The Story of Mika Tanimoto: From Working Poor at 22 to Running One of Japan’s Great Whisky Bars
Some origin stories begin with passion and clear direction. Mika Tanimoto’s begins with almost none of either — and that, in a way, is the point.
Age 22: Working Poor, No Direction, One Million Yen
In 2006, Mika graduated from university in Hiroshima and briefly worked as a production assistant at a television station. She left quickly, finding the work wasn’t right for her. She was 22, working as a temp employee, uncertain what to do next. A chance opportunity led her to lease a corner of a car park in Nagarekawa — Hiroshima’s entertainment district — and convert it into a tiny café-bar, built largely herself, opened with one million yen saved from part-time work and almost no knowledge of what she was doing.
She describes those early years without romanticization. “昼は派遣で働き、夜は自分の店を開ける” — working day shifts as a temp, night shifts behind her own counter. The income barely covered costs. She couldn’t drink well. She didn’t know what she didn’t know. “I was the working poor,” she says directly. The isolation, the uncertainty, the gap between the vision and the reality were all very real.
What changed everything was a bartenders’ school she found listed in a printed telephone directory, and the first serious encounter with whisky that followed her enrollment. Something in the depth of whisky’s aroma — in the years of history compressed into a single glass — reached her in a way no other drink had. The experience wasn’t just pleasurable. It was a revelation about what was possible. That curiosity became the foundation of the next twenty years.
Building the Bar: 20 Years, 1,000 Bottles
Bar Little Happiness grew from that car park corner into a permanent location in Nagarekawa: a single-floor space with a long counter, heavy wooden door designed to evoke the entrance to a whisky maturation warehouse, and a small heart-shaped window Mika designed by hand at age 24 — irregular, asymmetrical, exactly as she wanted it. The bar now holds approximately 800 whiskies and 200 rums. There is no cover charge. Prices are listed on a digital menu in eight languages. Solo visitors, first-timers, and serious collectors are equally welcome.
She has expanded to operate a casual sister bar (Rum & Whisky Highball Bar), an online shop delivering sample bottles nationwide, and a column series — “Whisky and Rum Notebook” — documenting distillery visits, bottle profiles, and the history of spirits. She has received the Hiroshima City Excellent Technician Award (広島市優良技能者受賞), one of the city’s recognitions for outstanding skilled practitioners.
The Distillery Visits: Knowing the Source
A defining commitment of Mika’s work is visiting the places that make what she sells. She has been to distilleries across Japan (Sakurao, Saburomaru, Chichibu, Kanosuke, Gaiaflow Shizuoka, Ikawa), Scotland (Caol Ila, Glenmorangie, and others across Islay — she visited around 2008, when Asian women visiting Islay distilleries were rare enough to be genuinely unusual), Taiwan (Kavalan), and Laos (LAODI). Each visit is reported directly in her columns. The stories behind the bottles — the people, the decisions, the landscapes — are what she brings back to the bar counter.
In July 2026, master distiller and internationally recognized whisky personality Ian Chang accepted an invitation to hold a special tasting event at Bar Little Happiness — a direct recognition of the bar’s standing within the global whisky community.
Ghana: A Health Clinic Built with Bar Revenue
In 2012, on the occasion of the bar’s seventh anniversary, Mika donated funds to construct a CHPS Compound — a community health post — in the Gbal community of Upper West Region, Ghana, through Plan International Japan. The facility served five surrounding communities totaling approximately 2,000 people. Before it was built, residents had to travel 40 kilometers for basic healthcare. The completed clinic included examination room, office, kitchen, storage, covered waiting area, sanitation facilities, and a motorcycle for the resident health worker.
At the inauguration, a photograph of Mika and a message from her were placed on the wall of the clinic. Messages from community members included thanks from a mother who could now receive prenatal care without a day-long journey, and from the community chief, who said the residents’ gratitude was beyond words.
This project is not incidental to the bar’s story — it reflects a deliberate view that a business operating in a community has responsibilities that extend beyond its own street. Mika had previously visited Ghana and walked through the slave trade castles on the coast: a direct, acknowledged confrontation with the history that connects the African continent to rum, the spirit she has dedicated her professional life to understanding and sharing.
Philosophy: Doing Only What You Find Beautiful
Approaching the bar’s twentieth anniversary in 2025, Mika wrote an extended reflection on what she had learned. The core of it: for years, she adapted her vision — the pricing, the selection, the technology, the approach — in response to criticism and in an effort to be understood. Eventually she stopped. “I decided to do only what I found beautiful,” she writes. “That was an enormous fear.”
What followed was unexpected: the bar became more distinctly itself, and attracted people more genuinely aligned with what it was. The financial outcomes improved. The exhaustion of compromise disappeared. She had spent the previous years trying to make other people happy by adjusting herself; she came to understand that authentic presence — full commitment to one’s own values — is itself a form of giving to others.
She attended the 2025 Osaka World Expo multiple times, and found in several installations a philosophical articulation of this experience. The concept that “existing authentically is itself an act of giving” — that you do not need to intend to contribute, that genuine presence already contributes — became a way of understanding what the previous twenty years had been building toward.
Where to Find Her
Bar Little Happiness is at 5-14-1F Nagarekawa-cho, Naka-ku, Hiroshima — open Monday to Saturday 7PM–12:30AM, Sunday 7PM–midnight, no cover charge, walk-ins welcome. The full column archive in Japanese is at little-happiness.jp. Instagram: @littlehappiness7.
Source: english.little-happiness.jp/about/ | little-happiness.jp/profile/ | little-happiness.jp/media/
Bar Little Happiness | Hiroshima, Japan
Rum & Whisky specialists | 1,000+ bottles | English menu available
Open Mon–Sat 7PM–12:30AM, Sun 7PM–midnight
No cover charge. Walk-ins welcome.
english.little-happiness.jp