To All the Cafés I’ve Loved Before

It’s no secret that I really, really love coffee. Even as I edit this I’m drinking a homemade attempt at a spiced latte, and anyone who has travelled with me can attest that I’m constantly Googling coffee recommendations when I go somewhere new. If left to my own devices, in fact, my travels can look suspiciously like “sightseeing as a time kill while the caffeine wears off,” which is certainly a questionable if delicious way to get the most out of a vacation. As someone who grew up in a giant corn field of a state (I love you, Illinois, but don’t pretend you’re overflowing with interesting or niche coffee joints), I’ve found that my experiences abroad have been some of the best times to explore café culture, and over time these places have come to seem like more than just simple shops. Unlike in America where I tended to grab coffees on the go, always juggling classes and homework and quarter-life crises, most of my time in cafés abroad has been an escape from such things.  Having lived with host families my study abroad classmates and I couldn’t easily hang out at each other’s houses, and our Japanese college was private which means our campus was a five-minute walk wide and had absolutely no non-academic buildings. Cafés became a surrogate home for our time together, nurturing late night daydreams and apprehensive conversations about the future, and also a time for individual relaxation and reflection. While there are still times I want to just order a latte and go home, cafés have become a place where I feel I can take a breather from my daily life. I must admit it’s been a nice change of pace.

So why not share these spaces with others?  Unfortunately all of them are far away from, well, the rest of the world, but that can’t stop me from trying to make a guide map of some of my favorite (or least favorite) places and taking everyone else along. Hopefully in these little bean blurbs I can show you some of my joy in traveling or the happiness I’ve been afforded through countless cups of coffee (and tea, and juice, and…), and while I neither have a comprehensive list of cafés nor any credentials to critique them I hope this can at least be a catalogue of my own fond memories.

 

K O R E A

커피명가, Daegu

Daegu’s 커피명가 (Coffee Myungga) took so long to find that some people would say it wasn’t worth it to go in the first place. The shop I visited takes residence on the second floor of one of twenty stores on one of ten shopping streets in the middle of a city known for having a million cafés, and only has one sign…in Korean. Easy to miss even if you’re paying attention, and easier to miss once you’ve been there—except after having been once you’ll be missing the cuisine, not the location! What the café lacks in visibility it makes up in its menu. Not only is the coffee criminally smooth (I got a cappuccino variant called the Myunggaccino [명가치노]), but their cakes are good enough to even tempt non-coffee-lovers through the doors. My gateau au chocolat, the fancy French way to put chocolate cake on a menu, was rich enough to pay for my plane ticket back to America. And possibly also my college tuition. The interior of the café is mostly russet woodwork and vintage chairs whose pillows are embroidered with quails and paisleys; stained glass windows color the afternoon sunlight as it falls on shelves of floral china and brass kettles. If the décor were a smell it would probably be a mix of patchouli and the perfume of an old, dignified Victorian lady who wore an excessive amount of lace, but somehow it would still be pleasant and free of mothballs. Despite this strong impression made by both the interior decorating and the food, the highlight of Coffee Myungga is neither of them. Instead, the best thing about this quaint location is the ladies’ restroom, or more accurately what you can see from the window: the neighboring bar’s rooftop, crowned with a stupidly large statue of Godzilla.

 

Tumtree Project, Daegu

Boasting both a prime location at the lower entrance to Daegu’s massive Shinsegae Department Store and fairly good coffee, Tumtree Project is a place I will definitely never go back to. Not because the café itself is bad—I liked what I ordered and the interior was a fun kind of a Meet the Robinsons retro-modern mashup. This shop, however, was one of the first places my friend and I went after arriving in Korea, at a time when we were both very jetlagged and very aware that our Korean ability sucked. Self-conscious and under-studied, we stumbled our way though our order with all the grace drunken ducks, and for me it was mortifying. As our trip went on we both picked up more Korean phrases and cared less about looking like tourists, but somehow I feel if I went back to this place, the exact same people would be working. And they would see me. And they would remember. I can never show my face there again.

 

수요일, Seoul

Impossible to find unless you follow your nose for the smell of spices and check which building is across the street, 수요일 (Suyoil), meaning “Wednesday,” is a second-story café in the historic district of Insadong. It looks like any other café from the outside, adding to its anonymity, but the inside looks like a clipping of a Rustic Homes (and Gardens) magazine, with a tree growing straight through one of the seating areas and an almost entirely wooden interior. The occasional heavy-looking clay vase or leafy plant fills up empty corners, and each table is decorated with flowers—sometimes just one, delicate and understated. The massive windows, which also serve as doors to the balcony seating, can all be opened to the street, letting the sunlight in and making the leaves dance overhead with the breeze. This quiet but sturdy interior is the perfect cozy backdrop for the café’s specialty: an array of traditional (and in some cases Korean-native) teas, offered in cold and hot varieties no matter the season. Drinks are served in wide, shallow earthy cups with traditional Korean honey cookies called yakgwa on the side. The jujube tea, thick and tasting of molasses and citrus, feels like the perfect drink to complement a warm armchair and an heirloom blanket; in contrast the five-tastes tea is cuttingly tart, carrying vague hints of cranberry and staving off the heat of a summer afternoon, with pine nuts and a single pansy floating in the center of the cup. I’d recommend this café to anyone with a craving for a unique blend of tea or a “Cabin Goals” board on Pinterest, but good luck finding it!

