Making our cafe dreams come true

And perhaps it's time for me to learn Japanese now...

October 2024

The sun was bright and warm as we meandered our way along the country road. The landscape was looking worn out from the harsh, hot summer. The vibrant summer greens were giving way to dull and sometimes brown foliage. It was mid-autumn but there would be no signs of beautiful autumn colours for several more weeks. Just tired looking forests and fields.

The landscape did not reflect our spirits. We were energized, enthusiastic and forward-focused with, perhaps, a little bit of trepidation that excitement and hope can bring.

We were headed to the local michinoeki, directly translated as “road station”, these kinds of spaces were nothing like the Australian Servo (ie Service Station). Instead, you could perhaps liken it more to an Artisan Farmer’s Market. Filled with local produce and locally made foods, as well as craft items, a michinoeki is a tourist attraction in its own right!

They are very popular among the Japanese, so opening up a cafe in this local michinoeki could be nothing but a great business move! As mentioned in my previous post, if we could rent out this abandoned cafe, it would be a perfect location! Located on a main road, the michinoeki was very popular and attracted many customers. We could not only sell to customers that came into our cafe, but we could also make and package goods and sell them downstairs in the michinoeki. And if there was a plandemic part II, we could continue to do online business, making goods in the commercially approved kitchen and sell them online!

My husband was now out of work. I had tried to get a job so he could have a much needed break after his previous stressful job, but that dream was going nowhere and looked as though it had fallen flat on its face. Starting a cafe was a passion and dream Shujin had held for quite awhile and it felt like this could be our opportunity.

With high hopes and great anticipation, we neared the michinoeki. The usual flags placed out the front were not there to wave their welcome. The carpark was empty. The place looked deserted. What was going on?

It turned out, we had arrived on the only one day of the week that they were closed!

Total let-down!

We parked the car nonetheless, and decided to peak through the windows. Climbing up the stairs, a spacious deck greeted us, complete with tables and chairs. Perfect for a cafe spilling out into the open air!

We went over to the glass doors and I pointed out the space out to Shujin. He looked through the glass doors and over to the other side of the hallway where the vacant cafe space stood. We couldn’t see inside as there were floor to ceiling wooden doors closing the space off. But because of the hallway, and it wrapping around the corner, you could get a gauge of the space. It was bigger than I remembered.

Shujin looked. He read the words on the wooden doors.

“ホール”

He turned to me and said, “It’s a hall.”

WHAT?!?!?!

My lack of Japanese really let me down this time!

It had felt so perfect! The location, the premises, the opportunities, everything!! But it had all been based on a complete lie. A false belief of a space that never even existed!

So we went home, my tail between my legs, and put our energy into the Prayer House.

Shujin had been extra stressed over the last few months and had not had the mental space for doing any renovations at all. Even though there was still the occasional contact from work to ask questions or get needed information, it was pretty much all behind him now and no longer his responsibility.

It wasn’t just the finance side of his previous job that was a stress for Shujin, but also the mental load that you carry home with you concerning the welfare of the residents. He couldn’t ever clock out completely. Not ever in almost 2 years of work. He was always on call, literally! Being relieved from that was massive.

So, the Prayer House!

I was super keen to get in and start making some good progress! In my mind, I didn’t need a bathroom, that wasn’t a priority. All I needed was a toilet and kitchen and we could move in. I had no qualms about walking six houses down the stress to Okasan’s house and using her shower! It would be just like camping, and I was totally cool with that!

Apart from our bedroom needing the final flooring, all bedrooms were livable. We could comfortably sleep there. Yes, we did want to replace the old windows and paint the walls, but they were livable as was. We could do those things later.

But before the kitchen and toilet, Shujin really wanted to stabilise the roof. Due to past water damage, the ceiling and roof over the living room was bowed. And being the Lego house that it was, built with “sandwich panels”, there was no frame holding up the ceiling and roof in this large space, hence the bowing. Shujin wanted to install a frame in the living room to fix the sagging roof and strengthen it.

As much as I wanted my kitchen and toilet, I understood his point.

Drawing up a plan and figuring out where best to place the posts that the beams would rest on, we eventually settled on the design. Thankfully it didn’t include a post right in the middle of my double glass doors! It would have been the perfect place to install a post structure-wise, but I refused to believe there wasn’t a work-around!

Settling on a design was one thing, implementing it was another. We realised that if we were going to replace the old wooden-framed, thin-glassed, rattling double glass doors then we really needed to do it along side the construction of the frame, not afterwards.

Shujin set to work looking for double-glazed glass doors.

It felt strange to me when I could tell you the location of the glass shops in a few towns I’ve lived in back in Australia. If you need doors or windows, you just go down to the glass shop and buy them. No big deal. It’s not the same in Japan. Glass shops don’t sell to individuals. They sell to builders and building companies. DIY is not common practice in Japan, particularly on the scale that we were doing.

But there must be someone you could buy from??

After hours of internet searching, he found it. A glass shop that sold to anyone. And that took orders for custom-made. The price was very reasonable too. Actually it was cheaper than other glass shops so we were super happy!

Shujin put the order in. Being custom-made it was going to take several weeks. That was a bummer. Moving in to the Prayer House before Christmas was looking more and more slim! But it was still October, and Shujin wasn’t working yet, so hopefully we could get quite a lot done in a short time-frame!

Oh the conflict of needing a job but needing spare time all at once!

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