Hiroyuki Inoue had been cooking long before the idea to open his own izakaya pub finally took hold. And it was a pub in Manchester, England, of all places, that provided the inspiration.
As the 50-year-old Inoue tells it, he was in England with his band First Alert, a punk and power pop band from Kyoto. The previous year they had invited The Drones, a pioneering Manchester outfit that had been around since the birth of punk, to come play in Japan.
"We were surprised they actually came," Inoue says. "And in return, The Drones invited us to a huge punk festival in Morecambe the following year. During our free time, they brought us to their favorite bar in Manchester. There were a lot of punk fans hanging out there, and I thought, 'This is the kind of place I'd like to own.'"