 

The Pink Pool Café, Seoul

With seating scattered on the roof of a five-story Stylenanda clothing store in Myeongdong, the Pink Pool Café is a welcome retreat from one of the most bustling areas of Seoul. This flagship Stylenanda, called the Pink Hotel, has its floors themed to look like…well, a hotel: the ground floor is a reception lobby, the second floor is a spa (complete with flower bath and suspended bed), the third floor is a hallway filled with doors and luggage carts, the fourth floor looks like a retro laundromat, the fifth floor looks like a hotel pool (even tiling the floor to look like lanes!), and the roof looks like a sea-themed pool deck. The various clothes, accessories, and cosmetics are arranged to look like part of the environment, as is the café: tucked into the back of the fifth floor between the fitting rooms that look like pool shower stalls and a few umbrella-covered tables is a counter reminiscent of a poolside concession stand. There are a handful of pricey drink options including the shop specialty “cotton candy coffee,” which I expected to be a cotton candy pour-over but which was actually just decorative sugar fluff above a cup of some standard joe. The Vienna coffee is the most interesting thing I’ve tried on the menu, though the non-coffee cotton candy specials look absolutely spectacular. Still, the coffee isn’t getting any repeat patronage from me. Instead, I would come back for the rooftop. The “pool deck” area, accessible from the fifth floor “pool,” has outdoor seating by way of candy-pink and white beanbag chairs, all fluffed around dry-grass umbrellas. There is a perimeter of small pines around the edge of the roof that protects the seating area from view and sound pollution, and the whole scene is backlit at night by the glow of an easily-recognizable neon sign. Ambient music accompanies the relaxed atmosphere with melodies just abstract enough to make you wonder if you’ve been listening to the same thing for twenty minutes. When I first went to the Pink Pool Café it was nighttime, which didn’t give me the best view (or the best photos).  What it did give me was a late-night caffeine boost and a fluffy throne from which to view the night sky, soft thrum of an electronic baseline muting the street noise below. It was amazing how much five floors between myself and the never-sleep streets of Myeongdong made a difference in atmosphere, and while the aggressively pink interior of the Hotel may be faulted for tinting my glasses with rose I created a happy place up on that roof, drinking coffee too late and thinking about life from under a giant umbrella.

…And then two American girls came up to the pool deck, talking loudly enough about their clubbing woes that I’m sure even the buskers in Hongdae heard them. It was a bit difficult to think existentially after that.

 

Innisfree Green Café, Jeju-do and Seoul

I never expected to find even remotely decent coffee at a cosmetics store. I feel like specialty shops are expected to be good at one or two things—you know, their specialty—and anything beyond that is a bit of a risk. Who has ever heard of a bakery also being good at computer repairs? Innisfree, however, is an innovative shop: originating in Jeju, the Hawaii of South Korea, it specializes in cosmetics and skincare products but at some of their bigger stores you can also find…cafés. Capitalizing on a mix of Jeju-regional specialties and tried-and-true favorites, Innisfree cafés offer pretty good food and drink for a price that could be a lot worse. I’ve had a few of their concoctions that have the same ingredients as their cosmetics, like a latte with honey and canola, and they tend to feel both familiar and a bit modern—in this case, like a café miel with a floral twist. Another of Innisfree’s specialties, the hallabong (Jeju Mandarin orange) mixer, adds a tart kick to a standard citrus slushie, while the mugwort latte tastes like the coffee version of green tea, earthy and mossy and bitter. Where food is concerned, Innisfree is known for their soufflé pancakes which mysteriously have the texture of both pudding and pancakes. This is all complemented by a clean, bright interior and walls covered in fairy lights and live plants, making the interior feel chic and open.  A window seat at the Myeongdong location will grant you a great vantage point for people-watching, and as the afternoon turns into evening you can see the avenue transform into a street food hub. Such seats are a great place to wait if you ordered any of the cafés food, as everything is made fresh and can take a while during rush hours. If you’re looking for skincare and an afternoon snack with a tropical twist, look no further than an Innisfree Green Café.

 

오설록, Jeju-do and Seoul

Like Innisfree, 오설록 (Osulloc) is a Jeju-born company, but they’re more concerned with green tea than with green tea face masks. Osulloc specializes in green tea products with dozens of different blends to choose from (believe it or not, there are many varieties of green tea!), offering blends both for in-store brewing and to take home. All of these blends come straight from the fields of Jeju, where the rolling hills striped with tea contrast the ever-blue sky. Luckily for those with a sweet tooth, this tea doesn’t just go straight to the kettle: green tea ice cream is also among this shop’s specialties, the harsh bitterness of concentrated matcha pairing surprisingly well with the milder floral of Osulloc’s famed Wedding Green Tea blend. On other branches of the tea tree, the Moonlit Walk blend gives the green teas a run for their money, pear undertones and sugar stars offsetting any bitterness. Thankfully, while the tea fields themselves are tucked away in Jeju, Osulloc makes sure to have plenty of locations in Seoul for those who fancy themselves tea connoisseurs. Warm lighting, exposed stone accent walls, and a natural color palate make these cafés feel earthy and natural, with understated green touches reminding patrons of Osulloc’s claim to fame. The company’s logo is equally simple but makes a big  impact, highlighting rows of tea against the backdrop of Jeju’s Hallasan volcano. And while these cafés are more than enough to satisfy any tea lover, if in Jeju the Osulloc Tea Museum and fields are also a fun visit, especially if you want to run through the rows and rows of tea like The Sound of Music. Just be sure to look out for the pointier branches!

