The Tourist-y Bit: Moff Animal Cafe

 

Basic Info

Location 

 PARCO midi, 3F, Sakae

Opening Hours

11AM - 8PM, everyday

Cost

¥600 for 30 minutes, with an additional ¥200 every 10 minutes, although it’s capped at ¥1600 on a weekday and ¥2400 on weekends and holidays. Extra for coffees, drinks and cat treats

Ellie's General Opinion - 8.5/10

I am a complete sucker for an animal cafe, especially since living in a small Japanese apartment means I can’t have a dog or cat of my own. This cafe was particularly enjoyable, with a lot of cats, but also a lot of space.

Instagrammability  - 9/10

Adorable kitties, in a bright and clear environment makes the perfect Instagram shot. And don’t even get me started on the lattes with cat faces somehow printed on to them! 
Stereotypical Cringey Tourist-ness - 5/10

While this isn’t necessarily a ‘tourist’ attraction as such, no trip to Japan is complete without a visit

to some kind of animal cafe, after all Japan is where cat cafes really started taking off, despite the first cat cafe opening in Taiwan. 

Cultural Appreciation Points  - 3/5

A lot of people associate cat cafes with Japan, though they can now be found throughout the world, so I wouldn’t say it’s particularly cultural.

After getting turned turned down by the circus that was too full to accommodate us, the next obvious step was amusing ourselves in a cat cafe, I decided. My boyfriend wasn’t so enthusiastic but was willing to go along with the plan, so I dragged him to Moff, a cafe that was particularly attractive to me because of the coffees with a cat face on them. 

Obviously, I let my boyfriend do the talking while I stared in wonder at the cats lurking inside a large, bright room with ceiling high windows that displayed the city streets below. 

Once the lady had explained the cost and the rules of the cafe, we replaced our shoes with the mandatory slippers and headed inside the cafe. A whole bunch of weirdly shaped wooden partitions took up the majority of the room, allowing plenty of spaces for humans and cats alike to hide and sit. 

We started, of course, with coffee. I ordered a latte, desperate to see the famed cat face printed on to it. I was not disappointed, I had a coffee with a cat named ‘Yui’ displayed on the foam. 

Then we decided to settle in a corner, away from other guests, something that the wooden partitions made incredibly easy to do. The privacy was nice and when a cat finally made its way to our area, I was overjoyed.

In my opinion the partitions were a nice touch, as it made it feel easier to interact with the cats without feeling like you were interrupting other people’s interactions or being interrupted by others. 

After a little while, though, I grew restless and decided to take a trip around and see what other cats I could pet. Plenty of cats roamed the cafe, and it was easy enough to approach them without them running away, though I noticed a few slip through a gap in the wall to what I assumed was a quite area for the cats to get away from the constant pestering of customers. 

When I was done with my adventure, concious that I didn’t want to spend too much money, I returned to my boyfriend, who was sat calmly next to a sleeping cat. He reminded me that the maximum cost was ¥1600 and that we were pretty close to hitting it, so we may as well stay as long as I wanted. 

Armed with this knowledge, I continued my cat bonding for about two hours. I was only satisfied when I managed to spend  few quite moments with a cat on my lap. After this, I decided that there was only so much cat interactions I could need in one day, so we headed home. Plus my boyfriend was developing some itchy rashes that may or may not have been an underlying cat allergy.