and coffee roasters kumamoto japan tokyo coffee festival cafe sprudge
Yosuke Yamane (right) with Ryuichiro Saiki of And Coffee at the Tokyo Coffee Festival.

When I heard And Coffee Roastersย would be at the 2016 Tokyo Coffee Festival, I thought it would be a good chance to learn more about them. And Coffee hasย been at every specialty coffee event Iโ€™ve known, and I often see itsย coffee in and around Tokyo. That always struck me as funny, finding a Kumamoto-based coffee shop weaving its way into the specialty coffee scene here.

and coffee roasters kumamoto japan tokyo coffee festival cafe sprudge
…which has left no one to mind the shop.

Kumamoto is located on the island Kyushu in the south of Japan. As the region is best known for Fukuoka, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, Kumamoto sometimes feels like a distant fourth. Yeah, thereโ€™s Kumamoto Castle and Mount Aso, but it lacks the excitement and history of other cities in the area.

And Coffee opened in Kumamoto in 2013, when owner Yosuke Yamane moved there with his wife. Before that, he says he was self-taught, and that he developedย an interest in specialty coffee while on exchange in New York aboutย 10 years ago. But when he came back to Tokyo, he found good coffee to be something of a rarity.

and coffee roasters kumamoto japan tokyo coffee festival cafe sprudge

Yamane is quiet and soft-spoken, with the aura of a kindly uncle, and itโ€™s easy to picture him roasting quietly at homeโ€”first with a hand roaster, thenย an electric one, honing his craft over time. He says experimentation was his first teacher; roasting and cupping meant slow and steady improvements.

The other instructor, he says, was travel. โ€œI thought if I didnโ€™t taste and experience good coffee, I wouldnโ€™t be able to make it myself,โ€ says Yamane. โ€œYou have to know whatโ€™s delicious, and whatโ€™s good.โ€

Over the years, Yamane has been to Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, and Melbourne. He makes a point of going somewhere once a year to see what’s developing in coffee elsewhere. He hopes to begin visitingย farms next year, too.

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When And Coffee first opened, Yamane says it was tough going.

โ€œIn Tokyo, because of TV shows and magazines, the spread of coffee has been explosive, but in the countryside thereโ€™s no such push, so itโ€™s a slow climb. Sometimes itโ€™s hard because there arenโ€™t any other shops to share information with.โ€

and coffee roasters kumamoto japan tokyo coffee festival cafe sprudge

Yamane says heโ€™s grateful too for the dedicated Tokyo coffee scene. When the earthquake hit Kumamoto in April earlier this yearโ€”and everything stoppedโ€”it was the help of others that got the coffee shop back on its feet.

โ€œRight after the earthquake, people werenโ€™t leaving their homes, and of course they werenโ€™t buying coffee,โ€ he says. โ€œBut I still had staff to pay even though we couldnโ€™t open for two weeks. It was bad, and it was hard, but Atsushi from Onibus Coffee,ย and Kenji from Fuglenโ€”lots of Tokyo coffee shops, actuallyโ€”said they would buy our beans to support us during the recovery period. Iโ€™m really grateful to them for that.โ€

and coffee roasters kumamoto japan tokyo coffee festival cafe sprudge

This felt very much a picture of the Tokyo coffee scene as Iโ€™ve come to know it. Thereโ€™s a feeling that everyoneโ€™s in it together, roasting, brewing, and sharing the coffee they believe in.

And if one of those shops happens to be in the little town of Kumamoto? They get just as much love.

Yamane says there are plans to open a shop in Fukuoka soon, as well as a headquarters for sourcing new coffee and creating direct-trade relationships with farms. Heย says itโ€™s hard to source coffee here, so many shops end up buying from the same places; creating moreย variety and diversity among coffee shops in Japan is among his goals.

and coffee roasters kumamoto japan tokyo coffee festival cafe sprudge

But for the time being, Yamane wants to establish and maintain specialty coffee culture in Kumamoto.ย โ€œEven now,โ€ he says, โ€œpeople here say specialty coffee is sour. But thereโ€™s a worth and motivation to being [in Kumamoto]: in a place that has nothing, you can build something up.โ€

And Coffee Roasters is located atย 11-22 Kamitoricho, Chuo Ward, Kumamoto, Japan. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Photos courtesy ofย Yosuke Yamane.

Hengtee Lim is a Sprudge staff writer based in Tokyo. Read more Hengtee Lim on Sprudge.

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