If you¡¯ve lived and worked in Japan for any length of time, there¡¯s a chance you¡¯ve at least daydreamed about how great it would be to run your own restaurant or bar.
The idea seems so much more exciting than a standard office job, so much more interesting than another year of teaching English.
Establishment owners can set their own hours and don¡¯t need to deal with nagging bosses, so the thinking goes. They can make money just by providing a place for their friends to come and hang out. It¡¯s like an expat¡¯s dream ¡ª and in March of 2015, I fulfilled that dream when my wife and I opened a restaurant in Tokyo¡¯s Aoyama district. Then, in June of the same year, I became part of a statistic: the nearly 60 percent of restaurants that fail before their first anniversary, according to an Ohio State University study.
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