13th Journey of Beginnings

watanabe — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:22:16 +0000

My first ever trip to a coffee origin was in 2011.

I visited Nicaragua and El Salvador in Central America, and met coffee farmers in person for the first time in my life.

I’ve visited them every year since, and now we are like friends or family. Visiting them feels more like visiting my own hometown.

In my earlier post, I mentioned how I fell in love with this world after drinking a Kenyan coffee. But I’d never stepped foot in Kenya, Tanzania, or the continent of Africa, even after all these years of traveling to coffee origins. Africa is like a holy site for me. You could say that I’d been unconsciously keeping a certain distance from the continent.

By now, I’ve gotten used to packing for origin trips. And yet, with my departure coming up tomorrow, I am unusually slow. I guess I am nervous, imagining what it will be like to finally visit a place I’ve never seen.

I’m at a loss where to start, looking at things scattered around the floor, scratching my head.

In any case, the trip starts tomorrow.

I can’t help but feel excited and nervous at once, now that the new journey of beginnings is about to start.

I want to enjoy the trip with the other roasters with whom I’m blessed to travel.

Trip to Explore My Roots

watanabe — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 15:00:00 +0000

08-23-2022

Trip to Explore My Roots

“What is this?”

The first specialty coffee I ever drank in 2007 was light-roast Kenya.

The red, clear liquid in the cup brought me new experiences. All my scattered curiosities were drawn into what was in that cup.

Two years later, I became a coffee shop owner, something I’d never written down as my dream. I moved across the supply chain from the consumer to the provider. What I saw was the splendor of nature and the strength of humans, and many stories beyond just the word “delicious.”

Rather than the coffee itself, various dramas surrounding it further pull at me. It didn’t take long before a natural course of things prompted me to travel to coffee origins.

My first visit to a coffee origin was to Central America. The coffee producers I saw online many times were now standing in front of me. It felt as if I’d met celebrities. Upon returning to Japan, I looked through an enormous number of photos I took and regretted not trying to learn anything.

After that, I visited the same producers every year, and projected their lives onto mine, trying to belong to the same community as theirs.

African coffee is my roots. Though always fascinated by the power of the continent’s powerful and wild land with unparalleled uniqueness, I have never visited Africa.

Every now and then, I offer coffee from Africa. Only my yearning for the continent grew year after year.

Then in 2022, my first chance to visit Africa came in the form of TYPICA Lab. This trip will surely be a milestone.

I’m grateful to TYPICA for giving me the opportunity to step foot in my holy site. I will start preparing for the new trip that will soon begin.

Nagasaki | TYPICA Lab

13th Journey of Beginnings

Trip to Explore My Roots

Trip to Explore My Roots