Edgevertizing - story of the itinerant Japanese knife-sharpener

knife shaperner photo by Cecilia

Marginal overheads
This itinerant Knife sharpener does the rounds every few months at my neighbourhood in Tokyo.
No office, no rent, no clocking in necessary, just a bike, a wetstone, and some slips of paper in mailboxes to tell everyone he is in town.

knife shaperner photo by Cecilia

Edgevertizing
Because he does his work where we can see him, we feel we already know him. We see other people's knives being sharpened, and wonder why we should miss out, so just put in our orders too.

"Spend one month learning somthing people need done, spend the rest of your life doing it" Bill Mollison

Now I live with a Nobu Sushi Chef,the quality of my kitchen life has risen, my knife collection glistens. Most Aussies don't sharpen their knives. Even permies. We just use more brute power, put up with things being slower, difficult, just because...it doesn't occour to us. And we have no neigbourhood knife sharpener

Cecilia in boots, Japanese demonstration garden edge

Become an Edgetrepreneur
if you were in my neighbourhood, and had a good reputation, I would pay you to do these things on my doorstep:

1. Green Clean my car
2. wash my dog (if I had one)
3. Train me to train my dog (if I had one)
4. put a dripper water system in my front garden
5. put in a better lettbox (mine is squeezy for my mail)
6. put in urban swales to catch my downpipe water
7. graft me some replicas of my favorite fruit trees (you would bring the rootstock)
8. Tell me a very funny story
   

Thats just the doorstep. There are 100 things I need help with inside, but thats for another day.

Got any good edge stories?