The other day we tried to visit a sushi train restaurant but were put off by long lines, so we were waiting at the door when it opened yesterday at 11!
This is a famous chain restaurant, known for low prices and automated service. Diners can complete the entire experience without ever speaking with an employee: everything from arriving and being seated through to ordering, food delivery and paying is automated.
That’s our booth. You order using the tablet, and food is delivered using the track on the top. The lower track on which you can see food is the traditional sushi train and you can take plates as you like from it. Every special order – including drinks – arrives on the top track.
The prices are very low and we ate a lot. I personally had 6 shrimp tempura, a bowl of udon, fries, onion rings and a mandarin drink. Kristin had about half a dozen plates of sushi as well as a drink and dessert and the entire order came to under US$20! The food was excellent too, which is probably why this place is always busy!
Another gimmick they have is a gacha machine at every table! Every five plates you return in the special slot gives a chance at a gacha roll. Unfortunately, despite 10 plates returned, both of our attempts at a free roll were fails (as evidence by cute animations in the table), so we never learned what’s in the gacha bubbles!
Animal ‘cafes’ are rooms where you can spend time with animals for a small fee. They’re popular in Japan and we’ve been to cat and owl ones before. The main shopping arcades in Kyoto have many but one in particular caught Kristins eye:
She spent an hour in ‘Mipig’ the micro pig cafe yesterday and said it was fantastic.
At first the pigs were all over a couple already inside and she only got attention from a few, but when the other people left this happened:
That’s at least sixteen porkers! She was the best thing in the world for these pigs for a while, who slept in her lap and grunted as she petted them. Her one sentence comment on this photo is: “It was as mad and chaotic as it looked!”
While she was there I went retro game shopping (and spent an hour in one store alone) and on my way discovered a shrine specializing in marriage. To my astonishment the prayer boards:
Were all hand-painted with an astonishing degree of skill! Was this the same artist doing them all? A shrine priest perhaps? I’ll never know:
Meanwhile Kristin had left the pigs and moved over to a cat cafe! ‘Mocha’ is a well-known chain with many branches, and she wanted to visit their kitties:
Incidentally these cafes aren’t too expensive. The pigs cost about $20 for the hour, and the cats less. The cat cafe made most of its money from the extras they sell, including frozen iceblocks for the cats:
As with most cats she said they lost interest in her once she ran out of food. Apparently the cat cafe cats are professional moochers!
Later in the day we went up Kyoto Tower for a look at the night lights, and we did some shopping. It was a Herculean task packing all our stuff for the return trip to Tokyo, and we’ll absolutely need to buy an additional suitcase, but we managed.
Kristin visited her robot companion again in a large electronics store, and they even let her hug it! These things are dangerously cute!
There’s a lot more to tell from yesterday but I’m saving some for dedicated arcade posts. For a day in which we had no specific events planned we managed to do a lot!
I’ve heard postcards have begun to arrive. Watch your mailboxes; there will be more!
The pigs!!!