During the summer of 2023, our team ventured to Japan to feature restaurant and cafe owner Gakuho Sato for the second installment of LOJEL Stories. Japan has and continues to be a source of inspiration for us in both work and life. As we continue to cultivate friendships with local creatives, we’ve also grown to learn more about their stories and day to day life. Through our friends in Japan, we were connected with Gakuho and his work through Common Bar and Echoes Café.
As part of LOJEL’s initiative for sustainability, this particular campaign was also meant to highlight local, low-emissions travel, which made Japan a suitable location given how train travel was an integral part of life in the city and between cities.
In this two day shoot, our team journeyed with Gakuho between Tokyo and his hometown of Sendai, walking through both cities and paying visits to his two restaurants. During this time, we learned of Gakuho’s story, which began in 2011 during the Great East Japan Earthquake that greatly affected his hometown of Sendai, making it a desolate landscape overnight. Gakuho shares his memory of the temporary shelter that was built there which became a safe haven for people to gather together. This became the inspiration for Gakuho to eventually start Common Bar in Tokyo and Echoes Café in Sendai, creating places for community, where people can gather together and have meaningful encounters.
Shooting a campaign abroad can bring about many challenges but we were grateful to have producer Yohei Okada (Stories LLC) on board and the opportunity to collaborate with our friends Kumiko Noda (Coordnation) and Rakuda (Director of Photography) on this shoot. With their help, we were able to form a strong local team of talent and gained invaluable lessons of working in Japan. We were grateful for the crew’s unwavering dedication to their craft and teamwork and the incredible opportunity to tell Gakuho’s story.
In this shoot, we featured new colourways of LOJEL’s Niru bag collection and the Cubo luggage in Cactus.
