Progress LIFE STYLE COFFEE: Hiroshima's Coffee Culture

Progress Life Style Coffee is located in Hiroshima’s Shintenchi neighborhood[IC1.1], an area where hotels, restaurants, and coffeeshops line the streets. The owner is barista and roaster Tanaka Yuji, who opened the place in 2016. Yuji claims that he once disliked coffee. So how did he end up becoming a barista and opening a coffeeshop that has since evolved into one of Hiroshima’s best-known roasteries? We asked him.

Discovering the perfect espresso drinking 50 cups of joe on a coffee tour

“I first got into the food services businesses when I started bartending. But then one day I became involved in helping out at a coffeeshop that was opening as an affiliate of the bar where I worked.”

Barista and roaster Tanaka Yuji, owner of Progress Life Style Coffee

The problem was, Yuji couldn’t even drink coffee in those days.

“When I do interviews like this, I usually say that I wasn’t fond of coffee, but the fact is, I hated the stuff,” he laughs. Initially he helped serve tables, but then gradually he expanded into other areas like preparing drinks, until he increasingly thought, “I’m supposed to be serving coffee, but I can’t tell whether the coffee tastes good or bad. I want to know.” So he set out on a three-day coffee-drinking tour.

“That was just around the time that what’s called third-wave coffee was starting to catch on. I wasn’t sure whether there were any places in Hiroshima that sold such coffee, so I decided to head to Tokyo.”

Yuji stayed for two nights in Tokyo, and during the three days he spent there, he wandered from place to place downing forty to fifty cups of coffee.

“The thing is, I’ve always hated to lose. I would have hated it if our sales had dipped just because I had come on board. Far from it, I was determined to boost sales [laughs].”

Yuji drank so much coffee that he felt unwell on the bullet train home, but it was worth it. During the trip, as if by destiny, he came across a truly wonderful cup of coffee.

“It was a very fruity espresso that tasted like nothing I’d ever tasted before. I was bowled over.”

My former dislike of coffee inspires my ongoing quest for a cup of coffee everyone will find delicious.

Having discovered the perfect cup of espresso, Yuji continued exploring the world of coffee. After working for three years at a second coffeeshop to make very sure he knew what he was doing, he opened Progress Life Style Coffee. Progress Life Style Coffee is dedicated to the proposition that a cup of coffee should be easy to drink. Above all, it’s committed to serving coffee that those with an aversion to coffee will find goes down smoothly — not to mention coffee lovers. Yuji spent considerable time selecting coffee beans to serve at his new place.

“I started in Kyushu and journeyed north looking for places that would supply coffee beans wholesale. That’s when I came across Milton Coffee Roastery, whom I still do business with.”

Thanks to this encounter, Yuji learned even more. He learned about single-origin coffee, in which the beans aren’t blended, and about specialty coffee, which is subject to rigorous quality control. As a result, he says, “I conceived a desire to become more involved in all aspects of coffee and express what coffee meant to me.” He started learning about roasting as well.

On the second floor, customers can leisurely enjoy their coffee with a cake or muffin.

“At first, I asked a shop that had the very roaster I wanted to let me use it — it’s called roaster sharing. I would try roasting beans there night after night. I also turned to acquaintances who were roasters for advice. I received all kinds of help as I got started.”

Thus Yuji embarked on the path to becoming a professional roaster. Slowly but surely, he began displaying beans he had roasted himself in store. An even more significant milestone was visiting countries where coffee beans are grown.

“Milton Coffee Roastery has been going to Nicaragua and El Salvador every year for the past twenty years to buy beans directly, and I went along with them. There I saw firsthand what beans are considered high-quality, how coffee beans are ranked, and how strictly operations are managed on plantations where beans are grown. I realized that there are things you can only truly understand by going yourself and checking the taste on the spot.”

Yuji believes in the importance of traceability. Every year he visits coffee-growing regions to buy coffee beans while engaging with growers in person.

It has been a decade since Progress Life Style Coffee opened. Listening to Yuji, you can tell that he’s spent many years studying and experiencing each and every aspect of coffee. So what has enabled him to explore the subject so exhaustively when he didn’t even like coffee at first? “Honing my palate by drinking coffee day in and day out helped develop my interest, of course,” Yuji replies. “But I guess the very fact I disliked coffee attuned me to its subtleties, and that’s why I’ve been able to keep pursuing the perfect cup of coffee,” he adds, reflecting on his life journey.

