A kominka café in Okayama | Pillars, old newspapers and summer at Lemon Tree

Looking for a kominka café in Kita-ku, Okayama? On July mornings at Lemon Tree Okayama, the first thing to greet you when you open the door is the scent of pine.

Beyond the engawa veranda, an old pine warmed by the sun breathes quietly. Cicadas, birdsong, and the long shadows between the pillars inside the house. Old Japanese houses have a landscape that deepens in summer.

We were looking for a kominka

Before Lemon Tree Okayama opened here, we were looking for a kominka, an old Japanese house. Not an ordinary property, but one with land.

A small vegetable garden, a place where we could cook without hurrying, an old house with time still living in its wooden pillars. That was the picture in our minds.

When we arrived in Okayama, we found one house. Generous space, beams aged over the years, and the freedom to work on it little by little with our own hands: it had all three.

What we kept, what we changed

We kept the frame of the house as it was: the pillars, the beams, the weight of the roof. The beauty of a kominka lives in the structure itself, standing for decades. Once you tear it down, it never comes back.

What we changed was the kitchen.

Italian home cooking has its own rhythm of fire, water, space and time. We built the kitchen from scratch: a large work surface for rolling out lasagna by hand, and a stove for sauces that simmer for hours.

Old Japan on the outside, an Italian home on the inside. That is the house Lemon Tree Okayama became.

What we found under the tatami

During the renovation, there was one moment that surprised us more than any other.

As we lifted the old tatami mats one by one, old Japanese newspapers appeared underneath.

In old houses, people used to lay newspaper under the tatami to absorb moisture. Newspapers from years, maybe decades ago, had been sleeping quietly under our floor.

Just at that time, my mother (mamma) was visiting from Italy. In her luggage she had carefully brought pages from old Italian newspapers.

We placed the two old newspapers side by side, one Japanese and one Italian, and used them to decorate the doors.

Even today, on some of Lemon Tree's doors, Japanese and Italian quietly live side by side.

Memories of two countries pasted inside one house. This is our favourite story about our kominka.

The depth between the pillars

The first reason I, an Italian, fell in love with this house was actually something visual.

The long prospettiva, the depth, stretching between the pillars. The colours of old wood overlap gently, and the further in you go, the more even the air seems to change.

This is a beauty you won't find on any floor plan. It is the shape of time itself, born from generations of a family walking, sitting and living in this space every day.

I wanted to protect this depth. That's why we keep furniture to a minimum

and arrange it so nothing blocks the view.

A house that moves, a table that grows

Another wonderful thing about a kominka is that the space moves. Open the fusuma and shoji sliding doors and two rooms become one; close them and they become separate places again.

This flexibility suits the way Italian families eat.

In Italy, on special days when family and friends gather, we join several tables together into one long tavolata.

In Lemon Tree's kominka, depending on the number of guests, we can open the sliding doors and join the tables to create that "long table".

An old Japanese house becoming a place for an Italian feast: a very natural harmony.

Summer is when the house breathes most deeply

In July, when we open the doors wide, the scent of the pine in the garden mixes with the herbs we grow and drifts into the house.

If you'd like to visit a kominka café in Okayama, or you're looking for a different kind of summer lunch, come and see how an old Japanese house welcomes an Italian summer at Lemon Tree Okayama.

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🍋 Lemon Tree Okayama | 582 Tamasu, Kita-ku, Okayama

Thu–Sun: lasagna lunch 11:00–16:00 (last order 14:30)

Wed: pizza al taglio only 11:30–14:00 (last order 13:30)

*Reservations recommended

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