Takao Yamamoto, Captain
Born in Shiga prefecture. His family has owned a traditional Japanese pastry shop since 130 years.
Studied design at school and started his career as a pastry chef at “Les Anges” in Kamakura, Japan. Returned and established the western pastry shop “Club Harie” as a grand chef. Now he runs 12 shops in all over Japan. Also, he owns several other pastry shops including “Patisserie Occitanial” in Tokyo under the collaboration with Stephane Treand, MOF.
Since several years, he started to challenge the competition. He got some prizes for the domestic competitions, like Japan Cake Show. In 2009, he won at the WPTC Japan heat for his chocolate show piece.
Yoshiaki Miyake
Studied at the culinary school and trained many style of cuisine and patisserie.
He changed his life when he started to work under Shuji Muto at Pan Pacific Hotel Yokohama. Yoshiaki helped Shuji Muto for his preparation at WPTC 2006.
Now he moved to Ritz Carlton Tokyo with Shuji and is assisting to manage the pastry section.
Yoshiaki has tried several heats for the international pastry competition including WPTC and Coupe du Monde. In 2009, he won at WPTC Japan heat for his sugar show piece as the youngest competitors.
Hiroshi Igarashi
Trained at the culinary school and started his career as a pastry chef at “Patisserie Colombin” in Tokyo. He got the 2nd prize at World junior pastry competition in 1994. It was his first international competition to be well known. After working at “Patisserie Cartron” in Bretagne, France, he moved to Hotel Seiyo. During his days at Hotel Seiyo, he tried Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie twice at 1999 and 2001. In 2001, he was a captain of the team Japan and the team got the silver medal.
He got several experience as an executive pastry chef at Hotel Seiyo and Roppongi Hills Club, he is the executive chef at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Tokyo since its opening in 2005.
