青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

Yuri Nomura, the owner-chef of “restaurant eatrip,” and Yukari Iki, proprietor of The Little Shop of Flowers, have worked side by side out of the same small property in Tokyo’s Jingumae (Harajuku) neighborhood for some eleven years. Now, with their businesses set to close for relocation in December 2023, the women each recount the days they spent welcoming guests from Japan and around the world to their haven, which has earned a reputation as one of the beloved “faces” of Tokyo. Here in this oasis of leafy calm in the midst of frenetically changing Harajuku, the two have long gone about working separately, but also with a deep-down feeling of fellowship, and they look back on it all in two volumes each telling the story of one shop through twenty-six themes from A to Z.

Yuri Nomura was led to a career in food by her mother, who ran a hospitality class. Today Nomura works to express the possibilities of food through a range of activities, from designing catering presentations, teaching classes, writing for magazines, and appearing on radio to developing recipes, planning events, and providing food supervision for films and television programs. She opened “restaurant eatrip” in 2011 and “eatrip soil” in 2019 as part of an effort to communicate the power, richness, and delight of food through cooking that values producers, ingredients sourced from nature, and seasonality. In 2021 she launched Tofukozo, an animated travel series covering food from around Japan; recent publications include Tobikiri oishii ouchi gohan (Really Yummy Home Cooking; Shogakukan, 2023), a cookbook for grade-schoolers.

Florist Yukari Iki worked in interior design and public relations before a fascination with the hues of flowers inspired her to begin operating The Little Shop of Flowers on weekends in the Yoyogi Uehara neighborhood of Tokyo in 2010. She relocated her business next to “restaurant eatrip” in Jingumae in 2012 and opened a satellite shop, The Little Bar of Flowers, on the first floor of the Shibuya Parco building in 2019. Focused on creating bouquets that “translate” the feelings of the giver, Iki not only sells retail but also hosts workshops and creates presentations for events and other settings. In recent years she has developed a line of lifestyle gifts using dyes obtained from discarded flowers and otherwise worked to fulfill her lifelong goal of gracing the entire variety of scenes in people’s lives through believing in the power of flowers and greenery. Her publications include Tasty of Life (Seigensha, 2019), coauthored with Yuri Nomura.