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.

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.

Me and Coffee

The prologues of me and coffee.

The prologue of my encounter with coffee started as a coffee drinker.

As I learned how to brew coffee, coffee beans became the prologue.

As I started to work in coffee, green coffee became the prologue.

Now, coffee trees and coffee cherries are the prologue of coffee. As I learn more and more about coffee, my coffee prologue changes.

I’m looking forward to seeing how my coffee prologue will change after this new journey.