Cafe & Studio Hi! Yoriyo

An unusual name for an unusually eclectic space. Hi! Yoriyo, which is beautifully located in a small hamlet betwixt Taketa city centre and the Kuju Highlands, has been conceived by Takaya Mori, a prize winning sculptor, and his wife and manager. Between them they have conjured up an intriguing gallery, live performance and cafe space out of a 120-year old but long-disused restaurant.

Hi! Yoriyo is an imaginative recycling and reinterpretation of the building’s history both in its form and function. The form is now an appealing fusion of a cleverly subtle reworking of the old restaurant’s original spaces and materials to which are added artistically rendered mud walls, colourful tile fresco, and the original metal and wood working skills of Mori. Original items from its days as a restaurant together with modern creature comforts lend an antiquely rustic yet soothing patina to the artistic atmosphere. Light refreshments and music recall its historic function as a restaurant with the added attraction of artwork to savour and perhaps purchase.

Even the name is recycled from the catchphrase of the last matriarch proprietor. Meaning ‘Hello, come on in’, Hi! Yoriyo is now once again at the centre of local social life and also attracting many others from far and wide.