An Era of Light and Darkness: Longing and Reality — Yamazaki, Balvenie and the Lehman Shock (20 Memories, Vol. 3)

2026.10.05

In short: Vol. 3 of “20 Memories,” marking 20 years of Bar Little Happiness in Hiroshima. Owner Mika Tanimoto on the “light” — a first visit to Yamazaki Distillery at 23 and the Balvenie that finally let her enjoy whisky — and the “darkness” of running a packed bar during the Lehman shock, deep in debt and unsure how to lead her staff.

In 2026, Bar Little Happiness celebrates 20 years since its founding.

Throughout this year, I would like to look back, with gratitude, on the “20 memories” we have woven so far.

Thanks 20th Anniversary　Vol. 1 is here　　Vol. 2 is here

2006. I was 22.

With a book I found in a bookshop, “Akogare no Café” (The Café of My Dreams), in one hand, I built a small, “rock-bottom DIY” bar by copying what I saw.

The 20 years that began there were days of going back and forth between the “light” I touched at 23 and a “deep darkness” with no way out in sight.

Longing, and a distance I could not close: the “3 million yen” at Yamazaki Distillery

“I want to see the place where whisky is made.”

Driven by that pure impulse, I took the shinkansen to Osaka when I was 23.

It was a time when there was almost no information online.

For me, it was a great adventure into an unknown world.

The world of Yamazaki Distillery I saw there was so beautiful it made me sigh, and my heart raced at the glow of the cask whiskies lined up in the lobby.

But to be honest, back then I still could not handle the “taste.”

I loved the aroma, but once it was in my mouth, the alcohol overwhelmed me.

An intense longing for the culture of whisky, and a body that could not accept it.

That gap frustrated me endlessly.

I still cannot forget the shock when the guide asked me, “How about an Owner’s Cask? It is 3 million yen.”

For me at the time, it was an unimaginable sum.

I was simply overwhelmed by Suntory’s formidable business sense, yet I went back to Hiroshima holding on to one longing like a charm: “Someday I want to be part of a world as beautiful as this.”

I could drink it too! The “place to belong” that Balvenie gave me

What forced open the door of my palate was a Balvenie I met at a bar in my neighbourhood.

The moment I took a sip, the joy of “I can drink whisky too!” ran through me.

It was like a saving light shining on me, who had kept rejecting myself for not being able to drink.

A few years later, when I heard that bar was closing, I bought up all of its opened bottles.

I had no financial room at all, but it was my clumsy, all-out way of thanking the bartender who taught me “the joy of drinking” back then.

Behind the busy bar, I was drowning

About a year and a half after opening, around the time we moved to our current location,

my “dark” era truly began.

The interior contractor I had hired for the move disappeared, and the premises were left exposed to the elements.

Even after we finally opened, staff being late or absent was the norm.

Every day I was busy picking people up from the police or the hospital, and negotiating settlements with other bars.

Money vanished from the register, and fights between staff never stopped.

The world was in the middle of the Lehman shock.

In an era when it was said that 300 bars had disappeared from Nagarekawa in Hiroshima, for some reason Little Happiness alone was full every night.

From the outside, I may have looked like the young female owner of a “thriving bar.”

But inside, I did not know how to deal with older male employees, and younger part-timers would cry to me, “I can’t do it like you, boss!”

A me with so little confidence that I wanted to scream “Somebody help me,” and an “energy close to bravado” to hide it, clashed fiercely in my heart.

Rather than “I worked hard,” those days were so frantic that my memories of them have simply fallen away.

Seen from the 20th year: what that darkness taught me

The move of Little Happiness was paid for entirely with debt.

The pressure of repayments, guests’ expectations, and the impatience of wanting “my staff to accept me.”

Immature as I was, I pressed on while getting the way I tried hard badly wrong.

The me of today has something to say to the battered me of those days.

Because of that pain, I learned the limits of trying hard on my own, and desperately learned the importance of “systems” and “organisation.”

And now, after 20 years, I have finally been able to return with confidence to the simple starting point of my 22-year-old self: “moving the one guest in front of me”.

Without either that “light” or that “darkness,” there would be no Bar Little Happiness today.

All the pain and all the longing I met in those days were meant to be.

20 Memories, Vol. 4 ↓
[Everything Is Meant to Be] One Night Connected by an Article from Nine Years Ago (20 Memories, Vol. 4)

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“Both whisky and rum taste even better when you touch the feelings of the people who make them.”

Every encounter is meant to be. Welcome to the world of Rum&Whisky.