 

Billy Angel Cake Company, Seoul

There are a couple of Billy Angel cafés floating around the city, but the only one I’ve visited is tucked inside a huge book tower in the Starfield Library, well-hidden but for a menu sign outside the door and a “come on in, it’s warm in here” message encouraging patronage in the winter. With a name like Billy Angel Cake Company you would expect this place to be better at cake than at coffee. It is. Still, it doesn’t matter much if the coffee is mediocre because if you go to Billy Angel you’re definitely there for the cake. While the shop itself has a basic clean-glam vibe with white marble tables, crystal chandeliers, and gold-legged chairs, the cake displays provide more than enough color and decoration to keep the eyes busy. From modern galaxy mirror glazes to Rococo-esque cream and gold icing swirls each baked confection feels unique, becoming it’s own centerpiece to whatever table is graced with it. They’re big enough to be centerpieces, too; many couples and families shared table space with only one or two pieces, pastel fruit drinks and extravagant coffees forgotten and in danger of being knocked over in the scramble for another bite of red velvet. When I went with my mom we ambitiously got two slices of cake: one triple quadruple chocolate supreme (not the official name, but accurate) and one rainbow crepe cake. The chocolate cake was richer than Mark Zuckerberg with an assortment of chocolate powders, chips, chunks, and icings making it dangerously sweet. The crepe cake was a lot lighter, and also one of the most colorful things on the menu, layer upon layer making a rainbow gradient from top to bottom, with each color of the stack was flavored differently—strawberry, orange, lemon, apple, blueberry, and grape. Independently each one tasted like fruit candy, and together the whole thing tasted like Froot Loops. My mom and I nearly died eating both pieces, as they were huge and overly sweet, but Billy Angel isn’t to be missed if you’re looking for a slice of Instagram food porn.

 

Thanks Nature Café, Seoul

This place was made for me, even if the coffee was nothing to write home about unless I wanted to write home about particularly boring cups of coffee. Like every other café in Korea it’s in a weird location; you have to descend a set of stairs from a nondescript street in Hongdae, after which you come upon an atrium and a narrow “underground” street. The cafe is on one side of the atrium, and entering it you find an uncomplicated wooden atmosphere with a strange amount of sheep decorations. A variety of food and drink is offered on the menu with none being particularly special, but no one cares because it’s only after you finish eating and drinking that the fun begins: seeing the actual sheep! Forget cat cafés and dog cafés and owl cafés and yes, even wallaby cafés, sheep cafés get too little love from the world. My undying affection for sheep made this place one of my top priorities when I first visited Seoul, and the two fluffy residents across the atrium didn’t disappoint.  We arrived at Thanks Nature quite early in the day so as we ate we got to watch the caretaker groom the animals and clean their pen, which was hilarious as the sheep spent the whole time bouncing around like rebellious children. By the time the caretaker was done you would be hard-pressed to find as clean a sheep in the rest of the country, which made them perfect for petting. While the sheep were a little shy during our visit, spending most of their time gnawing on things, I couldn’t have been happier to pat them and watch them wander around. I am nowhere close to being at a point in my life where I can have a pet sheep, but until that day Thanks Nature will be the closest I have gotten to fulfilling that dream.  Now they just need to work on that coffee…then it will be perfect.

 

Anthracite, Seoul

Well-placed in the hip, high-end Hannam district, Anthracite feels like the embodiment of industrial minimalism. The walls are unpainted and the floors, bare concrete, with huge machinery rumbling through the bean-roasting process on the first floor and mismatched stools dotting the waiting area. Ascending the stairs surprises you with a plant alcove off one landing, glowing with the soft magenta of grow lights and lacing the smell of coffee with notes of soil and petrichor. The only thing on the second floor other than assorted, possibly-thrifted-from-a-classroom seating is a huge display of plants, mostly large-leaved greenery that overflows their planters, and what looks like old school picnic-style lunch tables are latticed across the third floor for those willing to brave more stairs with their drinks. Furniture styles, from colorful leather stools to exposed metal-beam tables, are intentionally cobbled throughout the space which may make the place seem like an unfinished project, but those unimpressed with the interior design may yet find solace in Anthracite’s products. The first floor has a fait glow about it that could be labeled as “pretentiously hipster” with its sold-out in-house coffee blends and its baristas who look like they wore whatever what was closest to their bed to work, but Anthracite’s heart and soul is the real deal. The coffee is served without any bells and whistles but is probably the smoothest and strongest I’ve ever had, and without any touches of milk or sugar the tea is so flavorful you can taste it just by taking a sniff from the next room over. If such simplicity in food and furniture inspires you to decorate your house with upcycled goods and minimalist dishware, simply head downstairs from the café to find three floors of rustic-chic homeware…and be prepared to shell out a lot of cash for those style points.

