Day 1.5 - Attack of the killer cats: Lunch at the cat cafe

During the day with Lori and Ross we stopped in at at special place many Japanese visit, the Cat Cafe. What is a cat cafe? Well, it's a place where you can go and play with cats for an hour or so for $9 and have lunch there.



Many Japanese go there to play with the cats which may sound kinda weird from where we are standing but it makes perfect sense. For many here in Japan they don't have a chance to own a pet so the only experience they have is the occasional stray cat in the streets.



The pay this premium because they can't own pets here and their culture loves cats. They celebrate cats everywhere. Neko (cat in japanese) is everywhere and even their most popular shipping service has a mother cat carrying a baby cat as their logo. Lucky cat is the most popular cat in asia and Hello Kitty is the most favorite character among girls.



So what do you do in a culture that celebrates cats and every girls loves cute kittens, you have a Cat Cafe where you can play with cats. We entered the facility, one among half a dozen in Tokyo, and were greeted with instructions on how to properly behave among cats.



The place we went to was in the middle of Shinjuku and was located in a building and took up two floors.



There were cats everywhere, laying, sitting, standing, playing, they were relaxed, playful and spoiled.



We had one hour to spend with the cats.



As Gaijin, there was no reason we went there since we owned cats but the novelty of paying to play with cats and eat lunch was quite the novelty.



This didn't exist in the US so it was quite an unique experience.



It was quite the amazing time and no cats were harmed during our visit to their cafe.

They have names for every one of their three dozen cats but one in particular was the store favorite.


It has a puffy face and has quite the unique personality.


By the time we left the Cat Cafe, it was packed with Japanese, primarily girls, having fun and playing with cats.