Learning a language goes much beyond vocabulary and involves a deeper insight into the culture and value systems. Japanese learning for me was no different to understand the beliefs and behaviours of regular Japanese and needed a glimpse into their society, their family life and overall upbringing that Japanese kids go through. FUJI TV has been very helpful for me in that sense that I used to watch Chibi Maruko Chan, Sazae San and Kochi Kame in the days of 2000 until 2005. These animation serials have gave me and my family including my daughter now an awesome wealth of insights and understanding what a kid is exposed to in a standard Japanese family. Chibi Maruko-chan was adapted into an anime TV series by Nippon Animation, which originally aired on Fuji Television from January 7, 1990 and its the 25th year which the FUJI Television Building is commemorating the occasion with a special Cafe on the first floor of the Fuji Television Building in Odaiba! We went to relieve the nostalgia….
A Chibi Maruko Chan themed cafe has wall art plastered all over the glass outdoors of the cafe and the cafe opens at 09:00 a.m. in the morning.The OPEN is written on the wooden board in simple easy to understand kid’s Japanese as “やってるよ!” than the regular “営業中”, yeah makes sense…
The menu has four coffee’s including a Echigo-Strawberry milk latte with a Chibi Maruko Chan decoration on the top and a standard Cafe Latte with the Noguchi character on top. Each is 450 yen and there is also quite a exhaustive list of food items and desserts.
We ordered the Strawberry Latte with maruko Chan our favourite character coffee art topping. Cute and lovely.
It’s not just the coffee art which has been customised, but the cutlery is also in the same Chibi Maruko Chan Theme with her friend Tama-Chan also depicted on the cups. The staff is quit friendly and can customize character on the coffee if you wish to have a Cafe Latte instead of Strawberry Latte with a Chibi Maruko Chan character on top.
We also ordered one dessert which my daughter picked up with the pudding and fruits including a waffle on top with the character drawn on top of it. Detailed to say the least and this dessert is a big recommend. My daughter liked it a lot.
The wet tissue to wipe your hands, is just so cute with the characters of Maruko Chan and Tama Chan on top of it. We took one more extra for memories sake 🙂
The interior is really well done with the animation series art all around and one can find lot of families with kids, but we also did find “adults only” groups also having a nice time inside. You can hear them speaking about the animation series, probably have been watching it in childhood. Its 25 years now…
Nice wall art of the characters.
We had gone early morning and there was less staff at the Cafe. We were at the counter more than we thought we would, but by 10:00 there were many staff members at the counter. We were on way back from morning walk at Odaiba and had gone to the Cafe at 08:45 a.m. before it opened.
There is a LED television set in the cafe which is streaming music and video of various opening and ending theme songs of the Chibi Maruko Chan animation series over the 25 years time span. Nostalgic and nice ambience.
External glass wall art of the Chibi Maruko Chan Cafe
On way back we enjoyed the Cherry blossoms (Sakura) in the Odaiba neighbourhood and my daughter has an awesome memory to cherish in her life. She relished every moment of the same.