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Elderly Japanese man opens free cafe in Ukraine’s Kharkiv
- Fuminori Tsuchiko, 75, first visited as a tourist, then returned after Russia invaded, living in a subway station and working as a volunteer distributing food
- He now runs a cafe with a Ukranian he met at the station, mainly thanks to donations from fellow Japanese people via social media
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When Fuminori Tsuchiko arrived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv last year, he said he wanted to do anything he could to help people following Russia’s invasion.
Moved by the plight of residents forced by Russian shelling to shelter in subway stations, the 75-year-old Japanese national from Tokyo decided to stay.
For months, he said, he lived in a metro station and worked as a volunteer distributing food in the subway.
He and a Ukrainian he met in the station have now opened a free cafe in Kharkiv’s Saltivka neighbourhood – mainly thanks to what he said were donations made by Japanese people via social media.
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“June, July, August, September, October, November, December – [for] seven months I stayed in the metro, underground, sleeping or eating, and together [with] many, many Ukrainian people,” Tsuchiko said.
“FuMi Caffe” serves about 500 people a day, he said.
Tsuchiko said he had been visiting Ukraine as a tourist in February 2022, when the Japanese embassy urged him to leave as Russia prepared to invade.
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