 

Arriate, Seoul

Not far from Thanks Nature in Hongdae stands a doorway that looks like it leads to wonderland: decorated to bursting with ivy and flowers, you would never guess it was a café just by looking at it. The inside is similarly decked with flowers, some live, some fake, some dried, sitting and hanging and bursting out of every corner and windowsill. The plant vibe of this place is unreal, which made my plant scientist roommate quite happy, so despite not knowing anything about the place we picked out some of the prettiest-sounding things on the drink menu. They looked just as pretty as the café, with pastel colors and ombré pours, so we excitedly climbed the stairs to find seating…and found seating…and more stairs. It turns out this café has four floors, which at the time were entirely empty other than us and one other dude, each of which is entirely covered in plants. This included flower walls where we could pose with flower crowns and flower benches and…flower everything. Choosing the third floor as our home base we sat down, took an obscene amount of photos…and then drank some incredibly disappointing and expensive beverages. Other than the appearance, there was nothing revolutionary or appealing about what either of us had gotten, so I’d say the most we got out of that café were the photos.

 

Tom N Toms Black, Seoul

Tom N Toms, while apparently a chain that can be found all across Korea and even in America, has one special location buried beneath the streets of Myeongdong. Accessible by a somewhat frightening escalator descending into the depths of nowhere, the Noon Square Tom N Toms Black is an open, cozy café with unbeatable food and drink. The dark interior, mostly black leather accented with sandy wood, is highlighted by lights from the cattycorner game and sports arcade, which doesn’t make nearly as much noise pollution as you might suspect since it’s a floor lower, and sitting by the café balcony gets you a good view of kids and families playing together. Tom N Toms itself offers a large range of delicious-sounding drinks, including grain lattes, specialty Asian coffees, smoothies, yogurt drinks, and the like, all served in glass mason jars. The food menu is equally tempting. I have no idea what they did to the bulgogi pretzel bites but they are possibly the most delicious food on the planet, and while I haven’t had the chance to try the honey toast (yet!) I would probably fight someone for it. Having started off as a coffee bean brand and having extended to cafes, Tom N Toms is apparently doing something right to have such a wide reach, and while Tom N Toms Black is considered the high-end branch of their stores, if normal Tom N Toms are similar then I’d consider it to be a highly underrated chain. Honestly, try Tom N Toms Black, and you’ll never recover. …Unfortunately, since it’s “high-end,” your wallet may not recover, either.

 

A Random, Boring Starbucks, Seoul

Ah, Starbucks. There was nothing special about this Starbucks in the slightest…other than the fact that, at the time I was there, the seasonal drink was a peanut cream latte. Sounded disgusting, not gonna lie—who wants peanut butter in coffee? But that latte was one of the most delicious lattes I’ve ever had. Even the foam tasted of peanuts, but not so strong as to overpower the coffee, and wow if that thing wasn’t smooth.  I can’t believe it was a Korea-only product; East Asia doesn’t even tend to like peanut butter!

 

Starbucks Reserve, Seoul

Before going to Hannam I had never heard of a Starbucks Reserve roasteries and coffee bars; most recently one has shot up in Tokyo and now claims the title for the largest Starbucks in the world. But without knowing much of the actual differences between Starbucks and Starbucks Reserve, all I can say that these places feel like someone looked at the franchise and asked, “Okay, what would this place look like if it were in a Parisian hotel that was going to be used in a James Bond fight scene?” The Reserve in Hannam is beautiful, with elegant raw-wood tables and muted, classy colors; the café is cashless and has a mix of high-tech machinery and natural-looking floor-to-ceiling windows that make it feel both intimate and futuristic. Nothing of the green mermaid mascot to be seen here—the brand is stated in simple gold font with a star. While the drinks themselves aren’t completely different from a normal Starbucks (unless you get a coffee tasting menu, which…I know nothing about), and while you’re technically still just going to a Starbucks, the Reserve café blew me away with how different it felt compared to a normal Starbucks chain stores. Hopefully while I’m still in Japan I’ll be able to visit the one in Tokyo, and maybe even the one in Hong Kong! For everyone who is Stateside, there are currently Reserves in Seattle and New York, and there’s one scheduled to pop up in Chicago in the coming years.

 

J A P A N

%ARABICA, Kyoto

A modern, minimalist cube of white walls and glass windows framed by a gently flowing river and lush mountains, %ARABICA, specifically the Arashiyama branch, has to be one of my favorite coffee shops of all time. The first time I visited my friend and I weren’t expecting much—we saw the line stretching out the door and down the street and, knowing that in Japan such a thing usually means a place is famous, we decided to wait in it. Once we got to the door it became obvious why the line was so far out of the building; the shop itself is tiny, with no seating other than a rentable room that overlooks the river, and a lot of the remaining shop space is taken up by a warmly rumbling coffee bean roaster.  On the other side of the shop, elegant, complicated-looking coffee machines form silhouettes against the windows, glimpses of the river peaking in between metal and occasional bursts of steam. There were only two baristas (both of whom I would later find had won coffee competitions and the like), dressed in subdued beiges and whites, and a limited menu printed in neat, simple font.

It was perfect.

The coffee from %ARABICA was delicious, and the natural, uncomplicated aesthetic remains one of my favorites for cafés. Looking the company up online I also liked their views on coffee and on life: a love for simplicity, travel, and showing others the world through the beans they used. There are only a handful of branches of %ARABICA in the world, more than one of which are in their native Kyoto, but even just one made a big impact on me. One of my fondest memories from study abroad is interwoven with their coffee; to this day I can remember the bitter chill of the café latte warding off the early heat of spring, verdant leaves waving in the wind as two high school boys stuttered down the river in a rented canoe.

