Everyone knows a referral by word of mouth is so important for every business, and no surprise, it also applies to a small business like Cooking Sun. Today we had guests from Australia, but they did not just happen upon us online.

I (Shohei) used to play Australian Football in both Australia and Japan, and I made a lot of friends through the sport. In my twenties when I lived in Tokyo, I befriended a gentleman from Canberra. He had worked in Japan for a few years and now he lives in another country. It has been more than five years and I do not even remember the last time we spoke, but we are still connected on Facebook.

However, today’s guest was his colleague! She had mentioned in her message to me that she had heard about Cooking Sun through our mutual friend.

It’s amazing to realize how small the world is, and in fact, today is not the only time we had customer from referral or word of mouth. We had a lovely family of five from New York at the end of last year who had heard about us from guests who came the previous August. Two American gentlemen had heard about us in Sapporo when they met previous customers of ours. We had a French lady who met one of our guests from Montreal, Canada, in Hiroshima. The list goes on. Although we had only been in business for 10 months, we’ve gained quite a few customers from referrals.

It’s such an honor to know that our customers are recommending us as one of the things to do while in Japan. And because we know that our guests will talk about us if we do a good job, it motivates us to deliver our best every time we welcome new guests.