Why Japan Loves Australian Coffee So Much, And Vice Versa – CoffeeTalk

Australian coffee brands have become the go-to for many of Tokyo’s coolest cafes, and more than two-dozen Japanese roasters are coming to Melbourne for a unique festival in July. Single O, an Australian coffee brand, opened a cafe in Tokyo this week, offering batch-brew taps that can caffeinate more than 2000 people an hour. The café features a seasonal coffee blend inspired by a fireworks festival that has brightened Japanese skies since 1733. This rapid Japanese ascent is thanks to the “fabulous Yu Yamamoto,” who transitioned from working at Single O’s Sydney cafe to becoming a barista, roaster, and trainer.

Single O’s first Tokyo roastery opened in 2013, headed by Yamamoto and his wife, Mamiko. A new site in 2024 allowed Single O to significantly scale up, quadrupling capacity. More than 100 businesses across Japan use its beans, from Iris Bread & Coffee in the Tochigi prefecture to Better Girl down in Okinawa. Australian coffee resonates in Japan because it roasts on the lighter spectrum, which allows the terroir and actual bean to speak for itself.

Japanese surfer Tatsuya Miyazato was drawn to the Gold Coast and loved the cafe culture so much, “taking it home to Japan,” says Joe Stokes, general manager at Marvell Street Coffee roasters in Byron Bay. For nearly a decade, patrons at Miyazato’s Good Day Coffee in Okinawa have gotten their buzz from Marvell Street. Dan Yee from Sydney’s Artificer Coffee believes that the lighter-grade coffee is roasted darker to hide defects and make it palatable, which if roasted light would expose its deficiencies.

Traditionally, dark bitter roasts have ruled Japan, particularly in kissaten (old-school cafes) with retro brewing styles involving siphons and cloth filters. However, the new school of Japanese coffee pros have usually done their time in an Aussie cafe, learning the ropes and taking back that knowledge. The Japanese do what they do and often take it to another focused level.

Japan’s coffee culture might be older than ours (Kyoto-style cold brew has a 400-year history, for instance), but it has been highly influenced by Australia’s flat whites and growing specialty-coffee scene. “The new school of Japanese coffee pros have usually done their time in an Aussie cafe, learning the ropes and taken back that knowledge,” says Yee. “Then the Japanese do what they do and often take it to another focused level. You also see it with pasta, pizza, wine, and French cuisine over there.”

Organizer Kantaro Okada, owner of cafes Le Bajo Milkbar and 279 near Queen Victoria Market, is bringing 26 coffee roasters over from Japan for the festival. A third of them opened cafes “because they were so inspired by the Australian coffee market”, he says. Shinsaku Fukayama, who became Australia’s 2018 latte art champion while at Melbourne’s St Ali, is on the line-up for Coffee Weekend. Rieko Arai, from Tokyo’s Sol’s Coffee, was 14 when she first travelled to Australia and was moved by the warm connection between baristas and customers in local coffee shops.

Australia’s influence on Japan’s caffeine habits is undeniable, but the reverse is also true. Single O specialises in coffee, but the fastest-growing menu item at its Brisbane and Sydney cafes is matcha. %Arabica, established in Kyoto in 2014, will soon open its first Australian store at Bondi. “They know their clients,” says Okada. %Arabica’s location by Kyoto’s landmark Togetsukyo Bridge is highly Instagrammable, and he suspects Bondi was chosen for a similar reason: its beach doubles as a photogenic backdrop for coffee snapshots.

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