Being sincere as a person. A restaurant that embraces the local community, started in a foreign land by a 65-year-old mother and her daughter

Should you choose what you want to do, or should you choose stability?

I think that as we get older, we face these kinds of questions more often.

If you are ever lost, do you have a core principle that supports your choices? While listening to the journey of the mother and daughter I interviewed this time, I began to see hints to that question.

In the southern part of Mexico, in Oaxaca City where colorful buildings line the streets, there is a small restaurant. A Japanese mother and daughter serve unpretentious Japanese home-style meals.

The restaurant is called "Sakura Shokudo," and the walls inside are covered with paintings of cherry blossom trees. They represent one of the most important landscapes of their past: the cherry blossom-lined streets of Tokyo where they spent time as a family.

When I interviewed the mother, Junko, who runs the restaurant, and her second daughter, Haruka, I intended to ask about their move to Mexico and the operation of the restaurant, but their life stories as a mother and daughter also emerged.

I would rather regret doing something than regret not doing it. A mother and daughter head to the other side of the globe.

The mother, Junko, originally ran a nail salon and massage parlor in Tokyo while raising three children as a single mother.

She played the role of the father as the breadwinner, and the mother who handled housework and childcare. Even as a single-parent household, she was desperate to protect and raise her children so they could live without hardship.

The second daughter, Haruka, who watched her mother work hard up close, began shopping for groceries and cooking breakfast and dinner in her mother's place from the time she was in elementary school.

To help the household budget even a little, she would check supermarket flyers every day and ride her bicycle to distant stores to buy sale items.

She learned to cook by watching cooking shows on TV, and she loved shopping and cooking so much that she had dreamed of opening a restaurant someday since she was a child.

When the three children became adults, they helped at their mother's shop, and they spent their days running the business as a family. Sometimes they would argue while working, but at home, they would forget about work and enjoy family time. That is how they deepened their family bonds.

In the midst of those days, the eldest daughter, who loved traveling abroad, visited Mexico. This action became the beginning of a turning point for Junko's family.

Captivated by the charm of Mexico, the eldest daughter moved to Monterrey, a city in northern Mexico, one year after that trip. The action-oriented mother and second daughter also began visiting Mexico regularly to see her.

As they had more opportunities to encounter local information, they became interested in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. This was because Junko was drawn to Oaxaca's traditional culture, where hand embroidery and hand weaving have been passed down, based on her past experience of making clothes and bags for her children by hand.

That is how they visited Oaxaca City in the state of Oaxaca.

They were drawn to a life where tradition and art blend into daily life, with indigenous people wearing ethnic costumes walking around and many galleries, and they talked about how they would like to live in a city like this someday.

Then years passed, and in March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred.

Junko's family, who lived and worked in Tokyo, also felt the shaking of the earthquake, learned of the gravity of the situation through the news, and thought deeply about it. Junko and Haruka discussed it and decided to move abroad.

At the time of their move in 2011, Junko was 59 years old.

Moving abroad at that age is a huge burden both physically and mentally. Contrary to my assumption that she must have agonized over such a big decision, she said it quite casually.

Six months after the earthquake, we moved to Oaxaca, a place we had talked about wanting to live in someday. I would rather regret doing something than regret not doing it. So, I had no hesitation about moving abroad.

The path to opening the restaurant was the realization of a dream shared by mother and daughter

After moving to Oaxaca, Junko used the skills she had built in Tokyo to open a nail salon and massage parlor with her second daughter, Haruka.

However, Haruka, who had a dream of opening a restaurant, asked if they could try serving food at a food booth for an event. Wanting to support her, they temporarily closed their shop for the three days of the event, and the two of them worked tirelessly, sacrificing sleep to prepare rice balls and Japanese home-cooked meals.

It wasn't high-end food like you find at Japanese restaurants overseas, but the people in Mexico accepted it, saying it was delicious! I felt a bit of a response, thinking that if we opened a restaurant, there might be people who would be happy to eat our food.

Having gained a feel for opening a business, Haruka then asked about opening a restaurant. Junko pushed her forward, saying, If it's something you want to do, you should do it, and they proceeded with preparations for the opening together.

The first restaurant the two used as a reference was Kisaragi-tei, a set-meal restaurant in Sakurashinmachi, Tokyo.

Because it was close to home, our family often went there. When you're tired from work and don't have the energy to cook at home, but a cold rice ball from a convenience store doesn't satisfy your heart—that's when you want to eat a set meal.

