Samurai Coffee

a slow saturday with nowhere urgent to be suits this place well. samurai coffee sits on sojamachi ueno, a quiet stretch of maebashi that doesn't ask much of you, and that low-key quality carries into how you'd spend time here. maebashi isn't a city people typically route a trip around, which means the locals who've made samurai coffee a fixture know something the passing crowd doesn't. gunma's specialty scene is smaller than osaka or tokyo, so a roaster that holds a genuine local reputation has earned it without the foot traffic those cities hand you for free. if you go, go for the coffee and not much else, which sounds obvious until you're actually there, unhurried, on a weekday morning when sojamachi ueno is still quiet.