Alexander Kim

The Café with One Seat

There's a café in Japan I think about more often than I should. It has one seat. Maybe two. The owner clearly built it for himself, not for customers. You walk in, and you can tell — this is a man who spent decades doing something else, saved enough, and then created the exact life he wanted. A small room, good beans, a pour-over setup, and silence. No ambition to franchise. No growth strategy. Just coffee, made well, in a space that fits one person's definition of enough.