Japan has elevated the humble egg to an art form. It is present at all meal times. A half-cooked, butter-whisked egg is the most popular sandwich by a country mile, and a fried egg tends to crown many evening meals. Oyakodon, a popular dish composed of simmered chicken and cooked egg, is endearingly translated as parent-and-child-bowl.

Endearing, that is, until one considers the fate of both.

Anyways, I was drawn into a local breakfast haunt in Osaka by the lure of a toasted egg sandwich – the hero of a breakfast set for €3.60. Prices that may seem cheap are experienced differently by the hard-working Japanese people, a little down on their uppers due to a stagnant economy and the weak yen.

That Ibukicoffee was a traditional diner was evident by the low pitch of its furniture, and the nook-and-cranny layout of its interior. Just as Starbucks is about windows and watching, the Nipponese instinct bends towards discretion.

A cabinet of curiosities at the back of the café called my name, and I ended up seated beside three young lads ordering breakfast to their table.

Two beamed up from the menu and said ‘hello’ in the performative manner of the student linguist. Assuming they were school-age, I responded in slow and deliberate English, to draw out their knowledge.

That knowledge was circumspect, stopping at hello, who-what-where, and numbers located between one and one hundred.

Eventually, it emerged that they were in fact aged between 20 and 30, and were firefighters.

They had just been released from night duty.

There followed an animated breakfast conversation of sign-language, Google translate and mime. Japanese depends heavily on tone to deliver meaning, which means I can piece together what is being said even when the clues are faint.

Osaka is a mega-city and her disaster prevention is built on hundreds of thousands of local volunteers, led by a brigade of firefighting professionals. These lads were the pros.

They proudly showed me a video of them rapidly donning the technical kit for an emergency. One swiped through images of the aftermath of a fire they had controlled and extinguished. It is a shocking thing, to see a high-rise structure reduced to charcoal on the inside. Beside the photos of embers were images of paperwork with boxes and ticks. The world over, saving lives is systematised with protocols, it would appear.

Eventually, they had gathered at my low table, all the better to read my translated questions, the most important of which I held until the end.

‘What is the quality that makes an excellent firefighter?’

They looked at each other and agreed upon the answer, which was then articulated by my magic machine designed in California.

‘You have to want to help people’.

The answer mildly surprised me, as I anticipated some version of male valour as the firefighter’s best foot forward.

‘But surely you also need the courage of a lion’ I suggested, purposefully using colourful language to provoke them.

The young men erupted with positive energy on reading my statement, one clawing the air, and fake-roaring. Another saluted with a flourish.

At length, they finished their breakfast, and got up to leave. Each would stay up until 2pm, followed by three hours sleep before work this evening.

Now alone, I got to finish my cold coffee, and examine the cabinet of curiosities, filled with replica German crockery from the 18th century.