About Leaves Coffee Roasters
Leaves Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roastery in Kuramae, Tokyo, Japan, founded in January 2019 by self-taught roaster Yasuo Ishii. The roastery runs a focused light-roast program centered on East African and Latin American origins, and was the first Japanese roaster named a Sprudge Notable Roaster in consecutive years (2021 and 2022).
About
Yasuo Ishii founded Leaves Coffee Roasters in Kuramae, Tokyo — a self-taught former professional boxer who stumbled into coffee in 2010 when an acquaintance gave him a bag as a souvenir. That gift redirected a two-decade career in food and beverage. Leaves now operates one of Tokyo's most recognized light-roast programs, earning consecutive Sprudge Notable Roaster selections in 2021 and 2022 — the first Japanese roaster to receive that recognition two years in a row.
Ishii spent his teens and twenties running restaurants, doing concept direction, and consulting across Tokyo's hospitality industry before coffee took hold. He opened Leaves Coffee Apartment in 2016, then launched the roastery proper in January 2019. Both his barista and roasting skills are self-taught. The brand name encodes his guiding idea: fallen leaves nourishing the soil for new growth — a commitment to perpetual reinvention over any fixed house style.
Leaves runs a Probat UG-15 and a Stronghold S7X for production roasting, with the Kuramae roastery open four days a week — Friday through Monday. The current menu is anchored in East Africa and Latin America: Ethiopia (Guji Uraga, Worka Sakaro), Kenya (Gathaithi AA), Costa Rica (Don Eli, Ivan Gutierrez, San Isidro), Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Honduras, and Mexico. Ishii's stated target is a "clean drink" — light roasts tuned to pull out sweetness and aromatics, with acidity kept in comfortable balance and a long finish. In 2025, he placed runner-up at the Japan Brewers Cup Championship.
In the Press
Third-party coverage of Leaves Coffee Roasters.
Coffee & Beans Review
Sprudge named Leaves a Notable Roaster in both 2021 and 2022, the first Japanese roaster to land on that list in consecutive years. Kurasu Kyoto, which brought Leaves on as a partner roaster as early as June 2019, noted that their "sweet and fruity coffee has quickly become a hot topic among coffee enthusiasts in Tokyo." Rikka Fika, which distributes their beans internationally, describes Leaves as "a light-roasting coffee roaster, focused on sweetness and aroma" that has "quickly made a name for itself in the coffee world." The 2025 Japan Brewers Cup runner-up result confirms Ishii's competition ambitions alongside the roastery work.
The Kuramae café-roastery has over 110 reviews on Tabelog, Japan's dominant restaurant platform. For those outside Tokyo, Leaves sells direct through leavescoffee.jp with a subscription delivering 400g monthly — two 200g bags, one a member-exclusive origin, one from the current seasonal lineup. Single-origin retail ranges from around ¥1,800 for approachable Ethiopians to upward of ¥9,000 for competition-grade Panama lots, with wholesale distribution through Kurasu and Rikka Fika reaching buyers in Japan and internationally.
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