via life-wellbeing.
via life-wellbeing.

Japan has always had a deep and deliberate coffee culture, and in recent years the modern specialty end of the market has heavily expanded, with both high quality Japanese roasters and a veritable cavalcade of international coffee brands expanding into Tokyo. Now, Matt Viser in the Boston Globe reports that Japan’s coffee influence is going truly global, with Ogawa Coffee expanding into the United States with a downtown Boston cafe.

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Ogawa is home to 2010 World Latte Art Champion Haruna Murayama, who Viser reports will be heading the Boston operations, as well as 2013 World Latte Art Champion Hisako Yoshikawa. We’ve covered Viser’s excellent coffee reporting in the Globe before, and his latest is no exception, full of background on the larger Boston and Japanese coffee scenes, in addition to important context for Ogawa’s Boston choice:

Ogawa Coffee was established in 1957, and it now has about 40 shops in Japan. They have been scouting Boston for at least two years, making a trip to meet with cafe owners in the area and tour their shops. White has spoken with company officials but has no financial relationship with them. [Director of Ogawa Coffee] Takako said the company chose Boston over New York because Boston shares many of the demographic characteristics of Kyoto, the area of Japan where Ogawa is based. Both are rich in history, have large college-aged populations, and have international visitors.

Ogawa plans to open in Boston’s Downtown Crossing in the spring. For more information, you should check out Matt Viser’s article yourself here.

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