Neighborhood shrine

natasha nakamura's diary

A couple months ago, Maximilian kindly brought me from San Francisco a pound of coffee beans. I don't know where he got the idea that we are deprived of first-class coffee beans in Tokyo--I'd say we have easily to hand as good coffee beans as Wien.

But you know how it is. The sack of unground beans lay on a top shelf in the kitchen until just the other day when I found time to go to the little shop I buy my very fine coffee beans from. I was going to ask them to grind my San Francisco beans for me.

They looked at my beans critically. They smelled them. "I'm very sorry to tell you that these beans are old. Please understand that we couldn't ask our machine to grind them for you. They would contaminate our machine."