Coffee, Cigarettes and Sandwiches

While exploring Japan by car, we stumbled upon a little café on the outskirts of Nagoya, run by an elderly gentleman who had been there for over 50 years.Inside, everything felt frozen in the 1960s—eccentric, nostalgic, and wonderfully strange. We slipped into a booth overlooking his workspace, where coffee simmered over Bunsen burners. We ordered cinnamon coffee and sandwiches. As he prepared them, he casually lit a cigarette and carried on, as though time had never moved forward. For a moment, it felt like we had stepped into another era—where coffee, smoke, and quiet rituals filled the air. A small, surreal glimpse of Japan’s past.