Setting & Atmosphere

n my humble opinion, recreating an anime themed experience should be all about the details and besides food, that should be reflected in the decor as well.

Being a recurring ‘limited time only’ event, the interior for the Girls Night Out Sailor Moon Cafe does well in putting ‘Sailor Moon themed bells and whistles’ on whatever surface they can.

Inside, the cafe was decorated with newly created artworks for the event (minus Sailor Pluto and Saturn on the main poster WTF) and a fun, bold colour scheme just like the 90’s show. The official gift shop, the iconic anime soundtrack and projected Sailor Moon videos all served as a good distraction while you waited for your food.

My only pet peeve was that the already small cafe felt so cramped! It’s almost like

everyone was packed in on top of each other like a tin of sardines.

The table space for two people was almost impossible to fit drinks, two mains and adding desert to the mix meant having to balance a plate on your lap. It slowly dawned upon us that this experience was best suited to a light snack spot, rather than a full meal. Dinner was a constant ‘knocking-of-elbows’ with the person next to you and with the time limit looming, you are pressured to eat, enjoy and experience the café before the next group comes in. A chilled experience? Think again!

Despite its flaws, it was a fun casual dine out but if you were to live out your true weeaboo fantasies, the SHINING MOON TOKYO restaurant would be the better choice. We provided some extra photos for comparison below:

Inside the Cafe

Cafe’s Gift Shop (unfortunately many things were already sold out)

Cafe’s Table Top Designs

Photo Spot

 

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Costume Displays

 

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Stage Area and Seating (Scroll Next)

 

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Live Show

 

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Food

hough not as bad as the Pokemon Cafe, the food at the Girls Night Out Sailor Moon Cafe was a bit more sophisticated, but was still a mixed bag of good and bad.

Let’s begin with the drinks menu. I loved that they had a drink for every single Sailor Scout with their own colours and flavours (yes, sweet justice for Sailor Pluto and Saturn). I thought it was a cute touch to put their casual outfit artwork on the straws and as a bonus, you also received a free random coaster. The “Makoto” mint and lemon combo sounded refreshing but the mint syrup tasted borderline like toothpaste. Talyssa’s “Rei” cassis and pomegranate was nice and both drinks were garnished with frozen fruit. While, the drink combinations were interesting, given the cold autumn weather it would have been better if the fruits were fresh.

For food, they had a lunch and dinner menu with dinner time being the most appealing for mains. Talyssa chose the Moonlight Risotto which came with 4 different sauces inspired by the original Sailor Scouts; Mercury (blueberry cheese), Mars (napolitana sauce), Jupiter (pesto) and Venus (capsicum relish).  While the

flavours of this dish were quite good, it was a far cry from a risotto, with the texture of the rice being dry and hard. To this day, we are still left wondering why risotto would be served with a blueberry cheese sauce. Ah, the mysteries of Japanese-Western fusion.

In most situations, it usually goes without saying that the more expensive main options are generally much tastier.

My Chicken Steak Plate tasted great especially with the cheese sauce on top. It also came with a surprise glass of sparkling apple cider with rose petals inside and although I relish in the delight that it must have been a present from my man, Tuxedo Mask, it looked like I had grossly over-ordered and I didn’t realise my meal came with its own drink! Fml.

I digress, now we must talk about the desert because it was a massive let down. Although the Cosmic Heart Berry Sandwich looked good in the photo it also tasted super fake – like that artificial cherry flavouring which is a big “no” for me.

“Makoto” (mint and lemon soda) and “Rei” (cassis and pomegranate soda) (¥890 w/o tax each)

Moonlight Risotto (¥1,490 w/o tax) with the 4 different sauces inspired by the original Sailor Scouts;

Mercury (blueberry cheese), Mars (napolitana sauce), Jupiter (pesto) and Venus (capsicum relish)

Chicken Steak Plate with salad and soup set (¥1,990 w/o tax)

Cosmic Heart Berry Sandwich (¥1,690 w/o tax)

Service

or the first timers out there, anime cafe attractions almost always have a session time limit (this event was 1 hour and 20 minutes) and as a result are a bit systematic with a few steps to follow.

