The Wild Blue Yonder

Thursday, June 20

In the interest of brevity (and actually managing to make these posts), I’m splitting up days and including more pictures. See Day 2 (Tokyo): Harajuku and Shibuya for the rest of the day.

Mameshiba Cafe Harajuku

Jane is a Shiba enthusiast (who doesn’t love a shiba?) and we’ve been very excited to go to shiba cafes in Tokyo where we can experience the breed first-hand. Shiba Inus are one of the most popular Japanese dog breeds and are, by many accounts, cat-like in their finicky and mischievous dispositions. The shiba cafes we found online all seemed to specialize in mameshibas, which are a smaller version of the classic breed.

All of these places had terrible reviews on Google/TripAdvisor/Yelp, and we were worried it would be another Owl Cafe situation—but many of them cited something along the lines of “Shibas aren’t well-suited to cafes as they have no interest in humans” to justify their poor reviews, so we figured it was still worth a visit. This particular cafe, above the Harajuku Owl’s Forest on Takeshita Street (popular for food and cheap shopping), allowed visitors in for 30 minutes at a time. We heard it was popular so we arrived around 10:30 AM and got in line about 15 minutes before it opened at 11, which barely got us into the first group allowed in.

There were probably around twenty mameshibas of various sizes running around a small tatami-covered space. Contrary to reviews, they were extremely active, though it’s true they didn’t seem all that interested in us at first. We were asked to remove our shoes (typical for many indoor activities in Japan) and offered drinks from a vending machine (typical for animal cafes), but we elected to avoid the distraction and focus on the dogs.

Jane was positioned right next to the (single) water bowl, so she had the good fortune of having lots of visitors. The space had a narrow middle aisle and two larger seating areas on either side, which forced the shibas to run up and down the middle, right past us, whenever they milled from one area to the next. There was a lot of ball-chasing and play-fighting, although a few (older) dogs tuckered out pretty quickly.

In the end, the dogs were a lot friendlier than the internet gives them credit for—even if they didn’t seem constantly affection-starved like most other breeds we know. I happened to be disgustingly sweaty from the humidity outside, which made me delicious to the little white mameshiba, and my phone’s dorky wrist strap attracted a few others into my lap. Plenty of dogs trotted around letting themselves be pet for a few moments at a time, and one older pup took a long nap in another visitor’s lap. Jane came away with her Shiba-petting urge completely sated. These dogs see too many new people to be personally interested in us, but that was fine; it would have been a great experience to watch them play even if they hadn’t interacted with us at all.

A group of loud American girls who came in after us left in a huff when they realized the dogs weren’t going to pose in pictures for them and after they were told they couldn’t chase them or pick them up—now we know where the bad reviews come from! Otherwise, the dogs seemed well-cared for by the employees. We’ve been assured that they get long walks every morning and lots of socialization, even if they’re cooped up with tourists during working hours.