Spending some good times with a friend who also managed to get a job in Tokyo. After dragging him into XXI for some girly-shopping, we were trying to decide where to go for tea when my friend suggested Shiseido’s Cafe. I never knew until my friend told me that the Shiseido beauty and cosmetic line first started off as a cafe. Walking through Ginza we came up to a nice, deep red building, and the entire building was Shiseido, but dedicated to…food?!
Ground level was a snack shop, filled with cookies and slices of treats for omiyage (souvenirs) that Japanese people often love buying. On the third floor is the Cafe Salon, a tea room. While the upper level floors were high class restaurants. Super quiet and classy that it could make anyone “unfitting”, feel “unfit”.
Shiseido Cafe, Ginza
This cafe is popular and had a bit of a wait. We were shown to our table by a manager and a waitress who pulled and pushed our chairs in to seat us. Even at the most classiest restaurant in Vancouver I’ve never had my chair pushed in for me, and here we are, at a posh-cafe getting 5-star treatment!
The atmosphere was simple, classical and elegant. The walls were a simple deep-red color and was accented by the cream curtains and furniture. Waitresses were dressed like maids, but it was the classical, traditional French-maid uniform allowing females to retain their dignity and respectability. We could see this in their posture, how they presented themselves, and the fact that they could use their normal voice without a baby-pitch. This was a proper maid-cafe, done right.
None of the perverted, cosplay mumbo-jumbo where men attempt to fulfill some grotesque fantasy, and girls sadly play along because it’s a job that puts them through school.
Pricing is expensive, starting at ¥900 for tea (a pure blend of Shiseido tea), and desserts stretched into the double digits. We ordered their “House Cake”, or cake set. For ¥1500, we got a choice between 3 different desserts of the day and their pure blend of tea or coffee. Everything tasted great!
A day with a good friend, deep-intellectual conversations, shopping (at awesome prices = bonus); followed by a good tea time, then later, dinner. This was a wonderful day! Thank you Sam!
BC Roll in Japan 