Ever since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, I haven’t had a chance to travel abroad, let alone to coffee origins. But this time, I’m fortunate to be offered an opportunity to visit a coffee producing region. On top of that, I’m going to South America, a continent I’ve never stepped foot in before. I’ve always wanted to go to the destination of this tour, Bolivia. I vividly remember the superb quality of winning lots of the Cup of Excellence Bolivia and of national winner lots. But for a while after that, I hardly saw any great Bolivian coffee in Japan. But that’s changed in recent years, as I’m once again starting to see amazing Bolivian coffee, most notably Agro Takeshi. I personally believe that Bolivia is an origin with much greater, hidden potential. I wonder what thoughts will occur to me when I visit coffee farms and see them firsthand, and feel the wind with my body. I can’t wait to see what this trip holds in store for me.

From My Encounter with Coffee to Now

I was a junior high school student when I drank coffee for the first time.

I used instant coffee my mother bought for herself and drank it with chocolate to keep myself awake when studying for high school entrance exams. When I was in university, I discovered espresso and got hooked on caffe latte. I couldn’t forget that taste. So I got into the coffee industry. As my previous job took me from one place to another, I encountered specialty coffee. Out of desire to return to Toyama and spread it there, I opened hazeru coffee.

For the past 5 and a half years, I have worked to introduce customers to coffee’s different tastes, deliciousness and its new appeals.

At the back of my mind was always a desire to visit coffee origins. But I kept telling myself that I needed to start selling a certain volume first before I could think of anything meaningful. I was offered this opportunity just when I started to have a little bit of wiggle room. I felt something of a destiny, so I decided to take part.

Whenever I talk with customers at length about coffee, I’ve always ended the conversation with, “I’m ashamed to say that I have never been to a coffee origin.” But that will finally come to an end.

5 and a half years have flown by since I started my own shop. All this time, I’ve been thinking, “One day, someday in the future.” At last, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity. I started preparing for the trip.

To Become More Absorbed, to Grow Further

It’s been 35 years since I was captivated by coffee and started to pursue it single-mindedly.

Not everything has been sweet and fun. There were tough times when I had to swallow a bitter pill.

But never once have I lost my love for coffee.

To give back to coffee, something that has kept me alive all this time, I need to believe in the possibilities of coffee and keep evolving so that all those involved in coffee can lead richer lives.

I’m off to Kenya, to further fuel my passion, and to further develop myself.

My Starting Point

I want to see children full of smiles

On April 1, 2022, I was told that I had been nominated for TYPICA Lab. It was a truth too good to be true. Apparently, I would be able to choose my destination from four coffee origins.

I wanted to visit Ethiopia at any cost.

I wanted to meet Heleanna at any cost.

It all started with one photo, taken in 2015.

It shows a Japanese man and many Ethiopian children.

A photo of bright white teeth and beaming smiles.

The Japanese man is Shingo Matsumoto, the president of Matsumoto Coffee, a green coffee wholesaler I worked at before starting my own business. He showed me various photos he took when he visited Ethiopia for the first time. And that one photo particularly captured my eyes. What a bright smile, I thought.

Heleanna, the head of Moplaco, is quite famous in Japan as the president of an Ethiopian coffee exporter. It’s not an overstatement to say that she was the one who spread the amazing quality of Ethiopian specialty coffee to the Japanese market.

I’m particularly impressed with Heleanna for her efforts outside specialty coffee. She has built schools for children of coffee farmers in some regions, including Yirgacheffe.

Children in that photo are students at one of those schools.

I was strongly fascinated by specialty coffee not just because of its taste, but also because the coffee business can resolve various problems in society.

I myself had bitter experiences, including financial ones, at home when I was a small child. That’s why I have always been interested in issues facing coffee origins, such as poverty, education and child labor.

I’ve been hoping to help as much as possible through my involvement in the coffee industry.

In that photo Mr. Matsumoto showed me, I saw hope. Ever since, I’ve always wanted to visit that place some day. That yearning grew bigger year after year.

When I left Matsumoto Coffee and started my own roastery in 2016, the first single-origin I used was, of course, Ethiopia.

I named it “Ethiopia Heleanna.”

To this day, I’ve continued to buy Ethiopian coffee only from Moplaco.

*I received permission from Heleanna herself for using her name for the product.

I’ve kept hoping to visit Ethiopia, and Moplaco. And now, an opportunity presented itself in the form of such an amazing project.

I want to do something that puts smiles on Ethiopian children, just like those kids in that photo.

My heart beats louder and louder with each passing day, and there is something comfortable about this feeling.

With hope and determination, I’m anxiously waiting for the day of the visit.

Journey

Prologue

Before I realized, more than 20 years have passed since I started working in coffee.

I’ve worked at different places but always with coffee, going from a global chain of coffee shops to a restaurant serving coffee roasted in-house to a long-running traditional coffee house to a newly opened neighborhood coffee bean store.

I learned how to work espresso machines, knew the diversity of pour-over skills and started roasting.

Every place brought me its own joy and discoveries. And at each stage, my relationship with coffee changed.

Coffee was an object of my continuous studies, something that gave me a sense of belonging.

The more I continued to give what I had little by little, the more fun everything became, opening up a comfortable place.

There have been constant changes since I opened MOUNT COFFEE, too.

I started taking part in events, visiting coffee origins and teaching people how to roast.

Coffee gives me experiences to improve myself and connections with friends.

These are invaluable things I can’t get however much money or time I spend.

My relationship with coffee will keep changing.

That means I will keep changing.

I wonder what relationships await me down the road.

I can’t wait to see what changes will occur to me at the end of this trip.

Beyond Stories Woven by Coffee

Coffee takes us down the memory lane.

It always brings back fond memories from the past.

Coffee is a signpost guiding us to a new world.

It always shows us the joy of knowing the unknown.

The past or the future,

the known or the unknown,

coffee transcends all boundaries to connect them all.

When countless buds of memories inside myself 

coalesce with a journey into the unknown,

I wonder what kind of my new self and the world will be waiting for me.

About Me Wanting to Eat the Fruit of Fresh Coffee

I have never been to a coffee farm.

I think this is true of every job, but I feel a bit ashamed of not having been to a place where the object of my work is being produced.

Of course, I do read books, talk with people who have been to coffee farms and watch videos on the internet.

A friend of mine who is a chef travels all over the place to see rice paddies, farms and ranches and buys ingredients he finds interesting.

Ingredients selected that way seem to have more power to get a message across. Customers also tend to enjoy eating a dish along with a backstory attached to it.

I feel envious.

Coffee, meanwhile, is grown somewhere so far from our city.

Our role is to source good ingredients and do a good job of processing them. I think I’m 100% focused on that. But at the same time, I’m always driven to get better at what I do.

I don’t think just getting a glimpse of coffee farms will necessarily help me to do a better job. But once, I applied for a tour of coffee farms organized by a coffee shop, hoping that it would be a good opportunity. Unfortunately, the tour was canceled. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic.

I received this offer from TYPICA just when I was hoping to one day visit coffee farms.

Other participants I will be traveling with are great roasters.

I wonder who I will meet at coffee farms, what scenery I will see, how I will feel when I return home.

What will I be thinking about when I do my job after this trip?

I’m very much looking forward to it.