Along The Middle Path, Iron Coffee In Tokyo Beckons

iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

Chances are, you’ll find Iron Coffee on your approach to or from Gotokuji Temple. But don’t feel bad about it; that’s how it works for many anyone who isn’t a local.

And for owners Yuki Isono, that’s a point.

“There’s no specialty coffee here,” he says. “That’s a whole reason we chose this place. we mean, there’s a clever clarity of internal community, and a people are friendly, and this plcae happened to be available. we wanted to move something new to that.”

iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

It’s cold a day we revisit Gotokuji. Freezing. In a breeze is a solid brew of sleet and rain. At a hire sits a statue of a cat, and past it roads lined with a elementary elements of bland Japan: supermarkets, dentists, restaurants, bakeries, bathhouses, and book stores.

Iron Coffee sits where a shops accommodate a suburbs on a initial building of what was once a kimono shop. It’s black iron masquerade is interrupted by a elementary doorway and a to-go window, and created on a wall above it are a faded letters of a name Todoroki—all that’s left of a building’s past self.


iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge
“Iron feels like a pitch of strength,” Isono says. “And there’s also a clarity that as it ages and rusts, we see a personality. That’s a kind of feel we wish for this place, too.”

Inside, Iron Coffee is simple, spartan. While Isono brews a coffee (with beans from Single O Japan), we watch a few locals dump by. One is a regular, who enters to hang out. The others get their coffees to-go, chatting idly while they wait on lattes and pour-overs. Isono says this has turn what he many enjoys about using a coffee shop.

“When we started, we only favourite brewing good coffee and creation latte art,” he says. “But given opening here, it’s articulate to people and branch business into friends that creates a pursuit rewarding.”iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

Isono tells me he gets a lot of unfamiliar business since of a internal temple, so we ramble over to check it out. After encircling by a circuitous area streets of Setagaya, we find a hulk wooden gate, and inside of it, a universe opposite to a one we came from: church buildings, grave stones, statues, trees, bushes.

iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

It’s here, around a tiny dilemma of a elementary building, that we find a collection of cats—hundreds of them—on a mill floor. They approximate a tiny mill statue, and fill a circuitously shelf.

iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

These are maneki-neko, a attract famous to move good luck, and suspicion by some to have originated here in Gotokuji, when a feudal duke followed a cat to preserve during a start of a thunderstorm. It’s an considerable sight, and one that feels both decidedly out of place, and totally during home.

That sold aspect of it reminds me of Iron Coffee.

iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

When we conduct behind to a station, Isono is still brewing. His emporium is not bustling, and it’s not busy; it’s constant. Isono says that’s a good sign.

“When we started, people suspicion a coffee was sour,” he says, “but that’s only how it goes opening somewhere new in Japan. People traditionally like their coffee bitter. But it’s changing with time. People are surprised. The coffee is sweet.”

iron coffee gotokuji tokyo japan singular o cafeteria sprudge

The whole thing creates me consider of beckoning cats and good fitness on stormy days. we consider of how they prolonged ago brought a feudal duke to shelter, and how now they competence move erratic tourists to peculiarity coffee.

It’s surprises like these that we like best about Tokyo, and Japan, and a coffee scene.

Hengtee Lim is a Sprudge staff author formed in Tokyo. Read some-more Hengtee Lim on Sprudge.