I’m going to visit Bolivia on my first ever trip to a coffee origin.

I’m very honored to be able to travel to a coffee origin for the first time as part of a documentary-filming project.

Thank you TYPICA for giving me this precious opportunity!

I’m going to write this blog post under the theme of “prologue.”

I want to share with you what I feel, see, hear and things I didn’t know before.

It’s been 10 years since I entered the coffee industry as a barista.

Initially, I thought coffee was a bitter drink to force down your throat. But that idea was turned upside down after I discovered specialty coffee. Now, I perceive coffee as something sweet like fruits.

I was impressed with the acidity-mixed sweetness. Then I started to brew coffee with various beans and different brewing tools to enjoy my coffee.

I came across coffee when I was looking for something I loved, something I could absorb myself in, thinking that life would be fun if I did what I loved for a living. Attracted by the process of making coffee for someone else, I became a barista.

I see coffee as something that is not absolutely necessary to live but can enrich your life.

But I believe that having coffee there with us can enrich our lives.

Coffee is such an attractive drink. That’s why people around the world enjoy drinking coffee.

Coffee

Drinking coffee before breakfast was a daily routine for my parents.

Every morning I woke up, the aroma of coffee wafted into my nose.

Coffee never really tasted good. I would drink it just to keep myself awake when I was studying for exams in junior high school.

As a university student, I would go to a chain coffee shop, with a paperback book in hand, frittering away hours and hours with nothing else to do.

But coffee was always somewhere close by.

After graduating from university, I worked night shifts at a restaurant. The job was fun and rewarding. But keeping odd hours wasn’t for me.

Every now and then, I dropped by a neighborhood coffee shop managed by a man of peculiar idiosyncrasies.

 I wasn’t at all the most discerning when it came to tastes. But every time, he served me a different flannel drip coffee.

When I found a job advert for a coffee shop of the same name, I wasted no time in dialing the number.

During my training period, I had to drink close to 20 different coffees day after day. All this time, my stomach was full of liquids that tasted the same.

“This tastes like lemon cream!”

One day, one coffee sent shock waves through me.

It was clearly different from any other coffees I’d had before.

The coffee I drank that time was

Ethiopia washed.

Ethiopia washed has been my favorite to this day. It is the reason I am doing what I do today.

Now, I have a chance to visit Ethiopia.

I wonder how I feel, what I think about, when I land at an airport and arrive at coffee farms.

 I feel something is about to start.