Urusei Yatsura Cafe

Unfortunately I haven't updated this blog in a long while, despite having done so much during my time in Osaka. I will upload my adventures later, even though it will be about 6 months since it acctually happened.

I couldn't stay away from Japan, so 2 months after me coming back I went to Japan again. This was just to get away from my thesis and personal issues really. On one of my last days in Osaka, I was walking around Shinsaibashi (my main purpose was to go to Amerika mura to visit Puresound and Closet Child, hohoho) and by pure coinsidence I walked by a pop up café themed Urusei Yatsura! I began watching Urusei Yatsura 2 years ago while studying in Tokyo and found it quite amusing (I've also liked Ranma½ and Inuyasha since my early teens so I was eager to see some more from the same manga creator).

I'm not so sure how popular Urusei Yatsura is outside of Japan, especially in the West. I know some movies were released in Sweden but I don't know anyone who watched those. In Japan however it's very popular, one of those most people know of no matter the age. Since it's old though, most guests were in their 30s as far as I could see.

The café was on the 2nd floor of the building, so at the bottom floor was a showwindow for all the merch and on the walls surrounding the stairway were different pictures from Urusei Yatsura. In the actual café the walls were covered in drawings from the manga, as well as posters looking like paintings. The soundtrack was playing and on one of the walls and tv screens the anime was playing.

The menu was interesting and I would probably have prefered the foods, but since I had a huge lunch that day and wasn't really up for eating, I just managed to squeeze down a french toast for the sake of it. When ordering a drink and a food you were given an original sticker when before leaving, and for every drink you got a random coaster.

Out of all the themed café and restaurants I've been to, the food here was not as good as what I'm used to. I can't say what quality the other meals had, but the french toast was rather dry and did not taste much. However, it was so cute that I don't really mind.

The french toast came hidden, with just an image of Jariten burning your food...

...and obviously it was made to look all burnt! This dish came with a sorry-card from Jariten, hehehe.

As for my drink, I ordered a minth/lime soda. Very tasty.

This is also a bit late, I realised that today (May 28th) was the closing day. It seems to have been a similar café in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Their webpage for those interested:

http://the-guest.com/urusei_yatsura_osaka/

Alice in Wonderland restaurant

There's a lot of theme restaurants and bars in Tokyo and this time I finally tried one of the Alice in wonderland restaurants!
I've seen pictures and read about it, but I had not yet got myself there until now. There are seven of them in Japan, including the ones in Nagoya and Osaka. In Tokyo however they are located in Shibuya, Ginza, Ikebukuro and then two in Shinjuku. Everone of them looks different and has a individual name, I went to the one in Shibuya called Alice in a dancing land.

 The menu was inside a bick clock, and it acctually worked!

Of course these restaurants go all in the theme, the staff is dressed as characters (we were led in by the Mad hatter) or just in costumes to match the story. Also, our appetizer came with a tiny card, saying "eat me", and when the waitress arrived with it she told us that we should be careful because it might make us bigger (like in the story!).
About the food, you can get a whole menu, which lasts for tw or three hours, or you can just order seperate dishes or smaller menus, which I did. Me and my friend did one of the smaller menus, including an appetizer, main dish and dessert. They had various drinks and also original cocktails, so I decided to try the Cheshire cat drink. My menu was as below!

It's not that visible in the picture, but the drink acctually glowed, no idea how that worked...

 Appetizer, buttery bicuits with soup.

 Avocado and salmon sallad, green sallad and chocolate mousse with strawberry sauce.

Pasta with shrimps and vegetables.

When we arrived, we also got bunny ears to put on, white or black. I was acctually suprised that the food was as good as it was. I didn't have any high expectations at all, concidering I assumed you paid for the experience more than the food. In the background they played Disney music, made me feel very nostalgic. Since all of the restaurants have different interior and style it's an experience just sitting there and enjoying it. For example, at this restaurant they have a merry go round, in which the tables are located.

After we paid our bill and was about to leave, our waitress arrived with a bag of tea, saying we should drink this to get to our normal size again. Some might think this kind of roleplay is silly, but I absolutely love it! That's one of the things which is so amazing about Tokyo, you can find anything here. The staff was very kind, when we were leaving the Mad hatter saw that we were taking picture in front of one of the cards, so he helped us getting a picture together!

I don't acctually remember the total I paid but I believe it was somewhere around 3500-4000 yen, which it was totally worth! They have a table fee of 500yen each, be aware. Reservations can be made through their webpage, but you have to have a Japanese cellphone. However it wasn't crowded at all when I went (around 18.30 on a weekday).

Check them out!
http://alice-restaurant.com/

池袋男子BL学園 -

I've wanted to visit a maid café for quite some time but I've never managed to get anyone to go with me. I finally found a friend in school who's into BL and she told me the most fantastic piece of information the other night.

We talked about maid cafés and butler cafés, and then she told me that a friend of hers mentioned a BL café!*

To be honest I don't have that much experience of BL, because every single one I've watched has either showed rape or pedophilia and that's not what I enjoy watching. So this café of course made me very interested, what is it like? I went home that night google:ing!

