the car itself, now
that we have the adaptive variable suspension turned on, has
lowered itself into the appropriate the entire chassis of the
car has lowered itself into the appropriate driving most like position,
(16:04):
because it was raised when we got in, to make
even just a few inches just that much easier for
us to enter the car and sit down and not
have to kind of PLoP down. Now, the technical reason
for that is that if the car raises itself, it
makes it easier to get in and out of the car.
Your hip point should be aligned with the height of
the seat. But all I could think about was, oh man,
(16:27):
Olma Tanashi. Then we pulled over in front of one
of those big mansions. We let's do some clunking. Yes, yeah,
let's hear the doors. I'm gonna I want you to
stem Can you do your door at the same time
we're gonna do in unison. This is what a door
is supposed to sell. It ready? One? Two, three? Oh?
Oh yeah, let me get them just mine. Also, can
(16:50):
you hear the difference in the noise like you hear
all the sound of the world. It's gone. Oh the windows.
Remember back when I was in the Kaikon and there
was that little thing with the windows. We hadn't yet
heard everyone talking about Oma Tanashi, so I didn't yet
understand what I was looking at as I rolled up
(17:10):
the window. Now I do. The traditional Japanese tea room
has a door called the nagiri Gucci, a sliding panel door.
It's so small you have to crawl through on your
hands and knees. Understand that what takes place in the
tea room, the Japanese tea ceremony is the essence of omutanashi,
an elaborate ceremony designed to anticipate and address every aspect
(17:35):
of the guest's comfort. Everything is choreographed, including the way
you're supposed to open the Najiri Gucci. You use the
hand closest to the door to open it a few inches,
then you switch hands and slide the door the rest
of the way. You enter quietly and softly on your knees,
closing the door behind you in a way that draws
(17:58):
the least attention to yourself. There are literally books of
etiquette on how to perform this movement with grace and balance.
Because at the cruise moment that the door is almost closed,
you're supposed to slow down so that it makes impact
with the door jam as elegantly and silently as possible.
(18:22):
So how do you suppose the window on the ls closes?
So I've now opened the window. Okay, Now I'm gonna
I'm clicking at once and the window's gonna close. So
it goes up up, it slows Outshi, it's the tea ceremony.
Even just the little funk of its ceiling is okay.
(18:43):
And you know that someone spent like you know, good,
probably fifty just on that little noise. Yeah, every other
car window goes except Lexus. That's mutanashi. Go and See
(19:06):
is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily Rostek and Carl Migliari,
edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola composed our theme music
and mixed and mastered our episodes special thanks to Jacob
Weisberg had a fame, Paul Williamson, the Mark Levinson engineers,
and all the Lexus executives, engineers and designers who participated
(19:28):
in our recordings. Go and See is a production of
Lexus and Pushkin Industries. I'm moltain Ba
Pushkin. When I was a kid, my father would take
me to the Big Art Museum in Toronto. He would
go inside and I would stay outside the whole time,
sitting on the steps so I could watch the cars
go by. At the age of ten, I would much
(00:35):
rather look at traffic than Rembrandts. I'm not sure anything
has changed. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. I'm a Carnot.
When I go online in the morning, my first stop
is bring a Trailer dot com, where people like me
auction off their cars to other people like me. Just
so we're clear, I read the comments I'm bring a trailer,
(00:57):
which is one level of obsession beyond the standard bring
a trailer obsession. I have on a shelf in my
office every issue of Car magazine, the British Vogue of automagazines,
going back to April of nineteen ninety nine, with the
exception of the June and October issues of two thousand
and one, which for the life of me I cannot find.
(01:20):
And I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how many cars
I've owned over the years. A nineteen seventy two Mercedes
two eighty in original factory lime green, a bunch of
VW golf rs a push of Boxter gts and Immaculate
E thirty nine BMW M five And once many years
ago Alexis I s to fifty, a delightful little Japanese
(01:45):
sports Dan fantastic gearbox. I loved it, but then the
lease was up and I replaced it with a Golf GTI.
In my memory, I somehow filed away Alexis has just
another kind of luxury car, like an Audie, only from Asia.
Then one day Alexis called me up and said, Malcolm,
(02:08):
we'd like to prove you wrong. Lexus is its own thing.