 

Gorilla Coffee, Tokyo

When I went to Gorilla Coffee last it was in Shibuya, but I’ve been told it has since moved to Roppongi Hills, which makes me a bit sad as I love Shibuya and…don’t particularly like Roppongi Hills. Still, if you ever wanted an adventure with your coffee (and an excellent sandwich to boot), I would recommend Gorilla Coffee to anyone who can haul over here. Gorilla Coffee actually has its roots in Brooklyn, NYC, though personal experience marks the original Brooklyn branch as worryingly inferior to the branch in Tokyo. The Tokyo branch has an eclectic menu of Western-style hot sandwiches, hot dogs, and wraps, some easily recognizable favorites and others with mysterious, somewhat cheeky names. A creature of habit, I always got the beautiful balance of bacon, avocado, egg, onion chips, and lettuce known as the Wild & Mellow. But of course this is a place with “coffee” in its name on a list of cafés, so I have to talk about their coffee. One of Gorilla Coffee’s slogans is “wake up and smell the gorilla,” and I would do so gladly if there were one in my neighborhood: besides having a tasty Gorilla-brand coffee blend they also have some of the most unconventional specialties I’ve encountered, including the Fat American (carbonated coffee), the Monkey Business (your guess is as good as mine), and my personal favorite the Lemon Olive Oil Latte, which tastes like the coffee was filtered through a lemon tart. Combine the cuisine with a laid-back, diner-style café interior and the peace and quiet of a street-view seating bar on the second floor, and you have a café that I miss every time I think about Tokyo.

 

قهوة يمنية‎ Mocha Coffee, Tokyo

Shoved into the tiniest nook you can imagine in the district of Daikanyama, Mocha Coffee is…not a place I miss when I think of Tokyo. I heard of Mocha Coffee from a list of can’t-miss coffee spots in the city, and while I don’t regret going there, it certainly wasn’t the crowning achievement of coffee brewing in my opinion. The draw behind this tiny shop is that it’s the only place in Tokyo that serves Yemeni coffee; in fact, the only thing on their menu is variations of Yemeni coffee. I didn’t even know coffee came from Yemen, and it was only after doing a bit of digging that I learned that while yes, Yemeni coffee was a thing, it was also one of the most exotic, most expensive types of coffee in the world.

…You only live once, right?

I suggested my mom and I visit the shop when she visited me, as we both liked coffee. The interior was immediately charming, with huge windows making up most of the shop walls and only a handful of delicate white tables crowding the available floor space. After contemplating the menu, my mom and I ordered a pot of coffee that cost more than either of us would like to admit, which came in a beautifully slim silver carafe and was accompanied by a small plate of candied dates and two floral teacups. We excitedly set ourselves to our drinks…and almost immediately started calculating how often we could eat a date. I can’t even begin to describe how scathingly bitter Yemeni coffee is; between the two of us we had split the pot to about three or four small cups each, but even after the first sip we were ready to be done. The dates were the only reprieve from the taste, incredibly sweet in comparison, and we paced ourselves on eating them as best we could. We also did our best to seem like we were enjoying ourselves, as the size of the shop didn’t allow for much privacy of expression (facial or verbal), and two more guests had arrived after us to talk animatedly with the owner about coffee beans. They seemed like connoisseurs, and in comparison we could have laughed with how awful we thought the stuff was.

Still, it was an interesting experience—how often will I be able to have Yemeni coffee? I’m glad I tried it, and am also glad I’ll never have to drink it again…especially at that price!

 

The Roastery by Nozy Coffee, Tokyo

The Roastery is another hidden gem found between the districts of Shibuya and Harajuku. It sits in the midst of a bunch of strangely unpopulated shops, like a North Face with a front made almost entirely of windows and a few famous shoe stores. The entrance is partially concealed by the overhanging balcony of a second-floor barbecue and the metal staircase leading up to it, with the looming brick of a Ralph Lauren shop casting shadows over it all. The interior is made up of deep marbled wood, concrete, wrought-iron, exposed brick, and semi-exposed lightbulbs; everything feels solid and industrial. Instead a single door the entire front of the shop opens to the street, letting the smell of roasting coffee and the low thrum of chatter drift out into the patio seating. A long wooden bar and brewing area creates a center island inside the shop with a few wooden tables hugging the halls around it for additional seating. Decorative bits and bobs are entirely absent, and only a few neatly printed blackboards announce daily recommendations and bean blends from the walls. The Roastery feels like the intersection of a factory and an old-timey red brick restaurant in New York, a place where I would expect a low-fi variant of “Rhapsody in Blue” playing in the background and the baristas to wear chic newsboy caps. The coffee menu only contains the basics but with the option to choose which blend you’d like your drink made from, and I remember mine being quite good. The pastries aren’t to be overlooked either; I would recommend the mince pies and the famous NY Rings!

Both times I have been to The Roastery it has happened to rain, which hasn’t detracted from the experience. If anything, it has added. With the concrete overhang protecting my outside table from the pitter-patter of raindrops, I have fond memories of quiet mornings in Tokyo surrounded by wood and steel, the smell of coffee, and the sound of sparrows playing in the puddles.