“For example, someone who loves to drink will tell you a chuhai (shochu highball) with 1% ABV tastes just like juice. But if you’re averse to alcohol like me, even the presence of 0.01% alcohol will be noticeable. It’s the same with coffee. Because I used to dislike coffee myself, I’m sensitive to what it is about coffee that turns some people off, and I’ve always wanted to serve coffee that people will find delicious even if they’ve never liked coffee.”

Yuji continues.

“There aren’t that many things in life that I’ve really gotten into, but coffee is one of them. You’d think there must be single right way to prepare coffee, but there isn’t. Whether it’s a dark roast or a light roast, the one thing you can say for sure is, ‘This is the taste of our coffee,’ and if someone doesn’t like it, too bad. There’s no need to follow the rulebook, and there’s no need to abide by someone else’s standards or conform to what they think is right. I keep forging head in pursuit of what’s right for me, which is why I love doing this.”

Perfecting rice koji milk latte after many trial runs

Another thing that Yuji is focused on is making more people aware of Hiroshima’s coffee.

“We organize a latte art contest in Hiroshima, and once a year we hold the Good Life Good Coffee Fair, an event that brings together well-known coffee roasters. This is the fair’s fifth year, and this year, it attracted roasters from Yamaguchi and Fukuoka as well as Hiroshima. Roasters in the Tokyo and Kansai regions have plenty of opportunities to gain the spotlight thanks to the influence of the media. But even though Hiroshima with its long-established coffeeshop culture has many roasters with their own unique style, that fact is not widely known. That’s why we want to spread the word about Hiroshima’s coffee culture to more people through such events.”

These occasions enable roasters across Hiroshima Prefecture to get to know each other better, whereas previously there was no network among them. It was thanks to one such event that Yuji first discovered Koji Barista Edition.

Latte made with Koji Barista Edition is a favorite with international visitors. “Koji” or rice malt is becoming increasingly well known among non-Japanese.

“A roaster friend of mine told me about Koji Barista Edition. I think it’s a great choice for people who avoid animal products or who have allergies. We give customers the option of Koji Barista Edition instead of milk in caffè latte, matcha latte, and our other lattes. There are lots of hotels around here, so international tourists often drop by, and Koji Barista Edition is very popular with them.”

Koji Barista Edition can be bought in store.

Yuji himself is not that fond of fermented products like the sweet rice drink amazake. But for that very reason, he wanted to concoct a latte with Koji Barista Edition that he would enjoy himself and others find delicious too. So he kept experimenting, convinced that there must be a way to achieve the right flavor balance for drinkers like him.

The technique he ultimately hit on was this: use beans that are even more deeply roasted than those used for regular latte. And steam the espresso and Koji Barista Edition together.

“Steaming Koji Barista Edition on its own, then creating latte art with it really appealed to me,” says Yuji, “but steaming it with the espresso allowed me to achieve this wonderful flavor.”

“I discovered a different flavor balance from what your typical latte delivers by choosing the right beans and changing the ratio of Koji Barista Edition to espresso. Then I steamed them together. That’s how I managed to come up with a great flavor that even wowed me.”

Take a sip of Yuji’s latte, and it’s just as he describes. The aroma and full body of coffee are pleasantly layered with mild notes of sweetness, yielding a strikingly rich flavor. Like everything else on the menu, this delicately balanced latte is obviously inspired by Yuji’s commitment to serving coffee that anyone who drops by will enjoy.

Progress Life Style Coffee’s koji milk latte has the comforting taste of hot chocolate.

“I’ve had customers tell me that they could never drink coffee before, but since discovering our coffee, they’ve come to savor it, and now they love making coffee themselves. It’s truly gratifying to be told that, because that’s exactly what I was aiming for,” says Yuji. “We intend to stay true to who we are here at Progress Life Style Coffee by serving great-tasting coffee that customers find easy to drink while delivering the flavor that bean farmers expect,” Yuji winds up with a smile.