Japan Series! - Gundam Café!

            Today’s post features a specific place we visited that I thought would be of particular interest to my readers – the Gundam Café! Even though I’ve already talked a lot about food and restaurants, I thought this one deserved special attention. ^_^

            Near the end of our trip, we visited Akihabara. This district has been known for electronics for quite a while, but more recently has also become the best place to buy anime and related products in Tokyo. I’ll go into more detail about the other things we did in Akihabara (including Club Sega!) in later posts. But for today, I’m going to focus on Gundam Café.

            We saw it as soon as we stepped out of the train station, on the right-hand side of the open square.
 

Gundam Café - It was instantly eye-catching, as you can tell.

            Peek-sensei wanted us to see a few other things in Akihabara before dinner, but when we were done she asked if we wanted to try the Gundam Café, since some of us had shown such excitement over it. The group ended up splitting, because some of them wanted to go elsewhere, but Billy and I, Peek-sensei, and a few other students decided to stand in line at the Café.
 

This person-sized model Gundam stands in front of the Café. His sign says
“Sawaranaide kudasai” which means “Please do not touch.”

            The line was outside the restaurant, as you can see in the first picture. A hostess came along and asked if we wanted the smoking or non-smoking section. We told her non-smoking, and she said there would be a wait. If I remember correctly, she said it would be about 30 minutes. We stood there a few more minutes, but eventually some of the students were so hungry that they decided they didn’t want to wait any longer, and decided to go somewhere else. Peek-sensei went with them, so Billy and I were left as the only part of our group there.

Sign outside the Café. Yeah, I had a lot of time to take pictures while we were
standing in line. XD

            After a few more minutes, we thought to ask the hostess how long the wait was for the smoking section. It turned out it would only be a couple of minutes, so we discussed it and since we were both so keen on seeing the Café (and were also pretty hungry by then), we decided to tell her we wanted the smoking section. A few minutes later a hostess came and led us to a table and to our surprise, no one was even smoking in the smoking section! I don’t know if that’s normal or if we just got lucky that day, but if you ever go there, it’s worth a shot. Just make sure you can handle a little smoke if you aren’t so lucky.

Billy holding the Gundam Café menu.

            As you can see from the above picture, the atmosphere inside was really neat. There were a few other interesting aspects of the décor…

This was printed on several sections of the wall, inside and outside of the restaurant.

I found the “Return Slot” (trash can) really amusing.

            Predictably, Billy ordered chicken and potato chips. XD He’s not very adventurous when it comes to food. I have to coax him a lot to get him to try new foods, and since he had been doing a lot of that so far on the trip, I figured I’d let this one slide. ;)
 

Billy’s chicken and chips. Note the shaped garnish.

            Most of the time when we were in Japan, I took every opportunity to try food I couldn’t have in the States. But when I saw this, I knew I had to have it…

Gundam shield-shaped pizza!!

            Yes, pizza is a very mundane thing to eat in Japan. And I actually ate pizza more than once while we were in the country. But this one actually tasted more like what I’m used to having in the States. And the shape was just too cool to resist!

            Good food in a fun environment perfect for anime geeks. If you’re in the Akihabara area of Tokyo, I would definitely recommend checking out this restaurant!