My first thought was, oh wow, they're going to give
me a free car, which, by the way, I would
totally be fine with. But no, it was better than that.
They said, come to Japan because we think what it
(02:29):
means to be Lexus is something that you can only
understand firsthand in its home country. Go and see, so
I said what any self respecting carnut would say, twist
my arm from Lexus and Pushkin Industries. This is go
and see. My producer, Jacob Smith and I packed our bags.
(03:03):
We flew to Japan. Jacob actually went a little early
because he's also a car nut and he wanted to
spend a few days thrashing a sports car up and
down Japanese mountain roads. We met up in Tokyo and
took the bullet train to Nagoya, which is in itself
an experience. Checked into our hotel, which had I should add,
(03:24):
the greatest breakfast buffet in the history of breakfast buffets,
because this is Japan, a country dedicated to getting even
the smallest details perfect. And then we drove an hour
north to Toyota City, a town of about half a
million in Naichi Prefecture, where all things Toyota originate. And there,
in a discrete set of buildings, is the home of
(03:46):
Toyota's luxury division, Lexis HQ. Over the course of the
next six episodes, I'm going to tell you what we
learned there. Yeah. Yeah, that's great, fantastic. That was one
of the most fun I've had as a passenger in
(04:07):
a car, maybe ever, getting brief by race car drivers,
testing sports cars, making microscopic adjustments in a simulator, and
listening to the general manager of Lexus International hold Forth
on Star Wars and why he loves the shape of
the ones controversial Lexus front grill DA's bedder is an
(04:28):
atom the Batman and the first movie. People doesn't like
it Tout Beta, but finally he is a most famous
a hero in the Star Wars. The Lexus grill is
in the shape of a spindle, wide at the top,
wider at the bottom, and cinched in the middle. That's
the same story Lexus spindle. I hope, Oh it reminds
(04:53):
you mean the grill reminds people of Darth Vader's mask, right, Yeah,
though he was asked, you know, in an interview, some
people will say that it looks like I have the
idea of Star Wars. I liked because also Toast Beta
is inspired a Japanese although Sumlise so yes Star Wars
(05:14):
to Samuraize to the sound and engine Max and much more.
We're going to cover a lot of ground in this series,
but this first episode is about something very specific, something
that happened right at the very beginning of our visit
to the Toyota City campus, which, even given my massive
jet lag, kind of blew me away. Are we going
(05:37):
to go to the Japanese worked for visitors. Every corporation
has a taikon. The kaikon is a big open showroom
on the second floor of a glass office building. There's
a Toyota Sienta in one corner, wrapped entirely in white
faux fur with two giant puppy ears attached to the back,
(05:58):
which is like Japanese car, not humor. We took like
twenty pictures in it. Next to it is a race car,
the famous Lexus LFA. This particular LA I'll point out.
So this LFA is one that we've raced in the
Endurance Racing Series in Germany. Our guide is a guy
named Paul Williamson, big bushy, white mustache. Alexis Lifer, our
(06:23):
president of Occultota drove an LFA in two thousand and
nine and I think they finished fourth in Plass, So
you know, kind of a big deal to have a
company president that actually drives. Toyota is actually what the
Japanese call a master driver. Oh here we are just
the centry. They don't sell the centry outside Japan. It's
a totally old school limousine, very Japanese circa nineteen eighty boxy,
(06:48):
understated white lace curtains on the side windows. The seats
are covered with a soft woolvlure used to have a
v twelve engine. They are basically handbuilt. We can build
about one hundred or so per year. It's always a
tough one to come out with a new one because
every CEO has to have one the first year, but
only one hundred can get him. The other CEO's got
to wait till the second year, you know. Paul then
pointed to what's called the C pillar, the panel just
(07:11):
behind the passengers window. I'll point out one of the thing.
The m the vertical panels get a lot of handstanding
before the painting. This particular panel gets most attention because
this panel is a mirror for the VIP who just
got out of the back door before he turns around
and faces the cameras. It's like, what Human Center designed?
This is CEO Centers Center design exactly. That's right, that's right.
(07:34):
Then we came to the LS, the top of the line.
Lexus starts at seventy five thousand dollars. Lexus is answer
to the Mercedes S class or to seven series BMW.
