ABOUT: The Story behind the Cheese Guy

Retirement was the plan. Cheesemaking turned out to be much more interesting.

I came to Japan in 1976. I was in my late twenties, looking for adventure.

I found several!

In 1980 I opened my first English school in Kichijoji, Tokyo. It was a wonderful place to live—exciting and full of energy—but as the years passed Tokyo seemed to become more and more crowded. So I packed my bags and moved to Sapporo.

I opened another English school there and loved almost everything about Hokkaido... except for one thing.

The winters were too cold and far too long.

Eventually the time came to retire. My wife retired from her office job, I sold my teaching business, and we decided to retire somewhere without snow.

That place turned out to be Okinawa.

Retirement, however, lasted only a few months.

I discovered that Okinawa was rather like Tokyo in the 1970s...

Cheeseless!

There was wonderful milk but no real cheese. The supermarkets were stocked mostly with processed cheese and watery yogurt. I had plenty of time on my hands, so the solution seemed obvious.

Make cheese!

I started making cheese in the kitchen, mainly for my wife and me.

But then I became obsessed.

A friend suggested holding a cheese night at his bar in Naha. It was a roaring success. Encouraged by that, I found a dairy farmer who was interested in a joint venture. He let me build a cheese factory on his land...

...and we were rocking and rolling!

Before long we were supplying many of Okinawa's major hotels and had opened our own little cheese shop in Nanjo.

Sadly, my wife Sadako lost her battle with cancer in 2015.

But the cheese lives on.

Today we make cheese, yogurt and butter by hand from the milk of our own cows in Nanjo, Okinawa. We combine traditional British cheesemaking with Okinawan ingredients to create cheeses that simply couldn't be made anywhere else.