As the Shonan-Shinjuku train passes through the crowded Ikebukuro and Akabane stations, you get a sense of Tokyoโthereโs hustle and bustle, people hurrying, and of course, packed train cars. All around and out the windows are tall buildings, ceaseless traffic, and billboards advertising pop stars and new products.
But after Omiya Station, as the train enters Saitama Prefecture, the buildings get smaller, and the crowds thin out. The train rumbles along at the same speed, but the world slows down. Outside, the space between buildings grows, and houses and fields make up the passing scenery. Everything is a little more quiet.
Itโs in this quiet, about an hour and twenty minutes outside of Tokyo, that youโll find Hoshikawa Cafe, in Kumagaya.
Tokyo is home to a constant cycle of new people, new ideas, and new ways of thinking. And sometimes, one of these ideas will stick. Specialty coffee most definitely hasโitโs taken hold of Tokyo, dug in deep, and spread across the cityscape like wildfire, making its homes inย shopping malls and neighborhood communities alike.
But there are small pockets of it popping up outside Tokyo, too, places where quality coffee is roasted and brewed in small townsโand where termsย like โspecialty coffeeโ and โThird Waveโ often result in blank stares. Places like Trunk Coffee in Nagoya, Kariomons Coffee Roaster in Nagasaki, and Weekenders in Kyoto.
Even Maruyama Coffee, one of Japanโs standout coffee brands, started out in a quiet bed-and-breakfast in Nagano, after all.
My friend Riki told me about Hoshikawa Coffee when itย made an appearance at the Harukaze Coffee Street event. He said they did excellent coffee, then chuckled. โTheyโre so far away,โ he said, โonly the die-hard coffee lovers really know about them.โ
So I bought a ticket and jumped on a train to Kumagaya.
You wouldnโt expect to find specialty coffee in Kumagaya. The streets are quiet, and the town is dotted with restaurants, bars, and gaudy hostess clubs. Kumagaya was once a shukubajoโa place where travelers stopped to rest, and oftentimes drink, on their travels along the Nakasendo path that connected Edo and Kyotoโand the town still seems to cling to that past.
But when you reach the Hoshikawa River, you get a slice of the everydayโon either side of the river sit small businesses, local shopfronts, and houses. And then Hoshikawa Cafe.
The cafe is a family-run business, and the interior feels more like a friendโs house than a place of business. When you choose to drink-in at Hoshikawa, thereโs a genkanโthe entranceway to a room or house inย which you take off your shoes before entering.
Itโs utterly charmingโa warm, homely touchโbut owner Yosuke Suzuki says it serves a purpose.
By having guests take off their shoes, Suzuki aims to send a message of welcomingย friendlinessโhe wants to create an environment in which customers can relax. When he first opened, and specialty coffee wasnโt a well-knownย term, he hoped this might make people more open-minded to the new kind of coffee he was brewing.
Suzuki first became interested in coffee during a stint in Adelaide, Australia. At the time, it was Gloria Jeanโsย flavored coffees. Coincidentally, his return home also foundย him managing a Gloria Jean’s in the Kanto region. But soon enough he went independent, and in 2009 started Hoshikawa Cafe in his hometown.
When itย first opened, specialty coffee was still nascent in Japan, and good information was hard to come by. Fortunately, Suzuki shared his hometown with Kenji Kojima, now store manager at Fuglen Tokyo. Kojima helped at Hoshikawa and taught Suzuki about coffee culture both in Tokyo and abroad.
Suzuki and Kojima have remained friends, and when Fuglen Tokyo opened, Suzuki was able to deepen his knowledge through the coffees of Tim Wendelboe, Supreme Roastworks, Solberg &ย Hansen, and many others.
Suzuki roasts out of a small space just two minutes from the cafe, in the remnants of an oldย ramen shop. Itโs now home to an abandoned counter space, a roaster, and a collection of vintage Scandinavian furniture. Suzuki started as a hobbyistโwith mesh roasting pans and a hand-cranked Fuji Royalโbut about a year ago he upgraded, and now works with a 1959 five-kilogram Probat.
Suzukiโs style is inspired by the Norwegian roast, and the coffees he works with at the momentโEthiopia Gesha Village, Costa Rica Helsar de Zarcero, and Colombia Miguel Antonio Vargasโare all from the Collaborative Coffee Source. Roasting is a constant learning process for Suzuki, but he loves the spectrum of different flavors involved with it.
โI donโt think just roasting light is the answer,โ he says. โEven within light roast there are layers of flavor and aroma, and we aim to prepare coffee that highlights that level of depth.โ
Seeing Hoshikawa, and talking to Suzuki, it makes you think more about the coffee shops popping up around Japan, in the quiet of small towns away from the big city. Trunk, Weekenders, Kariomons, And Coffee Roasters, Hoshikawaโall are driven by their owners’ย desire to bring something they love back to their hometowns, to share it the best they can.
Even if that means, in the case of 2015/2016 Japan Barista Champion Yoshikazu Iwase, starting your coffee career in a truck.
Thereโs a hint of the Maruyama story in all of these placesโthat idea of starting up in a quiet countryside area, and paving the way to a better understanding of specialty coffee. “Itโs about care, patience, and enthusiasm,” says Suzuki, “but itโs still going to take time.”
โFor those of us in rural areas, and for me here in Saitama, we still have to work hard for a while. My coffee career started 10 years ago, and back then we wanted to share a new culture, a new way to understand and enjoy coffee. I feel that idea has just recently started to permeate the market here.โ
Before I left, I looked at the collection of shoes by the genkan, and the variety of customers in the cafeโthe mother and daughter chatting over cappuccinos, aย group of housewives talking gossip, two teenagers talking excitedly over pancakes and cafe mochas. A local businessman who dropped by for an americano.
And I sawย that if maybe Suzuki isย rightโspecialty coffee willย take a long time to become commonplace out here in the countryโit was still nice to see the community gathering together around cups of specialty coffee, and Hoshikawa Cafe carving out a little place for itself in Kumagaya.
Hengtee Limย (@Hent03) is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in Tokyo. Read moreย Hengtee Lim on Sprudge.
Note: If youโre in Tokyo and wantย to try some of what Hoshikawa Cafe has to offer, you can usually find their coffee at 4/4 Seasons in Shinjuku San-chome. (Shinjuku-Ku, Shinjuku 2-7-7.)