Tokyo's most therapeutic cup of coffee

A plantation employee selects ripe, red coffee beans.

Like stress, coffee is not unique to Tokyo. But the Japanese have put their own spin on both. Whether it’s the unmatched variety of canned coffee or the little filter packs sold in grocery stores, there is an emphasis on speed, as there seems to be for the strung-out souls who seek solace against the windshield of the next express train.

Coffee as cure

Perhaps as an implicit recognition of the exasperating lives endured by many citizens, Japan’s coffee manufacturers typically promise improved mental well-being through their products.

For example, the All Japan Coffee Association makes the case that coffee can actually “reduce stress.” UCC suggests that coffee may have yet undiscovered “powers” and Key Coffee with its flagship Toarco Toraja brand claims it provides “proposals” for new lifestyles “featuring” coffee.

Unrelenting attempts at commoditizing happiness certainly put me in the market for a proposal for a new lifestyle.

A true believer in the church of consumption might stay in Tokyo and try to find satisfaction in a cup of Toarco Toraja. But I am a heretic. I have decided to break from the flock to try it at its source and without the possibility of radioactive tap water.

Fleeing the grind

Toarco Toraja is both a brand and the name of the plantation where the coffee is produced in Tana Toraja, a region of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island.

Roasting arabica beans by hand is a long tradition.

After Brazil and Columbia, Indonesia is the third biggest supplier of unroasted coffee to Japan. But, as I found out when I arrived in the archipelago, there are a lot of fulfilling experiences to be had here besides the coffee.

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I am shuttling through the countryside on the island of Sulawesi, gagging on one of Indonesia’s tar-laden clove cigarettes in the back of a microbus with a couple of tourists and Agus, my guide. 

I know I have chosen a lively one, when he starts telling them that the local diet will help improve their odor. The women laugh while I drop ash all over my shorts. 

We pass a group of high school girls on their way to class and I have a small perceptual revelation when I notice their uniforms.

They are tidy and smart but unlike Japan’s sailor suits, not the least bit sexualized. It’s kind of like realizing for the first time that you can get cola without caffeine.