The first thing to show up was a BL café that closed in 2013, and that seemed to be it. Fortunatley I was wrong. There it was, Ikebukuro Danshi BL Gakuen. Everything was in Japanese and the rules was put as an imagefil so I couldn't do the lazy version and copy paste into googletranslate just to easily get the image of what it said without having to strain my braincells. My biggest worry was that it would be for japanese people only, yes not that weird here, but we were lucky and yesterday we took off to this some what weird café.

I came straight from an apointment which took longer than I imagened so I had not been home for a change of clothes. You see, the theme for this café was school, on the webpage the boys working there even had a selfintroduction saying which year student they were, so I didn't want to show up in jeans but I ended up doing so anyway due to lack of time.

It wasn't hard to find at all, and a sign was put outside the building so everyone easily could see it.We got up and ironicly stood there laughing not knowing if we should open the door or not, or what we'd see since the only thing we could hear was girls laughing. Being brave we just opened the door and a guy dressed as a high school student turns around. He greeted us welcome and asked if we were here for the first time, if we understood japanese and then pointed to the only free table in the right corner.

The café wasn't that big, looked sort of like they aimed for the lobby of some expensive school with fake leather furniture, blackboard and churchwindows.
Our guy came back and explained the rules, there would be no photographing and no touching. Then, back to the roleplay. He began explaining that when this school opened it was for boys only, them, but now it has opened up for girls aswell, us. We could see which year the students were by looking at their ties, black, red or blue, I think blue was first year, red second and black third. We would automatically start off as first year students but the more we went there we'd upgrade, but as for now, if an older student would talk to us we should use a bit more respectful speach and sit up straight. They reffered to us as our names plus chan since we were "younger".

All of the staff came up at least once to us and talked, asking where we came from, some were easier to understand than others, not because of them but because of my limited japanese. Our guy came back and put a BL book on our table while he walked around talking to others.
This evening I'd say the café had about 12 guests and 5 staff. In general they didn't walk around and made out with eachother which many might think, they would maybe hug or just talk in a cute way to eachother.

While we sat there trying to let all this sink in, we noticed that the table with girls infront of ours got very excited, screaming and laughing, while 2 of the students stood in front doing something.
One of the first year students came up to us and talked, and asked if we wanted to have pocky, the japanese chocolate sticks. We might aswell try since that table had pocky and they looked like they had a blast. He then explained that in the pocky menu you get to set up a BL scene that 2  of them will act out, especially for us. I couldn't really decide if I was thrilled or freaked out, but might aswell try since we're here.

He came back with a glass of pocky, and asked for a story, who'd be in it and who'd be uke and seme. This was a huge decision, we had to think about it. After a lot of thinking we came up with a story, told a third guy who completly seriously listened, asked where it would take place and gave suggestions. Then he walked off to tell the two victims.

They came back, showed us a seat in front of our table and sofa so that we could watch them comfortably.
They sat down and told us to tell them when to start, may I add that the guy who first showed us in seemed very excited so I don't think they suffered. No boys were harmed during this scene.

I'm not gonna tell what our scene was because that's private, but let me say they improved our idea and we got pretty excited.
When it was done our guy said that was nice because he was hungry so we offered him some pocky's and that made him very happy.

Then our hour was up. We asked for our check and our uke came back with that and our members cards. So, what does this kind of event cost? You can chose to stay 30 minutes or 1 hour, 500 yen for 30 minutes and 1000 yen for 1 hour, they sell drinks and even small amounts of food.
The members card cost 300 yen, and eventhough I'm about to leave the country I got one for the sake of a memory.
When we were on our way out another group of girls was about to leave, and we were told to wait. The boys wave you off, so you can't just leave! Very cute. They all got out to the entrance and waved and said thanks (in english) eventhough they spoke in japanese most of the time.

I must say it was a pretty special experience and very fun, but I have to admit not being fluent in japanese became an obstacle. So I wouldn't recomend it to anyone who doesn't speak japanese at all. My guess is that the guys working there are between 20-25years old and the customers looked more like 23-27 to be honest. I've never been to a hostclub, but I get the feeling it's about the same thing but cuter and more innocent.

Walking away from this café I couldn't decide if I was purely excited or if I was feeling like a perverted old man who put a bill in a strippers thong.


Webpage:http://www.blcafe.jp/pc/index.html

*(I don't think that many aren't familiar with the terms but just in case, maid café is a café with girls dressed up as maids, they talk to you and sometimes play games I've heard, and the same goes for butler café but it's guys or sometimes girls dressed as boys. BL is a shortened form of Boys Love, often reffered to as yaoi in the west but in Japan now a days BL is more often used. I've heard some confusion about there being a difference between BL and yaoi, that yaoi is supposed to be more hardcore but that's not true, at the bookstore everything goes under BL, intimate sexscenes as well as boys just kissing.)