A second life together with the community: Creating a place for the elderly

I run Hibari Cafe. This year marks our ninth year since opening. I take one day off a week and am at the cafe almost every day, with three staff members taking turns helping out. We offer breakfast, simple lunch menus, and cafe menus from 10am to 3pm, and we have started opening three nights a week as “café bar Hibari” from 4pm to 9pm. There is also an event space on the second floor where classes can be held.

The reason I started the cafe in the first place was because I wanted to help revitalize the Sobudai housing complex, which was once a symbol of Japan’s rapid economic growth and is close to my home and holds many memories for me. Rather than just a place that serves food and drink, I wanted it to be a place where the people who live there could communicate with each other.

Now in our ninth year, we have started to attract elderly residents of the housing complex, and when we organize events such as art classes, many people now participate.

I am also a director of the NPO “Hiyoko Hiroba,” which looks after local children, and we hold a children’s cafeteria once a month. I am often asked to be a lecturer for courses on revitalizing the local community and I am also interviewed, so I hope people will learn about these local activities.

I was able to create a place for the elderly, which is what I wanted to do. We are still barely making ends meet and there are months when I don’t get paid, but since making money wasn’t the goal from the start, the smiles of the people who come are the best reward.

I’m happiest that the elderly people living in the housing complex come to the cafe and it has become a place of relaxation. We’ve worked so hard to bring the place back to life, and I don’t want it to end when I’m gone.

In that sense, one of our newer goals is to train like-minded young people so that they can take over not only the cafe but also the activities to revitalize the local community.