Report: Collabo Cafe Honpo - Daiya no A Edition

You may or may not know this, but I’m a huge fan of Daiya no A. It’s my current everything. Since I showed up in Japan just past the Daiya hype, a lot of events for the series have already passed such as various Animate Café’s, stage plays, baseball team collaboration events, karaoke collaborations, and many many more. You could imagine the excitement I felt when I saw the announcement that Collabo Café Honpo was going to do a Daiya collaboration. 

While I was in Tokyo the first weekend of the café for a douj event, I never saw when they’d open reservations and they were all booked up before I could get my chance to snag one, so I made a second 3 hour long trip to Tokyo in order to reach this one. This past weekend I had the honor and delight of going to Collabo Café Honpo’s Daiya no A Café.

Collabo Cafe Honpo

Making the reservation and getting to the café was easy enough. They tell you that it is just in front of the Don Quijote in Akihabara, and that’s true. The photos the café posted to Twitter made it seem like the café was huge, but it was actually quite small. The magic of upward angles I guess.

Inside:

I walked through the doors and the first thing that struck me was how simple but trendy the design of the kitchen and front desk was. I gave them my name and they checked me off the list and handed me a token with the number 6 for my seating assignment and told me to make my way upstairs. A staff member helped me find my seat because I got confused because my token had the number 6 on it so I thought it was the number 9. I was one of the first couple people to arrive, and everyone promptly started taking photos of everything once they showed up. I took the cue to follow suit.

My seat.

Since I was all by myself I got this chalkboard as my view.

Other people's cuter tables.

The rest of the cafe. It's a pretty tiny operation.

The highlight was the huge standees of Sawamura and Miyuki in the cafe's uniforms. It was cute!

They also put little characters in places all over the cafe. It was fun to see who they put together and where!

So after I awkwardly asserted myself with the customary “sumimasen,” I placed my order for drinks, food, dessert, and the collab café goods. I asked the waitress if I could order more than one drink and she said yes, but after everyone had settled down into their seats, they made announcements about the café, like “Please don’t order more than one food and drink,” and “You can take pictures but don’t be mindful of the other costumers.” So. I gaijin smashed my way into two drinks? But it wouldn’t have been too hard to tell me no, so I’m gonna say this one’s not my fault. With each drink and each food dish they gave you a coaster.

Food:

Miyuki Blue Calpis Drink:

I’m pretty sure this was just straight up a sport drink. It tasted like blue. 
The waitress came over and handed it to me calling it the "Miyuki-senpai drink," and a part of my soul died of embarrassment from that. 

Sawamura-kun Soda Drink:

Sawamura’s drink was a carbonated citrusy soda with little flavor pearls inside of it. I liked the way it made my tongue fizz and the little bubbles were very fun to eat. This might be my favorite anime drink I’ve had so far!

Sawamura Chris (Disgusting) Kimichi Food Bomb: do not try.

So this might be the single most disgusting piece of food I’ve ever eaten. I would not recommend anyone ever ordering one of these food bombs. They’re kind of like giant takoyaki, but if you have ever watched anyone make takoyaki, you notice that the only way that they’ll ever really cook properly without being burnt is if they’re really small. Since these are about the size of an adult’s fist, mine wasn’t cooked all the way through at all. The texture was really really nasty; it kind of tasted like mucous. I was kind of worried that I might throw up if I continued eating it. It also had random veggies and meat thrown in, like mushrooms and corn, so it wasn’t a particularly delicious flavor. I got the kimchi one because I don’t like octopus and I thought the kimchi flavor would help drown out the taste of the octopus. I want to try the normal and the teriyaki flavored ones too, but not without a partner that I can force it on if I have the same experience as before. Sorry friends but you’re now my actual trash cans. 

The salad was pleasant and I would have preferred more of that.

Raichi-kun Waffle Bowl dessert:

This was good, but as you would expect of vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone bowl with chocolate syrup, bananas, and some surprise cornflakes at the bottom. The only thing that I would say about it is that the plating was kind of weird. As you can see it was on a flat square plate with no edges, glued in place using a bit of whipped cream, which looked really nice, but functioned kind of strangely. I wasn’t sure how they intended us to eat the waffle bowl because there weren’t any edges to really break it on, so I kind of just smashed it with my spoon and picked up the big chunks and kind of ate it like nachos. I didn’t really mind this too much but it felt weird to do in Japan. I don’t know if that was how they intended it or not. And I would like to point out that they give you half of a tiny ice cream scope. I believe they either literally cut a perfectly round ice cream shape in half, or they freeze it in molds because it had a perfectly smooth bottom, and then put it on cornflakes. It kind of feels like they stiffed you on ice cream.

So when there were about 10 minutes left, they did a last call for food, drinks, and café goods and then started bringing tables their bills. I didn’t time it very well but I believe that the café service was about an hour and a half long? So you paid at your table and then brought your receipt downstairs to the front desk where you checked in, and then you could pick up the goods you ordered.

Merchandise:

Here's what this cafe had to offer!

In the end, I got 2 drinks, 1 food bomb, 1 dessert, 2 buttons, 2 key chains, 2 Sawamura standee keychains, and 2 Miyuki standee keychains. For all that, it cost me about 9,400 yen. I was a tiny bit shocked when I saw the bill, because who knew you could spend so much without really trying, but thems the breaks. 

So for my goods, I kept one of each item and sent the rest back home to my partner as gifts. 

For my bling goods I got Haruichi and Tetsu! While neither of these are my favorite characters, I am grateful that I did not get Chris-senpai. I'm sorry world, I just think he's so ugly. My partner got a Miyuki keychain and a Tetsu button. At least we kind of match???

Conclusion:

The atmosphere was nice, I think the cafe goods were really cute, and while this cafe had the same type of cheap decorations as a lot of other collab cafes, I think they designed the space in a way that allows the staff to change the decorations without hurting the atmosphere. 

The biggest down side was the food. While I really liked my Sawamura drink, the Miyuki drink and the Raichi dessert were really lack luster, and I gagged a couple times while trying to finish my food bomb. If it wasn't that food bomb, which is the staple of their cafe, I probably would have said that this was the best anime collab cafe I have been to so far. 

All and all, I would say that going to the collabo café is worth it if it’s for a series that you really really love, but given how bad of an experience I had with my food bomb I would not recommend it otherwise.