Here is the second in a series of interviews by Claire Tanaka featuring creative people living in and around her home prefecture of Tokushima.
Just three years into his first job, as an editor at one of Tokushima City’s vibrant local entertainment magazines, Takao Yamasaki wound up in the hospital from exhaustion and lack of proper nutrition. Instead of popping a multivitamin, downing another energy drink, and getting back to the desk, he decided to abandon his fledgling media career and go into the restaurant business, providing nutritionally balanced meals for his overworked and underfed friends and colleagues. The YRG Café, named for a nutritional concept taught to children about eating something yellow (carbohydrates), something red (protein), and something green (vegetables) with each meal to ensure a balanced diet, has been running for six years now with this unlikely restaurateur at its helm.