There is an LS five hybrid, so this is the
new flagship sedan for the corporation for Lexus in Japan.
(07:55):
You know. In the LS, a very artistic interior so
you can see the details of how the lighting is
designed on the pleats of the door, this effect of
sort of floating handle on the door, the herringbone. Would
we do a lot of artistry on the ls. And actually,
you've got to sit in the back of this car, Malcolm,
(08:15):
because this is the long wheelbased car, and you've really
got to appreciate the backseat. Did you hit the sound
of that car door? The clunk? People like me live
for clunks like that. Not quite as luxurious as a
century but pretty darn good place to spend a couple
hours if you have to. It's not bad. Yeah. And
(08:36):
then I reached up and I hit the button to
roll up the window, and that first time I have
to confess I missed it. I missed the small, subtle,
quintessentially lexasy detail about the windows because it's the kind
of thing that you wouldn't consciously notice unless you know
what to look for. But after a few days talking
(08:59):
with all kinds of people at Toyota City, I was like, oh,
I get it. Now you will too. There's a concept
in Japanese called omotanashi. Amot means public face, the way
(09:19):
you choose to present yourself to the world. Nashi means nothing.
Amotanashi means public face, without pretense, without equivocation. Amotanashi is
the heart of the Japanese notion of hospitality, mindful hospitality.
It means can you anticipate the needs of your guest
(09:40):
and address them without your own ego getting in the way.
At Toyota City, this idea amotanashi kept coming up again
and again, Like one time we were talking to Yasahiro Sakakibara.
Sakakibarasan works on the lexus es and is obsessed with
eyesight and with driver fatigue. He's an engineer, so he's
(10:02):
super technical. But then in the middle of some complex
engineering speak, he started talking about how he's thinking about
design revolved around the five senses and their relationship to omotenashi.
You do it also, you gokantka, And my study is
(10:24):
actually um you know, focused upon those five senses as
well as um the Japanese omotenashi spirit, the hospitality spirit.
And for me to deepen that knowledge, I immersed myself
in traditional cultural experiences. Casing point was a flower arrangement.
(10:49):
I went to a master of a flower arrangement and
learned the spirit of omotenashi culture in flower arrangement. Now
let's be clear, Sakaki Barisan is an engineer. My favorite
engineer joke is the optimist sees the glass half full,
the pessimist sees the glass half empty. The engineer looks
(11:12):
at the glass and asks, why is it two times
larger than it needs to be. The engineer is supposed
to be rigorous and unsentimental. I guarantee you that automotive
engineers in Munich and Stuttgard do not go and consult
with masters of flower arrangement. A German engineer's idea of
flower arrangement would be to line up the flowers in
(11:33):
a straight line and number them one through ten. How
did that impact the way you think about cars? Well, um,
flower arrangement really roots back to about seven hundred years
ago here in Japan. So then Sakakibarasan starts talking about
the three tiers of flower design and its connection to
(11:54):
esthetics and omotanashi everywhere we went to Toyota City that
same words, Yeah, what does that mean to you? Yeah,
it's not because we had jumpan is a kind of
a nature our behavior It depends on personal of course,
(12:18):
but you know when we make up some product, we
already think about cut customer's life. There's a famous story
from the beginning of Lexus's time in America. Late summer
nineteen eighty nine, Lexus had just launched the original LS,
the LS four hundred, to great fanfare. Cars were flying
(12:38):
out the door. But in late September, Alexis owner called
with a small complaint about the housing for his center
rear break light. Then another new owner called to say
that he had an issue with his cruise control two cars,
maybe three, out of the eight thousand that had been
sold by that point. So what should Lexus do. The
(12:59):
easiest thing would be to fix the three cars with issues,
because chances are these were isolated problems. This happens with
new cars all the time, one or two have and bugs.
But no Lexus recalled every one of the eight thousand
cars they had sold to that point, send every new
owner a detailed letter of apology, said that Lexus would
(13:20):
come to their homes, pick up the car, leave them
a loner free of charge, make the repairs for free,
and then return the car washed detailed with a full
tank of gas. Oh and when you got your car back,
there was a gift waiting on the front seat. That's Amatuanashi.
