Twenty Years of Running a Bar My Way: What Criticism, Doubt, and a World Expo Taught Me
Bar Little Happiness turns twenty in 2026. Before we get there, I want to write about the year that led up to it — the year when everything I had been building for nineteen years either made sense or didn’t, and I had to decide which one it was.
The Criticism I Heard for Two Decades
Two things about how I run this bar have attracted consistent criticism since the beginning. The first: the prices. Too high, I was told. Too selective. You’ll lose customers by not stocking what everyone already knows. The second: the technology. When I introduced a digital menu system — photographs, descriptions, prices, eight languages — people in the industry said it wasn’t “bar-like.” That a proper bar relies on the bartender’s judgment and conversation, not a screen. That I was removing the human element from the experience.
I understood both criticisms. And I kept doing what I was doing, because the alternative — adjusting my vision until it was something I didn’t believe in — felt worse than the friction.
The Year Everything Changed
In January 2025, I took a longer break than usual and traveled to New Zealand with a business mentor I deeply respect. The trip itself was simple — nature, distance from Hiroshima, time to think. But something about the conversations during that trip set a series of questions moving inside me that didn’t stop for the rest of the year.
Through 2025, I worked through a realization that took me nineteen years to fully accept: that trying to adapt what I believed was beautiful to make it more acceptable to other people had been quietly exhausting me. I had been running the bar for my customers, for my staff, for the industry’s expectations — and in doing so, I had been slowly moving away from the version of this bar that I had actually wanted to create.
What the Osaka Expo Gave Me
I attended the 2025 Osaka World Expo multiple times. Several installations stayed with me. One examined the idea of choosing not to choose — the dignity of restraint in an age of endless options. Another explored what it means for something to end: not disappearance, but transformation into a different part of a continuous flow. A third proposed that simply existing authentically is itself a form of generosity to others — that you don’t need to intend to contribute; being genuinely yourself is already contribution.
That last idea landed with particular force. The Japanese phrase I encountered — “death is also altruism” — sounds dark in translation, but its meaning is clear: authentic existence, fully inhabited, is already an act of giving. You don’t need to sacrifice your vision to serve other people. Serving your vision, fully and honestly, serves them.
What the Next Twenty Years Look Like
Bar Little Happiness will continue evolving — but toward itself, not away from it. The high-priced, carefully selected bottles will stay. The digital menu will stay. The long counter, the heavy door, the dim light, the candle on each table — all of it stays, because all of it was chosen deliberately, and I still believe in every choice.
What changes is the operating style. I travel more now. The bar opens for fewer hours per session — four to five hours rather than the full stretch I used to keep. But those hours will be more concentrated, more present. The people who come will find a bar that is exactly itself, without apology.
Technology will keep advancing. AI will keep becoming more capable. But the specific thing that happens when two people sit at a counter together, in real space, sharing a glass of something that took decades to exist — that is not something that changes. It may, in fact, become rarer and more valuable as everything else digitizes around it.
Mika’s Perspective
To everyone who has come through the door over the past twenty years: the regulars who became part of the bar’s rhythm, the travelers who stopped once and never forgot it, the colleagues and competitors who challenged me with honest criticism — thank you. Each encounter was part of the process. None of it was wasted. And to whoever walks in for the first time in the next twenty years: the bar will be ready. So will I.
Read the original Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/future-bar-20th-ura/
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