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At This Unique Harajuku Cafe, Everyone’s Your Friend
Wanna go to a place where everybody knows your name — or at least pretends to? If so, this cafe in Harajuku is your new best friend.
When you enter any store in Japan, without fail, staff will greet you with a warm but formal irasshaimase! (Welcome!).
Well, nearly any store. At one cafe I recently visited, instead of the usual greeting, the woman working the register let out a cheery やほー! (yo!).
“How’ve you been? C’mon, sit down!”
I’d never met the woman behind the counter who greeted me. Yet from the moment I entered, she and the other staff treated me like an old friend who’d come in from the cold.
This is the Tomodachi ga Yatteru Cafe — The Cafe Run By Your Friends — a unique concept cafe in Tokyo’s Harajuku that, frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of.
A cafe designed to spark conversation
When I planned to visit Tomodachi ga Yatteru Cafe (TYC), I was a little wary about navigating the hustle and bustle of Harajuku. Fortunately, TYC’s removed from the chaos of Takeshita Street.
Leaving Harajuku Station’s east exit, I wound my way down to Jingumae’s 6-chome, down a side street a little ways past some of the major foreign fashion outlets like Tommy…
