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Tag Archives: Parco

Japan Envy: Show By Rock!! Café

7 / 23 / 157 / 23 / 15

Show By Rock Cafe ShinganCrimsonZ

If there’s anything I love more than a good themed café, it’s a good themed café of a property I’m really into! I literally just spoke of my newfound love for Show By Rock!! in the last episode of Chic Pixel Plus, so this café announcement would be perfect timing… if I lived in Japan. But alas, I do not, so once again I am reduced to swooning over all of the awesome creations concocted for this exciting new café. Care to join me?

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Pokémon Café at Shibuya Parco 2015 [Guest Post]

2 / 20 / 157 / 23 / 15
Waiting in line at the Pokémon Café

Greetings, Chic Pixel readers! This is Sarah (@everydayfoxlife), one of Anne’s newest correspondents in Japan. Recently Roy (@kotowari) and I had the opportunity to visit the Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire Café Anne wrote about recently in our neighboring city of Shibuya. Was it worth the 7 hour wait? Let’s see…

Getting into the Café
First, we had to wait in line to get tickets in order to make reservations. The process went like this:

  1. Line up for the entrance of the café. We arrived a half hour after it had opened, and the line went down several flights of stairs. It was maybe a 45 minute wait in total, which wasn’t bad.
  2. While you wait, staff members come along and ask how many people you have in your party so that they can create tickets ahead of time.
  3. Once you reach the café entrance, a staff member gives you an assigned ticket with a QR code that you scan with your mobile device, and proceed to actually make the reservation. We hit a snag with this because our QR reader couldn’t open the URL, and we realized that there was a specific app that the café requests you use to read the QR code (geez!). We just got a new Japanese phone plan, which was a life saver because without it we wouldn’t have been able to make reservations. We scanned the QR code and sent off an automated email, which confirmed that they would email us when it’s near time to for us to be able to get into the café.
  4. We once again lined up with the rest of the group who were called around the same time. This wait felt pretty long because it depended on people being done – a lot of times people will hang out and talk for a while after their meal. While we waited, staff members came by and let us review the menu and order ahead of time.
  5. Finally, time to eat!


Our view waiting in line. There was a little photo set where a staff member would take your picture. You could use whatever props you wanted, which were just Pikachu dolls and ears.
Ta da!

View of the café interior. Background music from the game was playing over the speakers.

 

Dining Experience

Roy and I both unabashedly love food, so we were extra excited to try out the menu items themed after the game. We decided to each try out one entreé dish and one drink.

 
Reviewing the menu while waiting in line.

First came the drinks. I ordered the “Voltekka Soda,” which had a Pikachu-shaped mango sorbet on top of crushed ice with some rosemary and lime. It came with ginger ale and pop rocks, which you mix to make an especially fizzy drink. The ginger ale, despite being called Wilkinson, is actually a product of Asahi, and has a surprisingly strong ginger flavor – the menu actually goes as far as to have a small warning for younger children.

 
The pop rocks came in a tiny plastic bowl which had the pokéball button taped to it.
A laminated Pikachu tail was taped to the spoon handle.

The drink itself didn’t taste like anything special (which doesn’t mean it was bad – the ginger ale is becoming a new favorite for me), but being able to add the pop rocks to it was a lot of fun and I am easily amused. The sorbet was kind of hard to eat, so I let it melt a bit, but then became a goopy mess inside a ton of ice. Guess I should’ve made more of an effort to eat him.

 
Melting Pikachu

Roy ordered the mix au lait, which is modeled after an in-game item. The presentation was less than thrilling as it was merely a piece of paper taped to a jar.

 
Um. Ok.

Roy said the drink tasted similar to a lassi – fruity and creamy – but with too much crushed ice. Maybe the café was anticipating little kids to take their time with the drinks, and not a grown man drinking it down like the world is ending. Who knows.

After hanging around a bit and enjoying the drinks, our food finally arrived.

Roy ordered a mabo tofu dish, which is a spicy tofu and ground meat mixture served alongside rice. The café decided to reinterpret the dish after Groudon.

 
The Pokéball-shaped tofu sitting a ground meat mixture next to the red rice.
The salad had a “dai” character cut out of a carrot, which resembled the bonfires that are lit on the mountainside in Kyoto during summer.

Roy initially thought the dish was too sweet, but it became clear that he was supposed to dump copious amounts of spice onto it to increase the heat. After that the dish was pretty good (although he found eating bright red tofu a little unnerving).

I ended up getting the Pikachu omurice (folded omelette with flavored rice) and “aqua” sauce. It came with a complimentary cup designed to look like a Pokéball.

 
The black parts of Pikachu’s face were made with dried seaweed sheets, and the rest were cut out of radishes. His ears were the omelettes, and the blue sauce tasted like curry.

The rice part was a little disappointing because it was room temperature, but as was the case with Roy’s dish, everything became increasingly tastier when mixed together. The omelettes were nice and melty on the inside, and pouring the sauce over everything made it addicting. The salad was refreshing and had a simple vinaigrette, which makes me think the café put some thought into the adults that would be dining in.