 

The Kawaii Monster Café, Tokyo

Perched in a high-up floor of a huge commercial building in the funky, fashionable Harajuku district, The Kawaii Monster Café is one of Japan’s most well-known cafés, even overseas. While they don’t serve “café food” as much as “normal restaurant food,” it’s classified as a theme café in Japan because it serves up a very…niche atmosphere with its cuisine. The ambience is a mix of “decora” and “creepy-cute,” both styles of Tokyo fashion subculture, and thus it thrives on being an eclectic mix of colors and lights. There are several themed “sections” within the store, all of which have a different feel—the psychedelic mushroom forest, the jellyfish bar, and the “milk bar” are just a few to name. Uniforms here include a kaleidoscope of colors, backcombed hair, colored contacts, platform shoes, and occasionally an assortment of piercings. The menu is equally colorful, with monster hamburgers and rainbow parfaits. Best yet is that, unlike some Halloween menus in America, it doesn’t taste any worse for all the food coloring in it! Every hour or so some of the waiters and waitresses have a disco party on the center carousel, where the flashing lights make it incredibly hard to get a good photo. This place is pricey, even having a service fee just to enter, but to do it once is worth the experience especially if you’re interested in the current youth subcultures in Japan. While the colors and mismatched clothes may look gaudy and scary to some, the history behind this kind of style is an interesting study, and the Kawaii Monster Café is just one way to jump into learning about it. If you go, my recommendation is the parfait—it’s big enough for two or three people, and each color of frosting on it is a different flavor!

 

マヌコーヒー, Fukuoka

マヌコーヒー (Manu Coffee), a relatively unassuming shop from the outside, is certainly a unique little place on the inside. The walls are all painted with a color likely named “The Child of Neon Lime and Pistachio,” with a jumble of art pieces and wire sculptures on the walls and equally many potted plants and kitschy knickknacks to break up the rest of the space. The tables and chairs in Manu Coffee are mismatched; some are low, some are high, some are wobbly, some don’t move even though you want them to, and some are definitely less comfortable than others. This peculiar interior is perhaps to be expected in the Tenjin District where Manu makes its home, as the cobbled streets streets around it are smattered with boutique shops and eclectic galleries, but it certainly stands out from the normal café color palate. If I had to compare the feel of Manu to an article of clothing it would be a pair of harem pants, specifically the ones whose fabric has Indian-inspired patterns on it, elephants and all: to summarize, the place feels overcrowded and chill all at once. Most of the drinks on the menu have ingredient variants that no one has ever heard of (mine had wasabon, which is a kind of Japanese confectionary sugar). Regardless, I couldn’t notice a significant difference in taste other than the obligatory improvement of quality from chain stores. The impression I’m left with is of a café that’s trying too hard to be quirky, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be visiting next time I’m in the area.

 

モンラパン, Sapporo

Placed on Japan’s northernmost main island and surrounded by snowdrifts for more than half the year, モンラパン (Mon Lapin) is a cozy rabbit hotel and café my mom and I stumbled upon on our way to Nijo Fish Market. Like most animal cafes the coffee is spectacularly unimpressive, but you’re there to pet fluffy things anyway so no one cares! The rabbits inside ranged from little Netherland Dwarves to Cornish Rexes to the unreasonably massive Flemish Giant, all of which you could choose as a furry lap warmer. The price of the café is based on how much time you want to spend with the bunnies; my mom and I chose a thirty-minute session, which meant we would get to hold two rabbits each for fifteen minutes. I’ve never had a pet rabbit, but with this experience I can confirm that they’re softer than anything you’ve ever felt before, and they’re also unreasonably cute. Cutest part is the nose, least cute part is the teeth that could probably kill you. …But they’re mostly cute. While getting a rowdy bunny may mean you spend fifteen minutes trying to make sure it doesn’t fall off your lap or pee on you, having a chill lap bunny is a memorable experience—one that will keep your heart warm even in the frozen, snowbound cities of northern Japan.

 

Wonder Fruits, Fukuoka

I’m not sure if Wonder Fruits counts as a café, but I’m going to say it is anyway just to talk about it. Wonder Fruits is a smoothie shop on the ground floor of the Hakata Kitte Shopping Center, and it has a variety and quality of juice products unlike I had ever seen before coming, or have ever seen since. Everything from Japanese pumpkin juice to avocado smoothies, Mandarin orange purée to watermelon-strawberry summer slushees can be found at this place, and it’s made right in front of you from fresh fruit and only fresh fruit. I can’t quite say how everything is so delicious, but it was so good that, when visiting Fukuoka for a week, my friend and I used our punchcards to the extent that we qualified for a discount. We had at least one Wonder Fruits drink a day, if not two! Money well spent.

 

