Discover Coffee

I was born in Kyoto. My family always had a western-style breakfast, with bread instead of rice, so I started drinking coffee at a young age—I think it was when I was in early elementary school. Actually, it wasn't really coffee—it was milk with a little splash of coffee in it. At some point, though, I realized that making coffee had become my job in the household. I wasn't particularly interested in coffee, but when everyone said "Kenji's coffee is so good," I basked in the praise and continued to make it. I never told my mother this, but my technique for making good coffee was to put in a slightly larger amount of coffee grounds than the instructions said to.

My next coffee-related memory is from the time when the Kansai area's first branch of a Seattle cafe was opened in Osaka. I was in university at the time. The news coverage caught my attention, so I went, but I didn't really understand how to order. The place was bustling with people from different countries, too, and I don't think I actually managed to order anything until the second time I went. I ordered the "staff recommendation" written on the blackboard. It wasn't good. I thought I might be drinking it the wrong way, so I was looking all around to see what people were doing. In any case, I got a great feeling of energy from the liveliness of the cafe and from that atmosphere that happens when they're making one drink after another. I remember thinking, this is amazing.

After I graduated from university, I decided to go to Tokyo and get a place of my own, without looking for a company job. That was the period in Japan called the "employment ice age." A few companies did contact me, but I couldn't get motivated to enter the workforce right away, so I discontinued my job search. At the time, I was interested in advertising. I did some research and found out about an advertising school that had been opened in Tokyo by a publishing company. The school had a branch in Kansai, too, but the teaching staff was different and the instructor I admired was at the Tokyo school, so I decided without any hesitation to go to Tokyo. The day I arrived there, I started looking for a part-time job. That Seattle cafe was hiring, so I immediately submitted an application and went for an interview. Since the school course was six months long, I thought I could only work there for six months. When I think about it now, I don't know why they hired me. I graduated from the advertising school with a perfect attendance award, but it turned out to be more difficult to find a company job than I'd expected. Before I knew it, three years had passed just like that. In the course of those three years, my interest had steadily shifted towards coffee.

Something happened that I still remember. I was cleaning the floor at the cafe, and a man in a suit who was sitting at a table told me, "Your lattes are really good." I immediately answered "Thank you," but I wasn't acquainted with this customer, so the conversation ended there. Later I found out that he ordered lattes only when I was working at the latte station. So there was someone who wanted the drinks I made. I was happy, pure and simple. The experience motivated me to make better coffee.

Something else that inspired me to devote myself to coffee was latte art. The first time I saw it was in an Italian bar in Toranomon. In my cup there was a big, symmetrical, beautiful heart. I thought, "How come? How do they do it?" I was fascinated; it was magical. I was already obsessed with coffee by then. And in 2005 I went to see a coffee competition for the first time. The contestants on stage making coffee and talking at the same time—everything seemed to sparkle. I wanted to stand on that stage one day, too.

My life then revolved around coffee. I read all the books about coffee I could find and I attended a lot of seminars. When a new cafe opened, I went there to try the coffee. The more I learned about coffee, the more I wanted to know. Around that time, I found out that the Seattle cafe Zoka was looking for people for its first branch in Japan. I was hired as a member of the opening staff. In the pre-opening training course, I was trained by a future U.S. barista champion and by someone who is still active at the forefront of the coffee world.

Just after the opening, my boss asked me to become a regular staff member. The company had decided to participate in the Barista Championship. It seems the boss asked an American member to recommend someone and that person said, "You should send Kenji." Taking part-timers overseas wasn't allowed, which is why I was to become a regular employee. I was even happier to have a chance to learn more about coffee, and to have been recommended by a Seattle member, than I was to become a regular staff member. And two months later I left for Seattle on my first-ever overseas trip. The training in Seattle was completely different from my previous training, in the sense that I was never told what to do. There were coffee beans and machines, and I could use them however I liked. Occasionally someone came and gave my coffee a score, from 0 to 6. (This is the score range in the championship judging.) About once an hour a judge would suddenly appear, and I'd make espresso and be given a score. I'd think, "3.5—that's better than the earlier score. What was different?" This process was repeated from morning until evening. At the time I wished someone would give me instructions, but now that I'm a trainer, I've come to understand that this is a very good training method. When I'm training someone, I don't say, "You have to do it this way." The training in Seattle taught me to think for myself—to think about why things happen and why I should do something a certain way.

That time I received special permission to participate in the North America preliminary round of the U.S. Barista Championship. So my very first barista competition was a North America preliminary round in the United States. I think I placed second, after a barista from Zoka. I didn't receive an official award, since it was the preliminary round for the U.S. sector, but the result was much more amazing than I'd expected. To be honest, I think they were probably being nice to me, but this first competition provided me with many valuable experiences over and above the final result. After the contest, a lot of baristas came and talked to me. When we were behind the stage, before clearing the dishes and other things to be washed, some baristas came up and said they wanted to try my drinks. One barista who always got a high ranking in the North America preliminaries told me he was energized and inspired by my performance. Then, at the party afterwards, one of the competition managers approached me. He grabbed an interpreter, frantic to talk with me.

Actually, there was a little problem with a machine at the North America preliminaries. During the preparation period I became unable to do the coffee extraction, because a part from another machine had been mistakenly placed on the machine I was using. I immediately called a competition manager, and he brought the right part and put it on. He was the person in charge of the machines at the competition. He installed the part and told me to try extracting a few times. When I was checking the flavor of the extracted espresso, he drank what was left. He told me he'd wanted to speak with me because he was amazed at how delicious that espresso was. He kept talking excitedly. The words I was hearing from the interpreter were fantastic compliments—"It was better than any espresso I've drunk this year." "I thought, 'We have to try harder." "I thought, 'Oh, damn!" I was surprised again when I found out later that this person was also involved in managing the World Championship at the time.

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.