4 AM: Brewing coffee while my family and society are asleep

3.4°C, sunny. The temperature has really dropped today, hasn't it?

Coffee feels especially delicious in the cold season. I felt like writing about my favorite coffee, so I did.

Morning. It is a very precious time in my life.
When I wake up in the 4 o'clock hour, my family is still asleep, and society as a whole hasn't woken up yet. There is no sound, no distractions, and I can dive deep into my thoughts. There is a time there where I can concentrate surprisingly well.

My rhythm is a bit off now because I'm feeding a newborn, but when I brew coffee, a switch naturally flips. Morning coffee is, as expected, exceptionally delicious.

I wonder when this lifestyle started.
Looking back, I definitely didn't drink coffee until I started working. Back in the day, there was a BOSS canned coffee campaign where you could win an MA-1 jacket, and I only drank it occasionally for that. And it was the low-sugar version, at that.

Speaking of coffee, what I actually drank a lot of when I was a high school student was coffee milk. I remember stabbing a straw into a 350ml paper carton and keeping it on the side of my desk to drink during class.

Up until junior high school, there was an atmosphere that said, 'Drinking beverages during class is out of the question,' but by the time I was in high school, more people were keeping plastic bottles or paper cartons on their desks under the guise of hydration. Was that because of the temperature, or was it a change in the times?

But I digress.

I want to get back to the topic of coffee.

My serious encounter with coffee might have been when I started thinking that the habit of 'reading at a cafe' was cool.

The first job I had after becoming a working adult was in sales. The drink served at the places I visited was always coffee. If I visited five places in a day, I would end up drinking five cups of coffee. I remember my stomach getting upset, and by the end, I felt sick.

Even so, I thought it would be rude to leave the coffee they had gone to the trouble of brewing for me, so I made sure to drink it all every time.

The commemorative gift I received when I took on the challenge of launching a new branch was a drip coffee maker. I hardly ever used it in the end, but as you become an adult, coffee becomes a 'staple' that is always right there in your life.

I've quit now, but back then, it also went well with cigarettes. You drink coffee to enjoy a good cigarette. That was the style.
I used to smoke Marlboro Menthols back then. I loved the indescribable combination of the cool, tingling sensation of the menthol and the bitterness and deep richness of the coffee.

Since I was in sales, the places where I could work while out and about were limited. There were no isolated phone booths like there are now, so it was either make calls in parks or on the street, or go to a cafe. Naturally, it was impossible on rainy days, so the only option was a cafe. And the cheapest item on the menu was usually coffee.

The presence of Starbucks was also significant.
I don't go there much anymore because it's always crowded, but back then, just drinking coffee at Starbucks and reading or working was a place where I could feel a sense of superiority for some reason. If I'm going to get work done now, I find Komeda's Coffee more relaxing.

As you start drinking a lot of coffee, you begin to see your own preferences.
In a word, I like coffee that has a good aftertaste and is refreshing. Rather than deep richness, I prefer a thinner, cold-brew type. That's why, even though 7-Eleven and Lawson's coffee were called 'thin and watery,' I actually liked them back then.

My recent recommendation is the coffee I ordered through the hometown tax donation program.
And actually, I've recently started getting into black tea as well. I think I'll write about that somewhere else.

The hour from 4 AM is the 'board meeting' for me, a solo CEO. Securing my own time before my family wakes up is also part of my family-first management design.