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Tokyo Coffee Shop Made Famous on TikTok Draws Returning Tourists Hungry for Pudding

Shizuo Mori serves a pudding during a photo opportunity at his Heckeln coffee shop in Tokyo, Japan March 15, 2023. (Reuters)
Shizuo Mori serves a pudding during a photo opportunity at his Heckeln coffee shop in Tokyo, Japan March 15, 2023. (Reuters)
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Tokyo Coffee Shop Made Famous on TikTok Draws Returning Tourists Hungry for Pudding

Shizuo Mori serves a pudding during a photo opportunity at his Heckeln coffee shop in Tokyo, Japan March 15, 2023. (Reuters)
Shizuo Mori serves a pudding during a photo opportunity at his Heckeln coffee shop in Tokyo, Japan March 15, 2023. (Reuters)

With a rapid, right-hand swoop, Shizuo Mori served the last of about 50 puddings on Wednesday, a treat that's made his tiny Tokyo coffee shop a destination for tourists flocking to Japan after the end of COVID restrictions.

Mori's trademark fling of the arm helps dislodge the eggy custard from its tin, and the circular motion is easier on his 80-year-old wrist than a snapping motion would be.

But the technique, developed over the half century he's run the Heckeln coffee shop, has also earned him a worldwide audience via videos spread on TikTok, Facebook and other social media sites.

The lines out the door of Heckeln, midway up a narrow street in Tokyo's Toranomon district, are largely comprised of foreigners willing to wait for the "Jumbo Purin" topped with caramel.

Visitors to Japan maintained a "robust recovery" in February, the national tourism agency said on Wednesday. Arrivals totalled 1.47 million, surpassing 1 million for a third-straight month after COVID curbs were eased late last year, though still down 43% from pre-pandemic levels.

Haitham, on a business trip from Abu Dhabi, was enticed by TikTok videos he'd seen of Mori, but arrived with his friend just a bit too late, finding a sign on the door that the puddings had sold out.

"I'm a big creme caramel fan, so I dragged my friend here to come and see him," said the 38-year old, who asked not to give his family name. "And I was very disappointed, because it's finished, and it's not even 2 p.m."

Sariel Wong, a tourist from Hong Kong who'd seen Mori's on Facebook, was luckier, getting his 400 yen ($2.96) pudding after an hour-long wait.

"In Hong Kong there is a lot of pudding but not like this one," said Wong, 38. "It's a little bit smooth and not too sweet."

Mori thinks it's a little strange that his coffee shop has a queue out the door most days. He hears from his customers that he's famous on the internet, but he doesn't use social media and doesn't have a cell phone.

Like many restaurants, Mori and his 24-seat shop struggled through the pandemic, which kept away many of his traditional customers of students and office workers. And a surge in supply costs has been a double whammy, but Mori said he's held firm on his own prices.

It was a dark time, but probably the same all over the world, he said. But now the masks are coming off and he's happy to welcome his new fans from abroad.

"I'm happy, but there's one thing I regret," Mori said at then end of a lunch rush. "When people can't get in, and they have to return home without getting any pudding, it kind of pains me in my heart."

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Varieties

Rubbish Roads: Nepal Explores Paving with Plastic

This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)
This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)
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Rubbish Roads: Nepal Explores Paving with Plastic

This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)
This photograph taken on December 26, 2024 shows a worker holding shredded recyclable plastic waste at the Green Road Waste Management processing facility in Pokhara. Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction. (AFP)

Cars speeding along a smooth, black-colored street in Nepal's Pokhara are also driving over heaps of discarded plastic, transformed into an ingredient in road construction.

Nepal's urban areas generate about 5,000 tons of solid waste per day, according to the World Bank, of which 13 percent is plastic waste dumped in landfills.

While high-value plastics, like bottles, are absorbed by the recycling industry, low-value plastics -- such as multi-layered packaging -- pose a significant challenge because they don't fit into a single recycling category.

For a group of young Nepali entrepreneurs, the vast accumulation of this low-value plastic waste presented an opportunity.

"A plastic road can use even low-value plastics," said Bimal Bastola, founder of Green Road Waste Management, the organization leading the initiative in Nepal.

"We saw scope for such plastics to be utilized as a raw material, partially substituting bitumen in road construction."

Discarded packages of noodles, biscuits and other snacks move along a conveyor belt at their trash-sorting center.

The divided plastic is then put into machines to be shredded into fine pieces.

Since the early 2000s, neighboring India has been leading the world in building a network of plastic roads, even making the usage of plastic waste mandatory in roads near large cities in 2015.

A growing number of countries are experimenting with it, including nearby Bhutan and Bangladesh.

In traditional road construction, bitumen is the binding material, a tarry oil product mixed directly with hot aggregates before paving a road.

The plastic road method, however, first coats the aggregates with shredded plastic before adding bitumen.

"This method reduces the need for fresh raw materials, lowers costs, prevents water infiltration and increases road lifespan," Bastola said.

Studies show that roads paved with plastic waste can be twice as durable as normal roads.

- 'Scale up' -

Globally, only nine percent of plastic waste is recycled, while 19 percent is incinerated, and nearly half ends up in controlled landfills, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Left unchecked, the production of synthetic polymers -- the building blocks of plastics -- is expected to reach about 1.2 billion tons annually by 2060.

The plastic that accumulates in the environment is non-biodegradable, takes hundreds of years to decompose and breaks down into tiny microscopic particles.

And while Nepal banned single-use plastic bags thinner than 40 microns, that ban is not strictly implemented.

For Bastola, increasing plastic road construction is key to making the recycling of low-value plastics economically viable.

His organization says about two tons of shredded plastic is used to build a kilometer of road.

So far, the organization has completed about 10 projects totaling a little over 1.5 kilometers (one mile).

"It is happening at a small scale, we need to scale up," Bastola said. "We have to make government-level projects and we are trying to work closely with the department of roads."

A pilot project is planned this year in the capital Kathmandu at a major intersection.

"Nepal is keen on testing this technology through pilot projects," said Arjun Nepal, an engineer with the Kathmandu road department.

"But to take it forward, we need government-led standards to ensure quality."

The World Bank says life cycle analyses of plastic roads are limited and it is still not clear what environmental impacts -- if any -- recycled plastics may have when used in road construction.

"While initial anecdotes and pilot studies show promise, further research is needed to measure emissions during production, evaluate microplastic release over time and determine how these roads behave once they are decommissioned," said Valerie Hickey, global director of the World Bank's climate change group.

Despite these concerns, environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar said that plastic roads present an important opportunity for Nepal.

"It is a low-hanging fruit to address two problems simultaneously -- the need for strong roads and the management of plastic waste -- for a developing country like Nepal," he said.