YAWATA Pasaraya, Jitra

(Pasaraya YAWATA Jitra Sdn. Bhd.)
Heran. Dari mana owner pasaraya YAWATA Jitra, Kedah pulak tu tahu-menahu tentang YAWATA? Mungkin pakcik bernama YAWATA-san dari Jepun turun ke Kedah join venture dengan apek terus menubuhkan pasaraya yang disukai ramai kot(Aku baru sekali jejak kaki ke situ). YAWATA lebih dikenali dengan nama bandar kecil terletak di Negeri Kyoto. Bukan calang-calang bandar ya. Di bandar tersebut, Thomas Alva Edison(alah, kalau dalam buk teks UPSR korang selalu tanya; siapakah orang pertama yang mencipta lampu?) telah menggunakan buluh di Otokoyama Mt. di mana terletak dalam bandar YAWATA(ha bangga la tu orang kampung YAWATA) sebagai filamen untuk digunakan dalam salah satu lampu ciptaannya pada tahun 1879.

"The bamboo at Yawata city, Kyoto prefecture, contributed greatly to his invention
of the electric light. In 1879, when he was 32 years old, he succeeded in manufacturing incande-scent electric light with the carbonized cotton filament covered with tar and soot which lasted for 45 hours.

Edison believed that the electric light bulb must last more than 600 hours to be marketable. He obtained more than 6,000 materials for the filament from all over the world to test them.

One day, he tested the bamboo of an oriental fan he found in the laboratory. The filament lasted 200 hours. Consequently, he began to concentrate his efforts to gather bamboos from all over the world and tested them.

He sent more than twenty researchers to many countries to find the best bamboo for the filament of the electric bulb. It costed him more than 100,000 dollars. He tested more than 1,200 species of the bamboos. ( Notes : This description may be an exaggeration. It is said that there are only 1,100 species of the bamboos in the world. In Japan, about 600 species of the bamboos
grow. )

In Kyoto, Uemura Masanao, the first governor of the Kyoto Prefecture of the new Meiji government received him and suggested that the bamboos in Sagano and Yawata in Kyoto might be suitable for the filaments of electric bulbs.

The electric bulb with the filament of the Ma-dake bamboo of Yawata lasted for 2450 hours. The Edison General Electric was founded to manufacture the electric light bulbs with the filaments made of the Yawata bamboos which were exported to many countries in the world during about 10 years until in 1894 when they were replaced by the cellulose filament bulbs. "

source: http://www.geocities.jp/general_sasaki/yawata-edison-eng.html

Aku bangga setidak-tidaknya nama yang menjadi kebanggan orang kampung YAWATA dapat dikongsi dengan penduduk Jitra. Ye tak?