Coffee

Shibuya and Harajuku can be quite a crowded placed to visit, and so I welcome any opportunity for a coffee in a more quiet place. Enter BAGGAGE COFFEE - a coffee store tucked away on a residential side street.

On the first day of our roadtrip down the Izu Peninsula, we stopped by a local coffee roaster called ITOKU COFFEE. I'm amazed by wherever I go in Japan, there seems to be a coffee roaster somewhere nearby (isn't it great).

Coffee House Kahikan (こぉひぃはうす 可否館) is a delightful little Showa-era cafe in Shimoda, Izu. The shelves and walls of the cafe are covered in tea cups and saucers.

Koffee Mameya, a specialty coffee bean store near Shibuya, had always been on my radar to visit but I had never quite gotten around to it.

Mermaid Coffee Roasters is cafe specialising in specialty pour-over coffee, located in a tall and narrow 4-storey building (complete with a rooftop) near Ikebukuro station.

If you've ever visited a Japanese coffee shop and found yourself confused by their bean roast levels, me too! I'm still relatively new to the world of pourover coffee, but over the past year I've been visiting coffee roasteries around Tokyo and trying out a lot of new coffee beans as a hobby.

Out of all the coffee bean stores I've visited in Tokyo, NorthStar Beans in Kita-Shinagawa stocks the biggest variety I have seen yet. They purportedly have over 150 beans on offer, and could be a mecca for coffee bean lovers in Japan. It also still seems to be a bit of a hidden gem.

KAIDO books&coffee is a delightful little coffee shop in Kita-Shinagawa that specialises in hot dogs and fresh cream scones. It's also home to over 10,000 books that you can peruse while you sip on your coffee.

As we were wandering around the streets of Matsue city (after visiting its castle and taking some bird photos) we happened across a coffee roastery called the Matsue Roasting Place (松江焙煎所).

Near Nippori station on the Yanaka-Ginza shopping street is a specialty coffee roaster called Yanaka Coffee. This is a coffee chain that now has over 30+ locations, but as the name might suggest originally opened right here back in 2000.

AOYAMA COFFEE ROASTER is a coffee shop tucked away on a residential side street in between Ueno and Nippori, in an area known as Yanesen. Quite amazingly it has 4.9 stars on Google Maps as of me writing this, with over 300 reviews.

Jubilee Coffee Roaster is a little coffee store about a 10 minute walk from Meguro station. It's located directly across the road from Meguro's Institute for Nature Study, so it was very convenient to be able to visit both of these places in one trip.

My mum was visiting in Japan last month, so together we decided to visit the Starbucks Reserve Roastery. The Roastery is a souped up Starbucks that roasts beans onsite, and serves a bunch of exclusive menu items that you can't get at any of the other Starbucks.

On the edge of Yokohama's Chinatown is Tsukikoya Coffee Roaster. They have a wide variety of beans available to buy, plus you can buy a cup of any of them too. As we spent a while sniffing the beans and considering our options, the owner popped his head out and gave us little paper cups.

About a 10 minute walk from Shinjuku station in the Kabukicho district is a really cute coffee store called Coffee Seibu (珈琲西武). If you're coming for lunch or dinner, their speciality is omurice, and the portion size was really decent for only 1300 yen.

Kamakura is known for its coffee - so if I ever stop by the area, I always like to check out a new cafe. Recently we visited 27 Coffee Roasters, which lets you pick from a variety of beans before you order.

Winning the title for weirdest coffee shop name is Diggy Doo's Coffee in Sydney. They have a store tucked away on a side street near Wynyard station, but also a small kiosk conveniently located in Martin Place.

Rising Sun Coffee is a little coffee store tucked away on a quiet residential street in Shinjuku. We spent our Sunday wandering around Shinjuku, so we started off at the nearby Yostuya station, grabbed some coffee here and then made our way over to Shinjuku Gyoen for some birding.

GLITCH COFFEE & ROASTERS is a coffee shop in Jinbocho that specialises in light roast pour-over coffee.

Blue Bottle Coffee is a pretty popular coffee chain in Japan - and they sell their beans on Amazon. They have two varieties, a light and a dark roast. It's 1950 yen for 200g, so it's not a bargain by any means, but the price is decent enough.

If you're in Shibuya, there is a coffee spot I really like called Coffee Supreme, which I've mentioned previously in my post on walking between Shibuya and Harajuku.

I work fully remotely, and usually from home, but sometimes it can be nice to get out of my apartment for a couple of hours if I feel like I can't focus.

Near Sugamo station is a local coffee bean roaster called Honey Beans. Most helpfully they also have a recommended pour-over temperature noted on each bean which I've found to be pretty spot-on.

Sarutahiko Coffee (猿田彦珈琲) is an upscale coffee chain, and is where you would go if were looking for the Japanese equivalent of Starbucks. Arguably Sarutahiko might even be a little bit better - their interiors tend to be on the fancier side.

So I'd been diligently testing different grind sizes and temperatures when making my pourover coffee (it's fun, makes it like a science experiment), but had completely neglected looking into how I should be pouring.

We recently moved into a slightly larger apartment, which has given me room to have a little coffee station in the corner of my living room. Spare space is quite hard to come by in Japanese apartments so I'm quite pleased with the setup for this one!

So this pack of coffee beans wins the award for the absolutely cutest packaging! As a bit of backstory to how I bought these beans, recently I've been watching Peace Wanko's videos on YouTube.