Japan 2010

During our exploration of Tokyo, our interest was piqued by "Cat Magic" posters. Investigating further, we learned that Tokyo has over 30 cat cafes. Because many Tokyo apartment dwellers are not allowed to have pets, some enterprising business people set up cat cafes where Tokyoites who are starved of feline company may go to get their fix. Looking at the options, we opted to go for Calico Cafe in Harajuku.

Finding the cafe itself took a while thanks to Tokyo's bizarre address system, but we eventually found it. The Calico Cat Cafe was on the fifth floor of a nondescript building. Here's the drill: Guests must exchange shoes for slippers and wash their hands with soap and water before they can even enter the front door. Once past the front door, we were asked to hold our hands out for the staff to squirt hand sanitizer on them. Properly sanitized, they placed a lanyard around our necks with a tag recording the time we arrived. We were then handed a menu with overpriced sodas on it; as it is considered impolite to not buy a drink, I opted for a small, very watered down diet coke with a lot of ice costing JPY250. When we were ready to leave, we handed the tag back to the staff and they charged us by the 15-minute block.

One of the most important rules at cat cafes is that guests should not interact with any sleeping cats, and they cannot pick cats up. There were about 20 cats on the premises. Many of them were sleeping. They were friendly, but you got the sense that they had already had too much human interaction that weekend, and they were pretty much in "enough already" mode. Regardless, they were all sweet and friendly.

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