Labels: frivolous, grad trip, kyoto, lookbook, osaka, photo entry, tokyo, travel

written at 01:16 0 comments

More cafe adventures in Japan, this time round in Tokyo! After exploring Shibuya and patronising Muji for the umpteenth time, we made our way to attic room to escape the drizzle outside. Coffee is decent-ish but they have no English menus available, which proved to be a problem. I wanted to order dessert, but from my garbled conversation with the waiter, I inferred that they only serve main courses and drinks? Then again, I MAY be wrong. Something might have been lost in translation along the way. Perhaps you'll have better luck if you speak the language or are better at sign language than I am, LOL.



Having had my coffee fix earlier on at attic room, I settled for a chai latte when we navigated our way to this next cafe. Similar to Cafe Bibliotic Hello! which I wrote about in my Kyoto Cafe Adventures, this was one of the bigger cafes we had a chance to visit whilst in Japan. Hooray for English menus, I finally managed to satisfy my sweet tooth with a slice of banana walnut cake! It was still pouring when we were at Streamer Coffee Company, and I noticed staff members bringing out umbrellas for their customers to borrow. I was impressed by the amount of trust the employees have with their customers, to have enough faith that these customers will have the basic courtesy to come back on another day to return the umbrellas. I'm not sure if I'll ever witness the same act in a Singapore cafe #justsaying



Third cafe joint I visited in Tokyo - as I'm churning out this entry, I realised how uninspired I am to continue writing. Maybe it's because I had just about the same coffee order at most of the cafes. Their cafe-culture is a tad different from ours. They don't often serve food and to be frank, most Singaporeans won't fly all the way to Japan to eat at their cafes. We rather drink the coffee, then head on over to somewhere else and grab a bowl of ramen or chirashi-don.

Hence, it's getting a tad monotonous to constantly keep saying that the coffee is "pretty decent" at all the different joints. Because I've said this many times before, I'm no coffee connoisseur. As long as the roast isn't overly charred or acidic, I'm fine with it. So yeah, maybe just let the photos do the talking for this outlet. In case you can't really tell, it's super tiny and serves as more of a takeaway kiosk in my opinion.



This last place received rave reviews online and was highly recommended by a couple of friends. There was even a long queue when we went to visit. However, I feel that it is ridiculously over-rated. If you MUST give this place a try, order ONLY their hot coffee. The iced options taste very mediocre and is totally not worth waiting in line for. The baked custard, which I ordered just to try, isn't good as well. Overall, I was highly disappointed with the place - partly because my expectations were somewhat built up and partly because the coffee, in my amateur opinion, was average.

I guess that wraps up my Japan Cafe Adventures entries. I'm still figuring out how I want to categorise the remainder of my posts. Hopefully I'll have some spare time in the next two weeks to finish them off before I start work full time. My days of bumming are numbered, sighs*

Labels: food, grad trip, japan, tokyo, travel

written at 21:45 0 comments

Kick-starting my Japan trip posts with one that covers the two cafes I visited whilst in Kyoto. I won't be blogging about EVERYTHING I did in Japan, because let's face it, do you really want to read about my visits to all the different temples on this trip? I didn't do any prior research on cafes to visit so as I stood in the pouring rain after visiting the bamboo groves, I typed "most popular coffee joints in Kyoto" and this place popped up in my google search.

It's relatively easy to find this place with the help of google maps. Like most of the F&B outlets in Japan, this cafe was quite tiny, so I wouldn't recommend visiting it in large groups. The coffee was excellent, but once again, I need to emphasise that I'm not extremely particular about my coffee. We didn't order anything to eat because we visited in between meals. Overall, the place has a nice zen environment that's nice to chill at, alone or with friends. There was only one person working when we visited the place, so do expect a 10 to 15 minute wait for your coffee orders.



Our friend recommended this cafe because it opens till late, which worked out perfectly for us because we had a lot of time to kill before catching our overnight bus (at 00:40H) to Tokyo. It's the largest cafe and possibly one of the largest F&B establishment I visited whilst in Japan. It's well furnished, with dim lighting. So if you want to take nice photos, remember to visit before the sun sets otherwise your photos will mostly turn out bad.

It's a tad pricey here as compared to Sentido and the coffee isn't as good. However, the seats were more comfortable, with a nice back rest, as compared to the stools we were balancing on back at Sentido, ha-ha. Food was decent, but opt for the dessert options instead (unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the cake we ordered, LOL). Nice place to kick back and catch up with friends because it is less zen than some of the other cafes I visited, where you'll feel self conscious if your conversations aren't held in whispers. Only negative about this place is that they allow their customers to smoke inside. Actually, I think that rule applies to most cafes. So yeah, if you're unlucky and there's someone puffing away like a chimney near you, you'll leave smelling like you spent the day partying in a night club or casino.

Stay tune for most posts about my Japan trip; the next one I'm planning on doing is a post about the cafes I visited whilst in Tokyo.

Labels: food, grad trip, japan, kyoto, travel

written at 18:19 0 comments