After my long walk in Saitama, I was ready for lunch. I ended up heading back to Ikebukuro. Because if you want to eat in Ikebukuro, there's a lot of choices. Really, a person could eat at a different restaurant every day and there would still be more untried places.
I decided to check out a cute place I had seen online. GraffArt Cafe. It was on a side street and a little hidden, but I found it.
Ichigo from Tokyo Mew Mew was there greeting customers. GraffArt refers to this style of art, chalk on chalkboard.
Inside was more cute art. And yes, photos are okay to take. So of course here are some that I took.
GraffArt is a company that creates goods and promotes artists.
So of course there are a lot of different items to see and buy.
The Cafe is one room with video monitors where you can watch short anime and other images.
The Cafe was decorated for Christmas including artwork for the holiday.
Characters from various manga and anime also decorated the walls.
There are goods also for these characters including classic ones like the two hearted Sapphire from Princess Knight.
The menu was only four food items. This is more of a place to sit and drink while enjoying the surroundings and any friends you may be with.
There are many more drinks to chose from. I went with the Calpis Blue. It's Calpis (Calpico for outside of Japan) with blue curaçao. It was very nice.
As for food, I had a choice of a waffle, pancakes, or two types of cake. I went with the pancakes. They were soft and warm. Berries with pancakes is a delicious way of serving them. That's chocolate ice cream in the little souffle cup.
Because it was a 65th anniversary of Nakayoshi manga magazine, there were special coasters given out. Lucky me getting three.
GraffArt Cafe's website is here http://graffart-cafe.athree3.com/#box
And their address is ＪＫ７ 1階, 1 Chome-9-21 Minamiikebukuro, Toshima City, Tokyo 171-0022, Japan
Back outside the weather was moving towards rain. I decided to walk a different way back to my hotel. Not far from GraffArt Cafe was this giant torii and chochin lanterns.
Turns out this is the Nichiren Shoshu Honden, the headquarters for Hokkeko affiliated with the Nichiren Shoshu school of Japanese Buddhism. Their website is here http://www.hodoin.net/
I also saw more owls. This artwork is at Ikebukuro Nishi-guchi Park.
Besides the owl statues, there are more owls at the base. Along with pigeons.
And it was wrapped with lights for the holiday.
Ikebukuro's illuminations here didn't start for another week, but the trees were colorful.
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