The Coffee Machine

1. Disappointment at Starbucks, Osaka Airport 2. Stef enjoys Iced Coffee (Japan style) 3. At home: cartons of iced coffee, whitener and gum syrup 4. Vending machines full of coffee...mmm. Convenient. 5. Our blessed machine. We're going to open a cafe in our tatami room this winter. :) Weird I know but I felt it necessary to blog about our new coffee machine. This will just take a moment. Please be patient. To tell you the truth... when we first arrived in Japan we had kind of prepared ourselves for what we like to call 'the coffee situation'. In fact, the famous 'Americans visit' to mum's store prepared us well. While battling it out with the guy who continually repeated his order (becoming louder each time) to me; the hick Australian waitress: "I just want black coffee. You know, black coffee', while I attempted to clarify: 'Long black? Short black?' At the time I was somewhat surprised to hear that in many places in our big wide world coffee is black and poured from a jug much the way we see Doris or Lucy or Candy in their pink uniforms do it in diners in the movies...or at McDonalds. Keen coffee drinking friends back home will support me when i say that Melbourne has some of the best coffee going. For starters, we do espresso, instead of drip style like the lovelies I know from the USA (sorry Sam!), secondly we've got Lygon Street, numerous good locations in the CBD, that fabulous House/Home of Delicacies (can never recall the correct name) on the way to work in Donvale, Hahndorfs in Blackburn and so on. I could go on but I wont. Japan has several coffee options, most of which didn't particularly get me excited. Dad and Glen had actually helped us prepare for the inevitable coffee issues that awaited us in Japan by gifting us with a farewell present - a Starbucks coffee card stocked with credit. Now, I am not a HUGE fan of Starbucks, but I did know they were quite big in Japan and I also knew they (of course) used an espresso machine. Upon arriving at Kansai airport, coffee credit card in hand I ambled over to Starbucks and ordered. It was our first night in Japan and very unfortunately the girl behind the counter said to me: 'To tell you the truth...we only accept Starbucks cards purchased in Japan' (actually she didn't say 'to tell you the truth but it's a habit of mine now so just go with it). In our early days in Japan, coffee became quite the concern: Should be buy a drip machine? They're everywhere, they can't be all bad. Should we buy a plunger? Yes, Let's buy a plunger! Where can we buy a plunger? Why doesn't anyone sell plungers? But it also became quite interesting. Japan has numerous ways to drink coffee. There are hundreds of thousands of coffee vending machines, cold black coffee (with or without sugar) comes in cartons ready to pour and add mini sachets of gum syrup and whitener to, and of course it can be purchased in loads of cafes and restaurants. In the early days we eventually found a small plunger and that became the norm each morning. Then when the heat of summer hit I actually took to buying cartons of cold coffee and adding the gum syrup and whitener (sounds worse than it actually is) and all was well...until we went shopping with Yoshimi and Keichan and they turned our coffee drinking world upside down. We were shopping when we saw a Delonghi espresson machine in a store display and I turned to Ross and noted how much cheaper Delonghi is in Japan than Australia. We discussed then Yoshimi and Keu wanted to know what we were nattering about. When we mentioned our love for coffee Kei was like: 'I have that machine! I have that Delonghi machine at work, it's in a box. I don't want it. You can have it.' And so, on fireworks saturday when everyone arrived at our place to enjoy the Juso fireworks display, Yoshimi came laden with the usual gifts of rice crackers and wine and sake and she came with a pretty spectacular gift...our espresso machine. We are well and truly spoilt.