So the Lexus LS, the flagship Lexus luxury sedan. You
(13:46):
look at it in the showroom and you walk up
to it and sit in the front seat, and you think, oh,
it's just like a Mercedes S Class or a BMW
seven Series, the Outi of Asia. No it's not, because
it's conceived in the spirit of Omatanashi. Okay, we're in
(14:09):
a a brand new Lexus Ellis. This is the flagship
of the Lexus brand. It costs like a kajillion dollars.
It's safe to say this is the nice Lexury guard
that I've ever driven. We are just to be appropriate.
(14:30):
We decided Jacob and I to drive around Brentwood, the
Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, one of the most expensive
neighborhoods in America, the kind of place where very discerning
Hollywood types drive their Lexus is. We're not out of
place here in this car. We're not out of place.
(14:53):
No one's gonna no security guards are chasing us a
way in our ls and we're gonna head up into
some of the when Jacob and I got back to
the States. We borrowed an LS from Lexus, took it
for a spin in some fancy neighborhood in Los Angeles, Brentwood.
We wanted to test out something in the wild, that
(15:16):
thing i'd first noticed back into Kaikon, I'd Toyota City
the way the car welcomes you. When we walked towards
it and opened it up with the key fob, the
car rose to meet us. We got in, however, so gracefully.
Then it gently settled down again. The wheel itself, the
(15:37):
steering wheel comes out and up into your preferred position
for where you want your hands to be and your
high level and all that. And the car itself, now
that we have the adaptive variable suspension turned on, has
lowered itself into the appropriate the entire chassis of the
car has lowered itself into the appropriate driving most like position,
(16:04):
because it was raised when we got in, to make
even just a few inches just that much easier for
us to enter the car and sit down and not
have to kind of PLoP down. Now, the technical reason
for that is that if the car raises itself, it
makes it easier to get in and out of the car.
Your hip point should be aligned with the height of
the seat. But all I could think about was, oh man,
(16:27):
Olma Tanashi. Then we pulled over in front of one
of those big mansions. We let's do some clunking. Yes, yeah,
let's hear the doors. I'm gonna I want you to
stem Can you do your door at the same time
we're gonna do in unison. This is what a door
is supposed to sell. It ready? One? Two, three? Oh?
Oh yeah, let me get them just mine. Also, can
(16:50):
you hear the difference in the noise like you hear
all the sound of the world. It's gone. Oh the windows.
Remember back when I was in the Kaikon and there
was that little thing with the windows. We hadn't yet
heard everyone talking about Oma Tanashi, so I didn't yet
understand what I was looking at as I rolled up
(17:10):
the window. Now I do. The traditional Japanese tea room
has a door called the nagiri Gucci, a sliding panel door.
It's so small you have to crawl through on your
hands and knees. Understand that what takes place in the
tea room, the Japanese tea ceremony is the essence of omutanashi,
an elaborate ceremony designed to anticipate and address every aspect
(17:35):
of the guest's comfort. Everything is choreographed, including the way
you're supposed to open the Najiri Gucci. You use the
hand closest to the door to open it a few inches,
then you switch hands and slide the door the rest
of the way. You enter quietly and softly on your knees,
closing the door behind you in a way that draws
(17:58):
the least attention to yourself. There are literally books of
etiquette on how to perform this movement with grace and balance.
Because at the cruise moment that the door is almost closed,
you're supposed to slow down so that it makes impact
with the door jam as elegantly and silently as possible.
(18:22):
So how do you suppose the window on the ls closes?
So I've now opened the window. Okay, Now I'm gonna
I'm clicking at once and the window's gonna close. So
it goes up up, it slows Outshi, it's the tea ceremony.
Even just the little funk of its ceiling is okay.
(18:43):
And you know that someone spent like you know, good,
probably fifty just on that little noise. Yeah, every other
car window goes except Lexus. That's mutanashi. Go and See
(19:06):
is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily Rostek and Carl Migliari,
edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola composed our theme music
and mixed and mastered our episodes special thanks to Jacob
Weisberg had a fame, Paul Williamson, the Mark Levinson engineers,
and all the Lexus executives, engineers and designers who participated
(19:28):
in our recordings. Go and See is a production of
Lexus and Pushkin Industries. I'm moltain Ba
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.