Kitano Starbucks, Kobe

Another Starbucks, but a Starbucks that’s very dear to my heart. This Starbucks makes you work off the coffee calories before you even get the coffee, as the Kitano District of Kobe is located on the side of a mountain in an area where there are neither trains nor buses to carry you. During the Meiji Period (1868-1912), Kobe was a city with a relatively large amount of foreigners, often well-to-do because of the trading economy. Many of them lived on the mountainside, and the high-end foreigner district they built as they immigrated made a large contribution to Kobe’s posh image. Still today the term ハイカラー (“high collar”) is used to refer to the stereotypical aloof air of the city and its inhabitants. The foreigners who used to live in Kitano built their homes and businesses in Western-style architecture, and while modern Kitano isn’t considered a foreigner district many of the historic buildings are still in use today, providing a stark contrast to the rest of the city. The Kitano Starbucks, situated about halfway between a medium-intensity thigh workout and the need for a breather, is special because it operates from one of these Western homes. A room at the back of the house has been converted into the order counter, but the front sitting rooms, dining room, bathroom, upstairs lounges, and meeting rooms have all been preserved and used as seating. The interior of the house and its furniture are also Western, and it’s possible that many pieces came directly from homes in the area. The stairs to the second floor are steep, narrow, and carpeted with deep red velvet; the floors are wooden and creaky, the walls are plastered with faded yet elegant wallpaper, and the sconce lights illuminate the plush chairs with a dim, warm light, almost like candles. While getting to the shop is always a workout, the Kitano Starbucks is one of my favorite cafés in all of Japan. It has no fancy drinks or unique coffee blends, but I have many happy memories in that house. My friend and I would often make the climb up the mountain on a Friday night and settle into a second-floor nook that overlooked the street, meandering downstairs every so often to order a second, third, or fourth drink. We would stay until the store closed at nine, and after a few visits some of the baristas began to recognize us. As they made our coffees and teas they would also make small talk, asking about where we were from and what we were studying and why we came to Japan, and laughing when we told them that Japanese chai lattes were objectively better than the ones in America. Starbucks may be a global chain but there is only one Kitano, and there is rarely a place and time that I wish more to return to than those Friday evenings.

 

Bleu Park, Kobe

Bleu Park was a café I saw en route to university when I studied in Okamoto, but only visited once. It sells a variety of flowers, plants, and home goods as well as a food and drink, and the excess of stitched crafts, handmade wreaths, and scented plant blends makes it feel like an organic cottage variant of Howl’s bedroom in his moving castle. Everything is quaint and earthy and pleasantly claustrophobic, with only one long table pressed against the windows for seating. There are a surprising amount of coffee and tea options for such a small place, and a few seasonal cakes rotate through the extra menu slots. I wouldn’t recommend visiting this café if you’re anywhere short on time; everything is made very fresh, as is obvious by how agonizingly long it takes to receive your order, but it becomes a bearable punishment if you have a friend and a penchant for people-watching. The drinks and food are both delicious once they arrive, though it’s debatable whether or not that makes up for the loss of an afternoon. Overall this cottage-esque café is a lovely place to visit, but being both off of Kobe’s usual stomping grounds and having slow service, I wouldn’t recommend it to travelers.

 

RJ Café, Osaka

There are many cafés along the river near Yodogawa, but only one boasts cookie coffee. RJ Café is a place that serves a healthy variety of food and drink, but their claim to fame is their cookie-cup coffee, which, as it sounds, is a small latte served in a cup (complete with handle!) made of shortbread and lined with chocolate to prevent immediate crumbling. Before your coffee is served you’re given a list of guidelines as to how to make the most of your experience. This includes picking up the cup with both hands (the handle is secured with white chocolate, but it’s better to be safe than sorry), photographing and drinking your coffee in a timely fashion (that chocolate will melt eventually, and then you’ll have a mess!), and finishing all of the coffee before starting on the cup. To add to the fun, the baristas decorate each cup with an icing logo, then make latte art characters on each and every cookie-cup coffee they serve—boys, girls, dogs, cats, and more. While not something I’d return for again and again—you go for the novelty, not the quantity!—RJ Café is a fun place to visit when you have a hankering for a side of sweetness with your coffee. Just don’t expect the shop atmosphere to match: it’s a surprisingly edgy mix of modern furniture, skeletal dog statues, and a fake bat hanging from the ceiling.

 

君の名は。Pop Up Café, Osaka

For those not familiar with animated films, 君の名は。(Kimi no Na wa., meaning “Your Name is…?”) was the highest-grossing box office film of all time in Japan after its premier in September of 2016. It beat out megahits like Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away and even Harry Potter in ticket sales, and was the talk of not only Japan but animation enthusiasts worldwide for months after the release, showing in theaters for over five months. I saw the movie in October and loved it immediately; apart from having a complex but heartfelt storyline, it boasts some of the most beautiful visuals in the industry. The director, Makoto Shinkai, is known for such visuals in films of his like Garden of Words, Five Centimeters per Second, and of course Kimi no na wa., and his most recent film certainly hadn’t disappointed! I myself was touched by the movie, not only because of how well-done it was, but also because I was proud of myself for being able to understand the story in Japanese with no subtitles.   It also doesn’t hurt that some of my friends now joke that, minus the lake, I live in a place looking pretty similar to one of the main settings of the story.

Due to the immense success of the film among all age groups, a pop-up café toured the country through the middle of 2017. Pop-up cafés, while uncommon in America, are hugely popular in Japan. Most stay in one city for either a few weeks or a few months before closing or moving to a new location. These cafés have themed food, drink, and merchandise from the franchise, and are often centered on popular films, anime, manga, video games, or characters.

I visited the Kimi no Na wa. Café first with friends, and a second time with my mom who, upon seeing my pictures from the first time, wanted to go when she came to visit. It was the first meal she had in Japan! The café and adjoining shop were all decorated with posters from the film, and the video screens scattered along the ceiling also played clips of the movie. But the main attraction of the café was the cuisine—all recreations of food from the film, or inspirations taken from settings and characters. The strawberry pancakes, the latte with one of the movie’s famous lines, お前は誰だ？ (“Who are you?”), written on top, and the cotton-candy pour-over drink were the crowning glories on the menu. Unlike the cotton-candy pour-over at the Pink Pool Café, this one was amazing: it had coffee on the bottom, but you poured milk over the multi-colored cotton candy sitting on top to reveal a message from the movie that had been trapped inside. The cotton candy then dripped into the coffee with the milk. It was a bit messy, but was a fun representation of the shooting star at the center of the film, cutting through the night sky in a white light.

