I have just recently opened a little 15 seat cafe at the front my house. Zoning in certain areas allow business use from home. I just do basic meals from 11-2pm and do a couple of English classes a week at the moment. As you can see the ceilings are huge so it will need a powerful stove. The upstairs has 12 seats and used to be back in the day where the old owner had a home silk making cloth factory. So he had the moths and all that sort of stuff. It has a great view of the mountains and one of them was the downhill section of the Winter Olympics. It’s still used today and you can see the slopes. Hopefully the cafe and school can sustain a livelihood for us here. It looks like it could and there’s nothing better than working from home.
Some more pictures. At the moment I’ve got a carpenter to install a proper glass door as the old one is too drafty and not secure.
I put the new door frame in and a carpenter is making me a proper glass door. The floor used to be pounded earthen but I put a thin layer of concrete over it to stop dust being trod all the place.
Is that the Hakkoda mountains? I have a friend on the US Air Force stationed there. He regularly snow boards and trail rides there.
The mountains in front are in Iizuna Nagano. I’m on the west side on the city and those mountains are east north east. Hakkoda mountains are at the far north of the main island.
That's really cool. I would think that you would have quite a few people wanting to take English lessons. What kinds of food do you serve? You'll definitely need a decent sized stove to heat that open floorplan.
Just started the English classes so only have 2 per week at the moment. Cafe food is just simple home cooking stuff plus some hamburgers. I’m just settling in so this will all change in 6 months time.
Had the local tv rock up to do a 5 min segment on the cafe and the new foreigner opening a business. went well I think. Won’t air for a couple of weeks but could be good to bring the punters in.thank god for google translate! I could only understand about 25% of what was said to me. So did quite a few takes! Edit- forgot to add. I had to run a bloody kerosene heater to take the chill out the room. That’s blasphemy!
