Electric will soon replace gasoline as fuel for cars

By Al S. Mendoza  

TOKYO, Japan—When you are here, the first thing you do is look for ramen—mami in the Philippines. 

No, you don’t sip it. 

You don’t even eat it. 

You slurp it.  As loud as you can.   Srrrrrppp!

You take it gently and people inside the ramen house will look at you not with wonder but with derision.

You take it soundless and you are insulting the owner of the joint. 

It would mean the ramen noodle soup isn’t delicious at all!

The trick is, you slurp on it, pig on it.

That’d give the impression, however false it might seem, that you are feasting on the best ramen in all of Japan.

A big compliment to the ramen house owner.

You will put a smile on his face and, as you begin to leave, he’ll bow to you without end—doing it repeatedly till his head will almost touch the ground.

Now, if you are done pigging on your ramen—only in Japan will you enjoy genuine ramen—the next thing you do is eat sashimi and sushi on your next meal, perhaps.

Sushi, of course, is basically either raw salmon or raw tuna. 

Ah, heaven.  Best when taken with hot sake.

And sashimi is slices of raw fish placed on top of rolled sticky rice.

Ah, heaven.  Best when taken with hot sake, too.  

You devour them, like a tiger feasting on its just-captured prey.

Three straight nights since I arrived here seven days ago on Sunday, my dinner consisted mainly of sushi and sashimi.

They made for delectable meals.

For a change, my last sushi/sashimi dinner was flushed down by a newly-discovered red wine named Takun, Cabernet Sauvignon 2016.

Every discovery drives idiocy away.

But as I said, you don’t just jump into sushi and sashimi without first slurping a bowl of ramen.

Anywhere here virtually, either on street corners or major thoroughfares, there will always be a ramen house—like sari-sari stores scattered like beerhouses all over the Philippines.

And why am I here again?

To repeat myself, I’m covering the Tokyo Motor Show—for the 14th straight time since 1993.

Fourteenth because the event is held once in two years.

As Toyota Motor Philippines’ guest once again—the outfit first invited me in 1999 and has since done that in 11 uninterrupted editions of the biennial meet—I got to watch up close anew the latest car models that have yet to roll out of the assembly lines.

But the most thrilling part is seeing once more Toyota’s so-called concept cars—the new models on display that will not be sold commercially until five years or so from now.

Simply put, they are called the futuristic vehicles—so called because they embody what our cars would look like in the future, and how our rides of tomorrow would perform.

Foremost in the Tokyo Motor Show now is the radical approach to make cars run in the near future: By electric.

Yes, the time is near when fossil fuel most commonly known as the gasoline/diesel will be discarded in favor of electric and—hold your breath—hydrogen.

The world is changing.  Be ready.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments