Cafe Culture in Japan: What IS A Cafe?!

Study Cafes?

One of the first things that surprised me after coming to Japan (and continues to confuse me still from time to time) was the cafe culture. At a lot of these cafes, there’s an unspoken or unwritten rule that you’re not supposed to crack open your laptop or study there (in some cases the staff might ask you to not do so).

Usually I love to cafe hop back home in America, because it’s a great place to get work or light reading done. But that’s not really what the cafe culture is like in Japan, at least from what I’ve seen. Instead, you’re more likely to see families or couples or individuals come in to talk over coffee or just sit and enjoy whatever they bought before they leave. A lot of the time these cafes are smaller or narrower, so seats are limited, so the “no sitting and doing work” rule makes sense.

When I asked students at KUIS about this, they mentioned bigger cafe chains where studying is more acceptable, but otherwise, just be careful not to overstay your time by too much or study where you notice other people aren’t.

And that’s for the cafes, at least in the more traditional sense of the word.

Themed Cafes?

Cafes are almost everywhere in Japan, but that doesn’t mean they’re the sit down and get coffee and go type all the time. Here, there’s also concept cafes, internet cafes, maid cafes, animal cafes… the list goes on and I’m positive there’s more out there I don’t even know of.

Depending on the theme, like an animal cafe, the main activity is to interact with the animals there, like with the cats or capybaras. So, not really any studying can be done there… Other concept cafes are for more if you wanted to interact with people dressed or acting under a certain theme, for example, there are maid and butler cafes. There are also a lot of collaboration cafes that happen with popular IPs and anime, where you can buy special themed goods and merchandise.

Collab Cafes?

A note on collaboration cafes: they mean exactly what they sound like -- they collaborate with different themes and IPs and give out drinks or foods based on it!

These collaboration cafes often only are open or exist for a short period of time of usually two weeks or so, unless it’s an established store like a Sanrio or Ghibli cafe. A lot of the times for anime collaborations, you have to keep your eyes peeled for signs and ads for them, or better yet, keep updated on X, or Twitter, because it's mostly advertised through there. 

And if it’s a special event like a collaboration cafe, you will need to reserve a ticket which is often by a lottery system. (Having a Japanese phone number is really useful in these cases!) I was really worried about the “lottery” part of it, but I was able to get into every event I signed up for, but it’s good to keep in mind the kind of system they use.

All this to say, "cafe" doesn’t really have a singular image or meaning in Japan at least. And yet, all of these things are still called a "cafe." It can be pretty confusing, so as long as you know what you’re in for, it can all be quite fun to experience at least once!