After that I also competed in the Japan Barista Championship, but I think the turning point was the Japan Latte Art Championship, which was held for the first time in 2009. The World Championship was already established, and they decided to have the same competition in Japan. It started as a pre-competition event in 2008, and the actual competition was held the next year. I won first prize in that competition, becoming the first champion of the Japan Latte Art Championship.
Then I participated as a representative of Japan in the World Championship held in Cologne, Germany. Unfortunately, in the World Championship I didn't achieve the results I'd hoped for—I finished in fourth place. But a lot of people came and talked to me after the contest, saying, "Your art is fantastic." I'm not exaggerating—dozens of people spoke to me. The support staff at the venue also said that people asked them if they were Japanese and talked to them about my latte art. Instead of going straight back to Japan from Germany, I stopped in Copenhagen, where there are a lot of famous cafes, and people even came up and talked to me there. Before I knew it, my sadness over the competition results had vanished. Because of that experience, when I feel that a competitor has made a great showing, I always try to let them know. In my case, those few words made it possible for me to appreciate the fun of a competition—they saved me.
At barista championships it had been taken for granted that espresso was made from coffee bean blends, but around that time there was a switch to espresso made from single origin beans. People had previously been focusing on how baristas extracted coffee to make it taste delicious, what regions' beans they used and in what proportions they blended them. But with the switch to single origin, the focus shifted to the location where the coffee was grown, the producer who grew it, and why that particular coffee was so great. We were getting information about production areas which we hadn't been able to obtain before. My interest gradually expanded from espresso extraction to raw ingredients. That was when I learned that Maruyama Coffee's roasting division was recruiting staff. At Zoka, the roasted beans were transported from Seattle, so it was hard to talk about the quality of the beans because of the time lag. My interest having moved from extraction to roasting, which was one step closer to raw ingredients, I decided in 2010 to change jobs.
I'd been participating in competitions for a long time. Around the time of my job change, my reasons for competing started to change as well. At the beginning my only objective was to win. I wasn't really thinking about what would happen after that. When I entered my thirties, a lot of the people I knew in the coffee business were in the same age range and successful in their work. Starting around that time, however, more people were drifting away from coffee. When they thought about the future, many of them felt uneasy about working in this still-new industry. For various reasons—marriage, the illness of a parent—my friends and colleagues left the coffee business. I thought, if I win a competition and have a successful career, maybe the barista profession will be fully recognized by society and something will change. Isn't there something I can do? That's when I started thinking about what would happen after I won.
The occupation "barista" is now starting to gain recognition in its own way, but it seems to me that the status of this occupation is still quite low. The reason, I believe, is the current situation of the business. Baristas who work for big companies move up to positions where they manage a number of stores, and move away from the coffee-making setting. I don't think a culture will develop if the occupation of barista is treated as a job for young people only. Wouldn't it also be really cool to see a barista who's approaching retirement age working with energy and style in the coffee-making arena? Of course, there would be some issues to work out—but if that type of barista becomes common, barista might become an occupation that people can continue throughout their lives.