While this café is no longer accessible, it was an awesome chance to feel like I was living in a movie. And thankfully, while the café is gone Kimi no Na wa. will always be around; I would definitely recommend it! It’s a beautiful movie with some interesting plot twists, and while some of the jokes don’t make any sense if you see the English version it’s worth it a watch in any language.

 

Kumamoto Milk Tea, Kumamoto City

As suggested in the name, Kumamoto Milk Tea specializes in…tea. Specifically milk tea. Originally a Taiwanese store, this shop has travelled across the ocean to deliver all types of leaf, fruit, and bubble teas to the city. I’ve never heard of half of the blends that they offer, possibly because I’m translating them wrong…after all, since it’s Taiwanese brand, the menu is almost entirely written in Chinese characters. Despite having to look up what the drink options are every time I go the milk tea at this shop is authentic, which is all I can ask for. The store itself is nothing to write home about—a simple, clean, bright white bar and seating area shoved behind some accessory shops in a nondescript mall—but the milk tea is noteworthy enough to put it on the map and put a line out the metaphorical door. Moreso than the tea itself, I was impressed that this shop makes good enough tapioca bubbles as to entice even me, who usually turns up her nose at them and says that having them in her drink is like drinking “tea with obstacles.” But Kumamoto Milk Tea is a game-changer. You can’t resist those bubbles!

 

AndCoffeeRoasters, Kumamoto City

A place that probably makes the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had in Japan, AndCoffeeRoasters is a small, industrial-minimalist shop wedged between pricey vintage clothing and indie designer stores, overlooking a side alley a few blocks from the shopping streets of the city. It is unassuming both outside and inside with an aesthetic made entirely of wood and exposed metal, but the short, simple menu and in-house coffee bean roasters reminded me of places like %ARABICA and Anthracite when I first went. (Maybe the secret is having your café name start with an “A” and putting a bean roaster inside?) The interior is a bit too delicate and too bright to look like The Roastery, but has the same modern edge to it. The baristas, of which there’s usually only one at a time, are all kind and relaxed, but by looking around the shop you can tell they love what they do: at first glance the corkboards seem cluttered with random flyers, but on closer inspection they all turn out to be advertisements for coffee seminars and competitions. Bold stickers with slogans like “Mugs not Drugs” are plastered on the front panels of the metal staircase, and assorted merchandise from the shop’s bean supplier brings pops of red into the cool grey-and-white interior. Seasonal taster menus almost make the place feel like a winery with beans instead of grapes. If you venture up to the second floor to sit, you’ll find a few wooden tables, a bar area, and some sleek black leather chairs perched near the indoor balcony that overlooks the roaster downstairs. I’ve been several times now but have still only ever ordered the Old Fashioned Coffee, and it has yet to disappoint me no matter what bean blend it’s been made with. Choosing to eat in (or “drink in,” in this case) gets you a cute Coke-bottle shaped glass branded with a simple “&,” straw poking out of the top, whereas a to-go order gives you a takeaway cup with a tag attached that kind of looks like a laundry label. This label tells you about the beans used to make the coffee, flavor notes, preparation method, and location of origin. My favorite thus far has been the Ethiopian blend, which they say has overtones of peach and tea, but which I found to be much more nutty than most of the other coffees I’ve had. It’s exciting to have the same drink taste different each time because of where the beans came from, which again reminds me of “traveling the world with coffee,” the ideal that %ARABICA so pursues from their own shop, hundreds of miles away. While these two cafés are not the same—the modern elegance of %ARABICA feels like a laboratory of delicate gold levers and billowing steam, large windows and constant in-and-out of customers making its atmosphere and influence bleed into the landscape around it, whereas the workshop vibes of AndCoffeeRoasters create the impression of an innovative studio with a quiet but powerful statement about their work and their beliefs, the interior a clean metal slate for the coffee to speak over—they feel very similar to me, or perhaps I have just created equally good memories in both of them. Overall, while my weakness for a simple aesthetic and the smell of roasting coffee might contribute to my love of AndCoffeeRoasters, the place is also genuinely one of the most relaxed, best quality cafés I’ve ever found.

 

Elephant Coffee, Aso City

Elephant Coffee is one of the rare cafés in the area of Aso in which I live; I found it off of the tourism map near our famous shrine. It’s quite close to my apartment—within walking distance—situated inside a train station which has seen a lot less traffic since the earthquake two years ago shut down the westbound lines. Still, for the few trains that do come, Elephant Coffee has a bar that overlooks the tracks. A small, one-off shop, Elephant Coffee has a few drinks that make use of regional specialties, like milk from the Jersey cows in Oguni, and it also offers some local specialties like tomatoes and pickled vegetables. The coffee is of the shop’s own blend, bitter but pleasant, and each day there is a limited amount of cold-drip available. I’m not actually sure if they ever run out given that I usually am the only customer I see, but that could be because I can only ever come at strange times. A local ginger cat whose name I’ve forgotten likes to hang out in the shop, meowing incessantly for some milk, or possibly affection. In reality, the cat belongs to the pachinko parlor not far from the train station, and when he visits the owner spends a lot of her time picking him up and taking him back outside.