What is that one drink that acts as a fuel for your system, keeps you going all day and no matter how and in which form you have it, its effect is always the same?  Ahaa... Coffee you guessed it right.

Coffee is one of oldest beverages in the world. It was somewhere in the 15th century, when some Ethiopian shepherds noticed their caffeinated goats dancing around in the field. Today coffee is one of the most traded commodity in the world and one of the most ordered beverage in restaurants and hotels across the world.

Personally speaking, I love coffee, it's like the third most important thing for me after oxygen and water.  And I guess it's the same case for Ryoko Iwata, a Japanese coffee-lover living in America. Ryoko was born and raised in Japan and moved here to the US few years back. Being a tea person since childhood, Ryoko felt awkward ordering for tea in a coffee shop and thus began her coffee-lover journey.

As Ryoko was learning a lot of new things about coffee, it prompted her to share that information with others and so she started the I Love Coffee blog, somewhere in June this year. I Love Coffee is a blog exclusively for coffee lovers and Ryoko makes it a point to write both in Japanese and English. Her blog is both interesting and informative and she shares all sorts of information like coffee reviews, coffee facts and pictures. Her blog is a must-follow for all coffee lovers. To know more about Ryoko and her I Love Coffee blog read on.


1. Hi Ryoko, please tell our readers something about yourself.

I'm a Japanese girl living in Seattle. I moved here a few years ago and have bounced back and forth between the US and Japan over the past several years for various jobs.  I was in Colorado for a few years, too, where I was a Japanese instructor at the University of Colorado.  I enjoy running, movies, and playing with my poorly behaved cat.  I typically drink lattes, but I also frequently go for an americano or just black coffee.  I'm currently a student studying web design and programming, and I work on ilovecoffee.jp part time.

Prior to living in Seattle, I think I'd only ever drank a few cups of coffee.  I felt like I wasn't taking advantage of living here because Seattle is a town of coffee drinkers and great coffee. I started the blog because I've been learning a lot of new things about coffee, grinds, roasts, and all the other interesting tidbits of information about coffee that are out there.

3. How has been your transition from a tea lover to a coffee lover?

I definitely get a lot more work done :)  I grew up on green tea, but coffee has an edge to it that gives me caffeinated superpowers :)

4. What prompted you to blog in both Japanese and English? 

Coffee culture in Japan is behind the rest of the world.  Initially, I wanted this site to be a resource for Japanese people who wanted to learn more about coffee. I figured I'd translate it into English as well, and over the past few months the number of English-speaking visitors has skyrocketed so I've started to make that the primary language used on the site.

5. Love the Coffee Facts and Coffee Reviews section on your blog, I guess its always good  to know the facts about the coffee you consume. Share with us some online resources we can use to achieve this goal.

http://coffeecupnews.org/
http://www.eeriehosting.net/cnm/assets/pages/trivia.htm

I want to create guides and resources for people who are relatively new to coffee (like myself) to help them understand what they're drinking and why they're enjoying it.  Most people have no idea what blend, roast, or country their coffee comes from and gauge the quality of their coffee by how much sugar and cream they drowned it in.  I'd love to address these kinds of things, as well as crafting lighter content such as coffee art, funny coffee facts, and things along those lines.

10. What advice would you like to give to aspiring bloggers to help them succeed?

Write as if YOU'RE the audience.  In other words, create content that is the kind of stuff you'd like to read.  I find that fun charts, graphs, and pictures are what I typically click on when I'm on Facebook and Twitter, so I try to create those kinds of things.