Tokyo Café, khái niệm văn hoá Nhật hiện đại | Tokyo Café, a Concept of Modern Japanese Culture

VENTUROLOGY has this side of a café-aholic that you might have known. I am in love with new coffee shop places, maybe around my base Saigon or other cities I have been to. Thus, I try to blog them as often as I can. During my trip to Japan in April, we were exposed to this new concept of café: Tokyo café.

What is a Tokyo café?

Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset — GINZA, Tokyo

I hadn’t noticed the Tokyo café concept until 2 months ago having been exposed to the concept right in Saigon. It was plain coincidence. My friend, who is also a writer for this VENTUROLOGY.ORG works for a famous Japanese restaurant chain in Saigon, invited me for a food tasting for the first Tokyo café concept in town.

During their presentation, my thought popped up: “Oh, I know this.”

Basically, a Tokyo café is a conceptual term for café that hold these qualities and features:

Minimal & modern interior design, which means a reduction of messy decorations
Plated dessert, a fundamental requirement, no more over-the-night food
Organic ingredients. Can be bought or even grown by the café themselves
A spectacular urban view

STYLO café in Ginza, Tokyo, an Example of Tokyo café

We were wandering in the most prestigious avenue in Tokyo and it was like a hobby. We looked for a space for sitting and contemplating Ginza surroundings. Difficult it was to actually find a café like any in Saigon. But we found a nice building holding a beautiful upscale gift store on the ground floor.

It is normal for buildings in Tokyo having their floor for rent for different shop owners. You could wander off into one building and discover it all day from shopping to dining experience. Strange for us, since in Vietnam, most buildings are for shopping malls and offices not individual shops to rent on each different floor. Vietnamese people tend to go to restaurants and cafés that don’t belong to any building, because they will provide parking for motorbikes and more convenient to just run in and enjoy. Apparently, Japanese way is too different. People walk all the time. For specific hours, Ginza is turned into walking street so foot is the only means of transport you have.

We looked through the guide map of the 9-story building. Lying on the ninth is a café named STYLO. We were curious and wanted to have a rooftop kind of view of Tokyo. We never regret it. Pricing could be expensive because, hello, it’s Ginza after all. 750 yen is the cheapest price for a dessert on the menu. We observed and could see the salad was their best sellers. Almost any customers came for their salad. We didn’t understand Japanese but after the visit of the eighth floor we could see the reason: organic grown salad.

The 8th Floor of the building STYLO located in is dedicated to growing organic salad which is the specialty of the café as well.

Plated dessert — Beautifully plated dessert. Took quite a while for it to be done.

The view is another feature you could appreciate. We stopped during the sunset hours when the golden splendor already painted all over Tokyo cityscape. It was a breathtaking view that I could not achieve in my first trip to Japan. I always describe myself an “urban explorer,” as I love exploring cities and its not usually seen parts; that moment was when I could proudly of that entitlement.

Tokyo café is generally a concept for Tokyo standard of café, but to me it was a touching moment to truly live inside the momentum of a city. Tourists can be found in Tokyo café but we doubt there are any, probably busy taking selfie with Tokyo Tower or Ueno Park.