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.¡¯¡±
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