The bus terminates in a town of three thousand people, and the last stop is, improbably, exactly where you want to be: outside a kissaten that has been run by the same man since 1974. Inside there is dark wood, a wall of jazz records, seven seats, and the smell of coffee being taken more seriously than most things are taken anywhere.<\/p>\n
The master siphons each cup over an alcohol flame, a method that takes four minutes and produces a coffee so clean it resets your assumptions. He remembers orders. Not today’s orders, all orders. A man came in while we were there, visiting his hometown for a funeral after thirty years away, and the master said, without drama, blend, no sugar, the seat by the speaker. The man sat down and looked out the window for a while before he could speak.<\/p>\n
Kissaten culture is supposed to be dying, and by the numbers it is. But the numbers do not sit in the seat by the speaker. They do not know that a room like this, in a town like this, functions as a public memory. The master does not use the word community. He says regulars, and he says it the way other people say family.<\/p>\n
We asked what happens to the records when he retires. He said he is not retiring, and made us another cup, and put on Coltrane, and that was the end of the interview and the beginning of a very good afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coffee siphoned over an alcohol flame, a master who remembers every order since 1974, and jazz on vinyl in a town of three thousand. Worth the last bus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unfamiliarjapan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}