I was anticipating the portions to be a lot smaller since the menu is presumably aimed towards kids, but I left the café feeling really stuffed – which was nice after such a long wait.

Goods Shop

 

After we ate, we headed towards the joint goods shop to get some souvenirs. There was a lot of pining after items we didn’t have any use for, so we did the next best thing: take pictures.

12 year old me needs this.

 
 
Roy’s purchase: a miniature Farfetch’d doll (sorry – “Duck Onion”)

I wasn’t planning on getting anything, but broke down at this small glass with Shinzi Katoh’s Pokémon designs. No regrets.

Special Café Pikachu

Whether you were waiting in line to get in the café or just walking by, you could download a special café themed pikachu as an in-game gift simply by hanging around. This was a nice incentive for people to hang around and create buzz for the event.

Final Thoughts

So was it worth the arduous wait? I’d say so just for the experience alone! The food, while nothing extraordinary, was still surprisingly good, and the atmosphere was a lot of fun to be in. I will definitely keep an eye out for more Pokémon Café announcements in the future (most likely via this very blog!).

Wow, thanks so much to Sarah and Roy for the amazing coverage of the Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire Café at Shibuya Parco! I was sad I wasn’t able to go, but these photos made me feel like I was right there with them! And what’s this? They even sent me a little souvenir!

Not only did they send me the exclusive Pokémon Café notepad I asked for, but an adorable Shinzi Katoh vinyl pouch and the two coasters they got with their drinks! I’m certainly one happy Pokéfan!
I hope you liked this guest post, and if you do, let Sarah know in the comments or by contacting her on Twitter! You may even recognize her as the designer of Chic Pixel’s logo, which I’m now going to be use to watermark my images going forward. Let’s hope to see more Tokyo coverage from Sarah in the future!
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Welcome!


Name: Anne Lee
Birthday: December 13
Fav food: Mochi

Chic Pixel is where I write about my favorite aspects of Japanese pop culture, with a focus on the cute and nerdy! Read More >

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euthanasian David Nguyen @euthanasian ·
11h

A lil late, but Happy Lunar New Year~
Hope everyone had a good one, and got to sneak in a little White Rabbit candy.
I'm a rabbit baby, and apparently it's real bad luck when it's your own zodiac year so uh.. Good luck to me 2023..

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apricotsushi Anne Lee @apricotsushi ·
22h

Before and after! Moving day in less than a week! 😱

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apricotsushi Anne Lee @apricotsushi ·
27 Jan

why is this so ominous

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apricotsushi Anne Lee @apricotsushi ·
25 Jan

12 years+ of my life has been packed into about 45 boxes (no furniture) 😱 I have too many things haha

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23 Jan

Chie Shinkyu's 72-Year-Old Mikako is an episodic light comedy manga about an older woman living on her own and writing a diary in the form of DMs to her deceased husband. This may sound sad, but Mikako is always on the move, and her life is full of joy and friendship. (1/2)

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apricotsushi

Happy Lunar New Year! @jessjhs took this lovely ph Happy Lunar New Year! @jessjhs took this lovely photo of me and Pai Pai to commentate our last Opera House visit. I can’t believe she and I are moving to the US on February 2! 😱 wishing you all a blessed year of the rabbit! 🐰
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Expired Twisted Wonderland gummies! I got a 12 pac Expired Twisted Wonderland gummies! I got a 12 pack of these for less than a dollar 😝 each bag comes with a random sticker! See which designs I got and my gummy taste test by heading to the link in my profile ✨✨
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Legiana x irises! I felt inspired to start a serie Legiana x irises! I felt inspired to start a series of Monster Hunter monsters with flowers 🌸 Which monster would you want to see next?
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🐙 [CLOSED] GIVEAWAY 🐙 To celebrate the Spla 🐙 [CLOSED] GIVEAWAY 🐙 
To celebrate the Splatoon 3 world premiere splatfest, I’m giving away this fanart keychain I made of Lil Judd! This was my first time making keychains of my art and I’m really excited 😆 To enter to win, simply comment on this post! Extra entry if you tag a friend (up to one additional entry). 
Giveaway is open worldwide and runs until Thursday, September 1 at 6pm EST. I will randomly select the winner and comment here as well as DM you on Instagram. Good luck everyone!
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Aki and I are not feeling this return to work afte Aki and I are not feeling this return to work after a 1.5 week vacation! Ms Aki is @jessjhs’s lovely shiba inu who we’ve been pet sitting for a few weeks☺️ mug is by Keane Ng, creator of upcoming game A Shiba Story! 
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A super cute new desk mat from a friend was the mo A super cute new desk mat from a friend was the motivation I needed to revamp my work space! 💻 I don’t think I’ll ever fully settle in to our current rental (it’s too tiny with both my husband and me working from home now), but at least this corner is cute! 💕💕 
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