Fifteen-hour workdays may sound grueling for most, but 80-year-old Shizuo Mori refuses to retire.
For more than five decades now, the energetic octogenarian has been waking up at 4 a.m. to prepare the famous flan-style puddings he serves at Hecklen, his cozy corner café in Tokyo’s Toranomon neighborhood in Japan.
“Work is what gives us energy,” Mori said, tending to a pile of dirty dishes that had accumulated over the course of the day.
Mori’s energy got a big boost last year after his already busy café went viral on social media, attracting a whole new host of international clientele who have been lining up from the early hours of the morning to secure one of the café’s 24 seats and chance to taste the homemade pudding.
It was already noon when customer Justin Li, who came from Shanghai, took his seat after waiting outside for more than three hours.
“It’s rare to see someone at this age who still works like this,” said Li, who confessed the pudding itself wasn’t really the main attraction for him.
“I just think there should be a reason for a shop to stay here for 50 years and continually do the same thing every day,” he said.
But there is one moment in particular that everyone in the shop has been waiting for — the pudding fling. It’s the moment that made Mori go viral in the first place.
The café goes silent as eager customers raise their mobile phones to capture Mori’s trade routine: He delicately places one of the puddings set in a tin mold onto a glass dish, then makes a quick circular swoop with his hand that dislodges the wobbly dessert from the tin onto the plate.
The pudding itself is less sweet than your typical flan, with a nice light texture that doesn’t overpower the taste buds.
It’s a dish Mori said he could only dream of eating when he was a child just after World War II.
“After the war, there were food shortages across Japan,” he said. “So, puddings like this one became a real luxury treat.”
That’s why he made the flans a staple of the café’s small and simple menu, which also includes coffee, tea, eggs and ham sandwiches.
When asked how much longer he plans to keep on working, Mori laughed.
“Let’s say 50 years,” he said.
“I’ve already done 50 years, so why not 50 more.”
While many in Japan working into old age are doing so out of necessity, Mori insists he does it out of love.
Andrea and Diego, a young couple from Costa Rica who did not share their last names, were among the last customers of the day to get to taste one of the puddings.
“This is our third time trying [to get a seat],” the couple said, after being turned away the first two times because the pudding had already sold out.
But they finally got a taste of the pudding Shizuo Mori grew up dreaming about — served with his contagious smile, big laugh and trademark fling.