When it comes to planning what to do with my free time, I’m fairly organised but there are occasions when spontaneity does come into the equation and one such moment came on the back of our (pre-planned) trip to the school dinner restaurant in Shin Okachimachi. My wife and I were walking through Okachimachi leading to Ueno station and en-route we saw Owl Nest Cafe which my animal-loving other half couldn’t resist and so we went to investigate.

Owl cafe’s have been around for quite a few years now and have been visited by many people I know but for some reason I’ve just never bothered, maybe because I’ve had a photograph taken with an owl before and was more than satisfied with that.

There were about a dozen different species of owl on show from the likes of Belgium, England, Kenya and so on.

Let’s start with the photo opportunities then even though we left these to the end of our allotted hour stay. As a Brit, I chose to hold Mishu as he was an English owl albeit not the kind of owl which most people think about when owls come to mind. He was the friendliest of all the owls and the biggest too but my wife went for a smaller more conventional one.

My wife really loved this place and was actually quite moved by the animals and she gained a fair amount of knowledge on them from the kind, friendly and devoted staff.

Each owl has a profile card on the wall behind it which gives all the important information with the most interesting being the personality for each one. The bilingual card also tells customers the possibility of touching, holding or feeding them.

It’s not often that Japanese places get their English right but this place has done it and there are even slightly amusing signs like the ones seen below.

This particular place costs 1000 yen for an hour and includes one drink. Customers obviously don’t go to such a place for the refreshments and maybe the owners have realised that and have put in very little effort on the beverage front. There is just a vending machine serving up about 20 different drinks.

As ever in Japan, souvenirs play a major part of a visit to any place and this one is no different with a range of owl-related goodies available for purchase. I’ve now been to a dog cafe (back in 2013), a rabbit cafe (last year) and this owl one but there are other ones devoted to cats, reptiles, penguins, hedgehogs, sheep and probably a few more unbeknown to me. No doubt we will eventually get round to sampling all of these at some point.

Click here to read ‘Mimi Rabbit Cafe In Ikebukuro’

Click here to read ‘Wan Love At A Tokyo Dog Cafe’