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JAPAN: The World’s Most Expensive Cup of Coffee

2 minute read
TIME

A notable byproduct of Japan’s swift rise to economic superpower status is a mildly bizarre cult of the price tag. Some of the best customers of art galleries on Madison Avenue and the Faubourg St. Honoré these days are dealers from Tokyo or Osaka, their pockets stuffed with yen, who are willing to pay astronomical sums for French impressionist paintings. Japanese buyers are equally conspicuous at the yearling auctions in Saratoga and Deauville, bidding handsomely for the best thoroughbreds. In fact, the Japanese seem to have supplanted the stereotype Texans as the world’s most eager status seekers.

One man who has shrewdly exploited his compatriots’ fixation on expensive luxuries is Keishiro Funakoshi, proprietor of the Akaneya Coffee Shop in scenic Karuizawa, a popular mountain resort 100 miles northwest of Tokyo. There, for 9,900 yen (roughly $38), he serves what must surely be the world’s most expensive cup of coffee. Funakoshi readily concedes that it is not so much the quality of his coffee (a home-blended brew of charcoal-roasted grains freshly ground for each customer) or the decor of his establishment (a narrow, dark wooden hut decorated in rustic Mingei style), as the defiantly exorbitant prices that attract hordes of tourists to his coffee shop.

“People come to Karuizawa with the expectation of spending money,” he says, “so why shouldn’t I help them in this endeavor?” Even those who do not sample the $38 cup of coffee—served at a special table by a kimono-clad waitress in a ritual that resembles a tea ceremony—can leave the Akaneya with the feeling of having been overcharged.

A weaker brew, served in less ornate cups, costs a steep 495 yen (more than three times the standard price) when taken at the counter. That is where the majority of Funakoshi’s customers sit, hoping to see someone come in and order the special $38 cup. Hardly anyone complains about the high prices. As Funakoshi explains it: “Compared to 9,900 yen, 495 is a real bargain.”

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