Cafe Utase, Art Office Saichi, Patio Music Academy & Hall, and the Akita Katagami International Music Festival.
Alongside our tsukudani business, we operate Cafe Utase and our Cultural Division, Art Office Saichi. The division runs Patio Music Academy & Hall and its piano school, produces arts projects, and serves as the secretariat for the Akita Katagami International Music Festival.
A cafe in a renovated traditional house, opposite Otoyo Elementary School
Cafe Utase takes its name from the utase-bune, sailing boats once used to catch Japanese smelt on Lake Hachiro. The restored traditional house has three distinctive spaces: a cafe area created from the doma, the traditional earthen-floored space of a Japanese house; a tatami room finished in Akita cedar; and a small room upstairs. Signature dishes include a rice bowl topped with Japanese icefish from Lake Hachiro and the Utase waffle.
Our Cultural Division produces concerts, staged readings, and projects with painters and photographers, and serves as the secretariat for the Akita Katagami International Music Festival. The festival is organised by the Akita Katagami International Music Festival Executive Committee.
Beneath the original beams of the storehouse: a grand piano and a harpsichord
We converted the storehouse once used for our tsukudani into an intimate salon hall. Beyond its Andalusian-inspired courtyard are the lesson rooms of the piano school attached to the hall. The site brings together a place to listen and a place to learn.
Founded in 2022 as the first large-scale music festival in northern Tohoku, the festival is guided by the credo “A single poem can change a life; art shapes people, and culture shapes the world.” Under the artistic direction of Keita Chida, a pianist from Katagami, it invites leading artists from Japan and abroad to perform throughout Akita Prefecture. The festival is organised by the Akita Katagami International Music Festival Executive Committee, while our Cultural Division, Art Office Saichi, serves as its secretariat.
