Australian coffee brands have become the go-to for many of Tokyo’s coolest cafes. Meanwhile, more than two-dozen Japanese roasters are coming to Melbourne for a unique festival in July.
This week, Australian coffee brand Single O opened a cafe in Tokyo. The batch-brew taps can caffeinate more than 2000 people an hour, and there’s a seasonal coffee blend inspired by a fireworks festival that has brightened Japanese skies since 1733. It’s the fourth Single O store to open in Tokyo since April 2024.
This rapid Japanese ascent is thanks to the “fabulous Yu Yamamoto”, says Single O co-founder Emma Cohen. Yamamoto began working at Single O’s Sydney cafe as a “very talented and persistent dish hand”, who transitioned into a barista, roaster and trainer.
“He said to us how well he thought Single O would go in Japan.”
Its first Tokyo roastery opened in 2013, headed by Yamamoto and his wife, Mamiko, but a new site in 2024 allowed Single O to significantly scale up. “We’ve quadrupled capacity,” says Cohen. More than 100 businesses across Japan use its beans, from Iris Bread & Coffee in the Tochigi prefecture to Better Girl down in Okinawa.
Single O isn’t the only Aussie roaster meeting Japan’s caffeine needs. At Osaka’s Why Not, Nobutaka Maekawa sells Gold Coast’s Blackboard Coffee, believing it’s the “best”. He encountered the roaster while visiting Queensland, and Blackboard Coffee co-owner Danny Andrade credits Japanese tourists for driving this Australian coffee-appreciation trend. (The tourism surge of Australians to Japan is likely turbocharging Single O’s overseas growth, too.)
Japanese surfer Tatsuya Miyazato was also drawn to the Gold Coast and loved the cafe culture so much, “he took 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. Stokes has one theory for why Australian coffee resonates in Miyazato’s homeland.
“If you look at Japanese whisky, renowned for beautiful, clean flavours, our coffee is similar,” he says. “We roast on the lighter spectrum, which allows the terroir and actual bean to speak for itself.”
It’s like cooking a high-quality cut of meat “no further than medium-rare to retain the natural flavour of the steak,” says Dan Yee from Sydney’s Artificer Coffee. “Lower-grade coffee, generally, [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.
“When I first went to Japan as a coffee enthusiast, most of what I could find was the older kissaten style, which was novel, but I never enjoyed the actual flavour,” says Yee. “Now, you don’t have to look too hard to find places that have a modern approach.”
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.”
This is especially true when browsing the line-up for July’s Coffee Weekend in Melbourne. Organiser 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.
On the line-up is Shinsaku Fukayama, who became Australia’s 2018 latte art champion while at Melbourne’s St Ali. “He’s now opened a cafe that’s very Japanese-design driven,” says Okada. At Barista Map in Osaka, Fukayama serves coffee in wooden boxes traditionally designed for sake.
Meanwhile, Rieko Arai (from Tokyo’s Sol’s Coffee) was 14 when she first travelled to Australia. “I visited Canberra and was moved by the warm connection between baristas and customers in local coffee shops,” she says. “That moment inspired me to become a barista.”
For Coffee Weekend, she’ll pour brews from the manual Arco espresso maker she developed in Japan. “Unlike electric machines, Arco allows for a more delicate texture,” she says. Arai will also take part in the Good Coffee Week program bookending the festival, which involves Market Lane and other Melbourne cafes.
Okada spent four years working in Japan and helped Mitsubishi set up an “Oceania-style cafe” in Ginza, topping flat whites with rosettas and tulip designs. But it doesn’t compare to Australia’s voracious thirst for takeaway cups.
Sometimes he hires Japanese baristas at his Melbourne cafes and “they can’t keep up because in Japan, it’s a very slow brew”, he says. People also charge more for coffee there. “It means they’re having one delicious cup rather than us, like, choking down three a day.”
Okada believes Japan’s shift from dark kissaten coffees and cheap vending-machine cans to lighter Australian roasts has taken time.
“But now, everyone’s getting it,” he says. “It’s growing so much, it’s exponential.”
Yee recalls being at Weekenders cafe in Kyoto when a barista pulled out a bag of coffee and asked if he’d heard of the roaster: the beans were from Yee’s own Artificer Coffee. Even in a back lane in Kanazawa, he chanced upon Artificer being served at Nonstop Coffee.
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. And %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. “It’s iconic.”
Coffee Weekend is on July 5-6 at Melbourne’s Meat Market; Good Coffee Week takes place July 2-10 at various Melbourne cafes. coffeeweekend.com.au
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