An unpretentious town set-meal restaurant run by local mothers. It wasn't stylish, but it was a place where you didn't have to be on your guard, a place where you could feel at ease and relieved. That became the origin of Sakura Shokudo.

And so, Sakura Shokudo opened in 2017. In 2021, they closed the nail salon and massage parlor, and the two poured their efforts into Sakura Shokudo.

What Sakura Shokudo, opened in 2017, values

The menu at Sakura Shokudo is very reasonable.

Compared to typical Japanese restaurants overseas, the prices are about one-third. In that, there was the wish of Junko and Haruka to be sincere.

I want to provide food at a price that an elementary school student can afford even if they come holding 100 pesos (about 1,000 yen). At high prices, only the wealthy can eat.

In Mexico, people often eat out with their families, so if there are many people, the food costs add up. I wanted to make it a place where local people could come easily without it being a burden, so I haven't changed the prices since we opened.

says Haruka, the owner of Sakura Shokudo.

To maintain affordable prices, we intentionally do not use Japanese seasonings that are not available in Mexico, and since miso is expensive, we do not serve miso soup.

Would I want to eat this at this price?

They said they seriously considered whether they could be satisfied with it themselves. If they had prioritized profit, they could have chosen to raise the unit price. Even so, what the two of them aimed for was not high-end Japanese food, but a canteen meal that supports daily life.

“Being sincere as a person. I think that is important. I believe that such an attitude and way of life naturally seep into the restaurant as well. A restaurant is something that embodies the thoughts and beliefs of its owner.”

Junko told me this in a calm, yet unwavering tone.

It might not be authentic Japanese cuisine, perhaps. But it has a comforting taste, like a meal you would eat at home. The thoughts of the two of them came through in the food.

A place where connections with local people breathe

For some, the meals at Sakura Canteen have become a part of their lives.

An elderly neighbor who used to come by two or three times a week was one of them. Now, her grandchild comes to eat with their parents about three times a week. Some people even visit on special days.

“They come from a village a little further away once a year to celebrate their elderly grandfather's birthday with the whole family. It makes us truly happy to feel like Sakura Canteen is included in the circle of family gatherings on important days.”

The staff working at Sakura Canteen know the names of such regular customers and support the restaurant.

When a staff member who had worked there for five years visited the restaurant with her mother, she was told, “Since my daughter started working at Sakura Canteen, her relationship with our family has improved.”

In a complex family environment, she had been on bad terms with her mother, but now they even go out together. Perhaps having a place that trusted her led to self-confidence and allowed her to be kinder to the people around her.

From such episodes, it was clear that Sakura Canteen is not just a workplace, but a place where people can spend time with peace of mind, and that it has blended into the daily lives of the local people.

A cherry blossom tree that blends into the streets of Oaxaca

The painting of cherry blossoms that covers the wall, which also became the origin of the restaurant's name, was painted by Junko, a former graphic designer who graduated from the Tokyo Designer Gakuin College, depicting the cherry blossom-lined streets of Sakurashinmachi, Tokyo, where the family spent time.

“In Oaxaca, there is art in everyday life. There are print galleries you can easily enter right there, and students perform at a high level on the street. Art is not for special people, but blends into life, and people freely express what they think is good. I feel that many people have their sensibilities liberated.”

When you walk through the streets of Oaxaca, various expressions such as wall paintings, folk crafts, and music naturally blend into daily life. Sakura Canteen, wrapped in the painting of cherry blossoms, looked like it fit right into the streets of Oaxaca.

Immigrating to Mexico, opening a canteen, and creating a place where local people gather.

If you look only at that journey, it might sound like a success story of a mother and daughter who fulfilled their dreams on the other side of the globe. However, what I felt while listening to their story was their attitude of “living sincerely to oneself.”

“Times change, and we don't know how our own environment will change. But I think if you have your own core, you can live without getting lost. That is why we live sincerely every day, and we want to keep the restaurant going as long as we can. It's fun and stress-free right now, so I can't find a reason to quit.”

Sakura Canteen continues to breathe into the life of Oaxaca today.

Restaurant Name: Sakura Shokudo
Address: C. Porfirio Díaz 507, RUTA INDEPENDENCIA, Centro, 68000 Oaxaca de Juárez, Oax., Mexico
Phone: +52 951 527 3898
Business Hours: Monday to Friday 13:30-19:00, Saturday 13:30-20:00
Closed: Sunday
URL: https://www.facebook.com/sakurashokudoumexico/