Coffee and Writing

I can sit in a cafe or diner and drink free refills of coffee indefinitely.

Some places will hook you up with refills on tea, but I feel like some kind of faggy Brit if I drink more than one cup of tea at a time (unless it’s green tea, which is a totally different animal). You can usually get free soda refills too (though not here in Japan), but I’m pretty much anti- anything with high fructose corn syrup, or anything related to corn, for that matter. (OK, exception: corn chips with salsa - I’m definitely down with chips and salsa.)

Coffee shops and diners both come with a certain culture, and I love them each in different ways. Coffee shops are built around the idea that you’ll be hanging out for a while; diners are built to tolerate the idea that you’ll be hanging out for a while. You could theoretically sit at Taco Bell and sip on a Mountain Dew all day, but it’s just not the same as camping out with a cup of the black stuff while you read or write.

In a coffee shop, you’ll usually have dark colors and a warm, comfortable environment. There’s going to be music (preferably jazz) and seats you can sink into a bit. There’s that distinct smell - coffee (of course), but also: sweet pastries, a touch of coccoa, and the scent of milk being steamed just shy of (and sometimes well-beyond) the point where the fat molecules break down and oxidize. In recent years, the larger chains have added the soothing sounds of high-powered blenders to their ambience, but many traditional shops still refrain from succumbing to the urge to make coffee “accessible” to preteens with blended icey sugar bombs. The coffee shop environment usually lends itself well to a quiet think and some genuinely productive reading or writing.

Diners are bright and noisy. You’re not going to relax in a proper diner. It’s not a good place to read poetry and contemplate what the modernists were really trying to tell us. You go to a diner for stimulation and grease. The grease is inescapable. It covers everything because it’s in the air. After you leave, everyone will be able to tell where you came from. But that’s OK, because you’ll have seen something, met someone, overheard a bit of a conversation that will have given you some kind of new insight - a spark - that can inspire your next brain fart. Diners exist for people, foods, and ideas that have no place better to be. It’s like temporary storage for stuff that’s either ahead of it’s time, or just past expiry. The coffee usually falls into the latter category.

Since Japan doesn’t have diners, I spend a good bit of time at coffee shops and seek out the small independent cafes that are run by older couples who have been serving the same blend in the same uniforms together for years and years. I’ll chat about the coffee, about the music, about whatever for a few minutes before pulling out the notebook. Then I’ll be left alone to do my thing until I’m ready for interaction again. I can’t get this much work done at home. A good coffee shop is the ultimate for me in terms of a place where I can escape from distractions and let flow what needs to come out.