On a Meeting in Osaka with the Boss...

Osaka, Handmakers exhibition, Nov. 01 st 2008. Meeting with Nagasawa San.

The talk was about 15 minutes so it wasn't that long. We couldn't ask questions during the talk but we could do personally later anyway:) I think there were some guys who have a connection with Nagasawa san for long time. (I saw them saying hi to him and having a chat, which seemed fun for them;He told us in a talk that Nagasawa san likes drinking... I think he is also just an ordinary guy you could meet anywhere in Osaka:) The interviewer led him to tell us about;
-why and how he went to Italy to train himself as the bicycle mechanic.
-how he started working with Nakano (a famous Japanese keirin athelete)
-thoughts about professional bike riders and amatur riders
-He was riding a bike in a bike club while he was in college. He was curious about why European mechanics could fix bikes at such a fast pace (it took him to put the parts together for a day but they could do a lot of bikes a day) so he thought, I need to go there and learn everthing as much as possible. He lived in Italy for 6 years in total. He worked for one company who had professional bikers as customers. He started to train the company's owner's son and other mechanic after 4 years. By that time, he figured out that he could go back to Japan since he was already training others.
-After coming back home, since he had a connection with professional bike association in Japan, one asked him to work for the world championship race where he met Nakano.Since Nakano met Nagasawa's bike, he never used any other bikes since Nakano fell in love with Nagasawa's one. For next 10 years, Nakano kept Nagasawa as his personal bike mechanic. Nowadays, a lot of people ride on a road bike, which he is happy with. Though one thing he hopes is that people keep riding them just like a part of their body. Many people who come to Nagasawa san's workshop with their bikes, those bikes are not matching to their body at all. Most of saddles are much higher than what they are supposed to be leveled, which makes us hard to ride on a bike long time.However he understands why they are happening; because people like to pick their favorite color frames and parts, and bike shop owners(sellers) cannot say no to them since they want to sell the products indeed. At last, he told us about tips when you choose a bike you would ride,
- buy good and expensive parts, old frames(not so expensive ones) could be put together at any age - though you should ride on a cheaper (not one like keirin) one for at least a year and get used to riding on a bike first, and then go for fixed bikes.

Thanks a lot to Miss K. for her Text and her Pics..
Use of Text and Pics. by request first, thank you.