One thing I think I under-appreciated about the Pokemon Cafe was the ability to choose when your food arrives. As pop-up cafes are extremely busy, all the food comes at once which as mentioned before, is not great when your table is exceedingly small.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed all the freebies you can collect while dining at this event. It was like a personal challenge to collect everything. The wait staff were overall very bubbly and friendly.

Ticket Envelope Freebie 

Random Pick Coaster 

Table Mat Freebie

Numbered Ticket Card for the Gift Shop

VALUE FOR MONEY

onsidering the price of the gift shop items, the food, the entry fee and the “limited time only” aspect of the event, there’s a few things we need to factor in to determine our rating for the cafe’s overall value for money.

Unexpectedly, I was gobsmacked by the price of some of the items for sale. While the smaller trinkets at the gift shop like the acrylic key chains and postcards were reasonable in price (650 yen and 300 yen respectively), there were others that were grossly overpriced. For example, the Luna Glass Cup was a steep 1,600 yen and the Clear Bag was a whopping 1,800 yen. Holy crap! They might be collectable items but I can’t fathom anyone would pay top dollar to own something that basic.

Considering the quality of the food was comparable to meals served at local family restaurants like Denny’s or Gusto, the prices were a tad higher than we would expect to pay. With the consistent hits and misses with dishes and drinks, I definitely felt

cheated paying over 1,700yen for a subpar dessert (I’ll have that weird blueberry risotto combo instead, please).

After crunching the numbers including the price of the entry fee (650 yen), the average base price for one drink, one main and one dessert would be roughly 4,000 yen per person.

So, did we think it was money well spent?

Despite all these criticisms, our overall sentiment is that although it is indeed expensive and overpriced, what we’re paying for was the nostalgia and the experience to relive something that we love – and in that sense we found it enjoyable and “worth it” for the fun. Though if we were to recommend our readers one or the other, we think you should save your money for the SHINING MOON TOKYO instead for a better experience.

Acryclic Coaster and Key Chain Displays

Luna Cup and Clear Bag

Acrylic Character Stands

How to Book

urious to explore the world of anime dining for yourself?

To find news about these special events or cafes especially if it’s anime related, it’s best to follow Japanese trend sites like SoraNews24 to catch wind of any new attractions popping up around Tokyo and Japan throughout the year.

For foreigners that don’t read Japanese, the reservation process can be a bit confusing, but generally follows a similar pattern:

And you’re done!

Setting & Atmosphere

alling all boba and manga fans alike – have we got a fun-filled cafe experience for you!

For those that don’t know, comic book culture or “manga” is intensely popular in Japan and, given Tokyo’s penchant for all things novelty, it wasn’t too much of a surprise when we found out a 2D Cafe had opened up in Tokyo just before our trip!  Hooray!

Located in Shin-Okubo aka Tokyo’s Korea Town, the 2D Cafe first opened its doors in August 2019. Stepping inside this cafe is like stepping into the pages of a manga.  Everything inside, from the furniture to the walls, is painted white and outlined with black, hand-drawn sketch lines, making for both a trippy and extremely believable manga experience.  Not to mention it’s incredibly Instagrammable. 

Given the cafe’s novelty and instagrammable-ness, it’s not surprising that the crowd here is rather international with tourists from Europe, South-East Asia, America, Instagrammers (hey they really are a breed of their own), and of course, us Aussies ;) In fact, I think there was only one table of Japanese girls!  Despite this, the cafe was fairly empty when we arrived around noon, which made for a pleasant experience and allowed for some playful photo opportunities.  With the comic book setting of our surroundings, choosing to wear bright colourful clothing really made our photos pop.

