This is my personal web site. I take no responsibilities on the information listed here.

Monday, March 26, 2012

forget-me-not: Like a Newly Born Flower....

Just like how buds grow and flowers bloom, a small maid cafe with a magnificent potential was born in a corner of Akihara this spring.  It is called "forget-me-not".  Yes, just like a name of the flower.  Indeed, it is not just a mere maid cafe, but it is also a maid flower shop.

Located right by a small park, this newly born cafe opened just a few weeks ago.  While it is not that far from the main street of Akihabara Electric Town, you will be surprised how quiet and calm the cafe is.  Drinking a cup of coffee while gazing at the flowers by the entrance illuminated by the calm sunlight from the windows......... you easily loose a sense of reality.  I never felt so good just drinking a cup of coffee without doing anything.

Yes, you can also just purchase flowers there.  There is a "gardener" who will prepare the flowers for you.  It looks like a flower is one of a key concept of this cafe.  There are small books about flower fairies on the tables of the cafe space.  All maids have flowers on their hair bands, that is prepared for them every morning by the gardener.  Most of all, all maids have names that were taken from flowers that represents themselves.

Schatzkiste that I mentioned in my previous post apparently "produced" this cafe.  You see a lot of commonalities between these two cafes: classical hand-made(!) interiors, calm cozy environment, very sophisticated classical maid outfit...  However, the cafe is very unique on its own, and has this fresh atmosphere of newly born cafe.  I am very curious which direction this place might go.  My desire to observe the everyday changes of this place is too strong that I've been holding myself from blasting off the highway for over two hours to go to this place!

Since it is slightly off even from the side street, it might be little difficult to find this place.  Although, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PLACE!  If you walk around Akihabara and got tired, just look for this small flower shop.  I am sure the flowers will cure both your tired body & mind :-)

forget-me-not
http://fogemino.blogspot.jp/
MAP

Friday, March 23, 2012

Soup Curry Kamui: Hardcore Soup Curry from Hokkaido!

Another biased opinion about maid cafes & restaurants: cute costumes, bad food & drink.  WRONG!  If you have such an image on maid cafe & restaurants, go to Soup Curry Kamui.  Its soup curry is too good that you don't care if the waitress is wearing maid outfit or not.  (Although, please pay attention to her maid costume....  It's also great! ;-)

Indeed, the waitress is dressed in the maid outfit only on weekends & holidays, but I always go there even on weekdays just to have a great soup curry.  I even know some of my friends who go there, order curry soup without rice, and just drink it off like a juice.  It is that ADDICTIVE.  They use some serious spices, which is turned into anthropomorphic (or gijin-ka) characters by customers, and all these character illustrations (40 of them!) are displayed on the wall of Kamui.  (And you will be surprised how fabulous these illustrations are.)  You can pick spiciness of the curry when you order: I've only gone up to 5-kara or 5th level spiciness, but I think you could go up to 30-kara.  I have no clue how hot the 30-kara curry would be, or even if a human can survive that level......  I am looking forward to take my college roommate from Indonesia there one day and have him try 30-kara (He LOVED spicy foods :-p)

Also, they have periodic collaboration menu with other concept cafes or magazines/blogs, which they call "love-collabo".  The upcoming ones include the collaboration with my favorite Pondichery Etoile, that I am really looking forward to.  Indeed, I was quite surprised that they were going to collaborate with the cafe that is on the other side of Tokyo: very interesting how "connected" the concept cafe community is :-)

As I mentioned, the waitress there only dresses in the maid outfit on weekends.  There are two types of costumes: Kamui-original maid costume that was recently made, and the costume of legendary maid cafe Cafe Primevere that used to exist in Hokkaido.  There is a deep story on why they are using Primevere costume...  Why?  Well, I might mention about it some other time.....

Where Kamui is located is on the other side of the river from Akihabara station, where people consider more as "Kanda" rather than "Akiba".  However, I call this area "Akihabara frontier", since small but excellent maid-style shops are emerging in this area.  If you go to Akihabara next time, don't just wonder around that station area which is fully developed & organized.  Just cross that river and step forward, and be a pioneer!

Soup Curry Kamui
http://www.soupcurry-kamui.com/index.html
MAP

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Pondichery Etoile: An Oasis in the Nightless City

Akihabara is not the only place where concept cafes exist.  There is one in Shinjuku called Pondichery Etoile, one of my favorites.  The cafe is somewhat hidden: in order to get there, you have to go through famous entertainment district Kabuki-cho and Golden-gai.  Once you pass all adult-like bars and clubs, there is a small building with unfit cute Anime-like signs.  Entrance is very fishy: my maid-cafe friend Takatora-san was surprised when I told him I found the place by chance and went in alone without prior information :-p

Original Pondichery is located in 2F as maid reflexology.  In 4th floor, there is a sister bar called Pondichery Printemps which is Tokusatsu Bar, and Etoile is located in the 5th floor.  It is a "Lolita Fashion Cafe & Bar".  Girls there are dressed in lolita fashion. What is your image of lolita?  Cute and delicate?  Yes, I give them cute...... but delicate, I wonder! ;-p

Girls there are hardcore.  They have deep Otaku knowledge.  They serve alcohol and cook real foods.  (Sometime they even make fried foods in lolita costumes...)  They are outspoken.  And most of all, they work until 4 in the morning....  Yes, the place is open until 4 am EVERY DAY!! (>_<)/

Since I find this place, I have a place to go even passed midnight.  Last Friday, I went to Tokyo in my co-worker's car.  We got to Tokyo in 2:30AM.  Guess what?  We went to Etoile, and they were OPEN!  Not only open, but people were there and we had fun!  Apparently, it was a birthday of one of two girls who was working there that night, thus one of the regulars brought a birthday cake for her.  We sang birthday song for her in like 3AM in the morning.  Hardcore, isn't it ;-)

Midnight Shinjuku might be a bit challenging for the people who are temporary visiting Tokyo, so if you want to try this place out, I recommend you to go there in afternoon.  They are open around 2 or 3PM.  I am not sure if they have English menu.  If you are a challenger, come at night.  The one who is always drinking peppermint tea is me :-p

Pondichery Etoile
http://pondi.jp/e/index.html
MAP

Thursday, March 01, 2012

The Granvania: 1-coin lunch!

If you want to make a quick stop in Akihabara and visit a maid cafe, probably Granvania is the one.  It is right by the Electric Town Exit of Akihabara station, right under the railways.  (There are two other maid cafes also right by the same exit, but I personally don't like those, so don't confuse with those :-p)  It used to be an old cafe called Corona which already existed when I first started going to Akihabara back in my school days, and its antique interior & Corona coffee still remains in Granvania.  While it calls itself "European Guild-style Restaurant", they serve decent food in a reasonable price, and they also serve alcohol.

I love this place since their weekday lunch is soooo reasonable.  They have set meals with soup and salad, and it only cost 500 yen.  Yes!  One coin!  The quantities are decent (of course in Japanese standard in case you live in a country like US where everything is LARGE :-p), and they taste good!  I also ate there last Monday, when I took paid holiday and went to Akihabara. ;-)

I often see people from abroad visiting there.  I heard from one of maids that they do have English menu for people who cannot read Japanese, so I highly recommend this place also to all of you who cannot read or speak Japanese.

The Granvania
http://the-granvania.ciao.jp/
MAP