The owner of this business, Mitch (Mikhail) Grigoriev, came to Vancouver several years ago and fell in love with this beautiful and wonderful place at the first sight after having lived in different countries – Russia, Japan, United States.
Mitch himself is an adventurer by nature and loves to travel. He crossed the whole North American continent by a car experiencing many adventures during these two trips: from U.S. to Canada. In the year of 1991 when accompanying the Japanese mass media crew he made more than four thousand kilometres in a jeep crossing mountains and desserts, flying in a Cessna plane over the dead Aral sea and descending in the gold mines of Middle Asia – Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Turkmenistan (former Soviet Union). The year later Mitch made another astonishing trip to China where he took a train on a wooden bench seat for three days and nights in a row and merely survived traveling from Urumqi (Xinjian province) to Peking.
Mitch Grigoriev is a Russian who had lived in Japan for more than four years, then United States where he was in Indiana for three years and a half. Now he resides in Canada, B.C., the city of Vancouver with his family – wife and two kids. His daughter was born in Japan (Tokyo), his son came to this world in Indiana and his wife originates from one of the most beautiful countries in the world but, alas, so poor now – Georgia, located at the Black Sea amidst the mountains. Mitch’s wife’s native town of Batumi resembles Vancouver: mountains, access to the sea, the same climate. It was actually his wife’s idea to get settled in Vancouver.
Mitch Grigoriev has a Ph. D. degree in Japanese Literature and he is a sessional lecturer at the University of British Columbia teaching one of the aspects of Japanese to three- four year students.