You might be wondering, ‘if this cafe is so mind-blowing, why didn’t it get a perfect 5 star score?’ That my friends is an excellent question that has to do with Tokyo’s 2D Cafe predecessor, Cafe Yeonnam-dong 239-20 located in Seoul.  But first, enjoy pictures from Tokyo’s 2D Cafe:

There’s a lot of confusion online between Tokyo’s 2D Cafe and its famous predecessor; Cafe Yeonnam-dong 239-20 (now called Greem Cafe).   Pictures of Greem Cafe will often appear in blog posts about Tokyo’s 2D cafe, and I’m here to set the record straight. There are some key differences between the two cafes which makes Tokyo’s version score just a little less than its Korean competitor.  

Put simply, Greem Cafe steps it up a notch. Unlike Tokyo’s 2D cafe, where the floors are simple white tiles, Greem Cafe goes the extra mile with hand sketched floorboards and serves all food and drinks using sketched outlined plates, cups, mugs and yes – even cutlery.  This attention to detail helps to elevate the 2D effect immensely and in comparison I couldn’t give Tokyo’s 2D Cafe a perfect score.

 

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A post shared by Greem cafe / 2Dcafe (@greem_cafe) on Apr 23, 2019 at 4:33pm PDT

Food

e gotta be honest with you.  This score is solely based on our boba tea experience.  Bubble tea has been in Sydney for quite some time, even before the recent viral trend taking over at the moment, so I have to say we’re quite the connoisseurs.

Apparently, the boba obsession is also the latest trend in Japan and to cater for this, Tokyo’s 2D Cafe is primarily a bubble tea cafe while also offering a selection of fruit juices, coffees and shaved ice desserts (Kakigori) and cake as the only food options.  If you’re looking for a hearty meal or something savoury this is not the place. In saying this, the vivid colours of the fruity kakigori’s look stunning against the stark white and black backdrop of the cafe and are a great way to add more fun to your photos!

But back to the boba tea.  I ordered the 2D Black Sugar Assam Bubble Milk Tea and Siree ordered a Cappucino. 

Let’s start with the bubble tea. If you happen to take a gander at the menu below, you’ll see there is only ONE milk tea that has “2D” in the title. So naturally Siree and I were like ‘oooh, why is this called 2D? Maybe they serve this tea all special in a 2D looking mug or cup’ and we ordered it.  To our disappointment, we received a regular looking bubble tea that looked exactly like all the others. Why the hell is it called ‘2D’ when it doesn’t have anything special about it???? We we’re kinda bummed. 

While the flavours of the bubble tea were really nice, the pearls were unfortunately hard, which is a big no when it comes to bubble tea.  Pearls are supposed to be sticky, chewy and almost gooey balls of pure joy (lol).  Siree’s Cappucino was well received and had the ‘barista quality’ taste she misses from Sydney.  Apparently a lot of Japanese cafes, particularly the chains, sell coffee similar to the instant coffee you buy in supermarkets and she very much enjoyed her coffee here.

Service

he 2D Cafe does not have table service, so there is very little interaction with the staff except for when you order.  Staff were friendly and after you pay for your order, you are given a pager.

When the pager buzzes, you pick up your order from a separate counter.

The best thing about the cafe is that you’re never made to feel rushed out, you can stay as long as you like and just enjoy.

Value For Money

 have to say, I think the prices here are pretty pricey compared to bubble tea prices in Sydney.  But I’m told that in general, bubble tea is a little more experience in Tokyo with prices starting from 500 yen.  The 2D Cafe has bubble teas starting from 600 yen, with the Assam Sugar Teas starting from 650 yen.  It is also an additional 50 yen to add toppings.

With the quality of our bubble tea not being great, we deem this UNJUSTIFIABLE!!! haha.

The Cappuccino however was served in a large sized mug, which at 550yen was very good value for money, especially since coffee sizes are usually quite small in Japan.