Buying a Pokemon Cafe Reservation: A Costly Adventure

I’ve written before about our experience of visiting the Pokemon cafe, as well as my top tips for getting a reservation. These tips served us well, and we did manage to get a booking for our last trip to Japan.

But for this trip, try as I might, I just couldn’t get one of those elusive and sought after bookings!

This was one of the poke-mad boys favourite experiences on our last trip, and the one thing they asked us to try again. So in desperation, when TheTravelMum wrote about it on her Instagram page, I started searching for reservation brokers in Japan. And that’s what this post is about!

WE NOW HAVE A RESERVATION FOR THE POKEMON CAFE IN TOKYO! HURRAH!!! And this is in no way a sponsored post (or an endorsement of this system, which I’m sure is controversial) but I’m going to show you how I did it:

Buying A Reservation For The Pokemon Cafe in Japan

So how did we get our Pokemon Cafe reservation? The answer is simple (and not particularly surprising). We paid for it! Reserve-Japan.com (not a sponsored link, just sharing the site we used!) offer a popular cafe reservation service.

You choose the cafe you want to book, in this case the Pokemon Cafe. But they can also secure reservations for the Kirby Cafe and the Peanuts Cafe if those are also on your radar. You select the date that you want to visit (as well as a back up date if you have one) and they’ll get to work trying to find you a reservation.

You CAN’T choose what time your reservation is – its a bit of a ‘get what you’re given’ deal. And you pay before you know if they can secure you a reservation. So if you don’t have the free time in your day to visit anywhere between 10am and 10pm then this might not be the right choice for you.

You’ll get a payment confirmation email straight away but you won’t get a reservation confirmation email until Reserve-Japan has secured your table reservation for you. This can take a while: they say on their website that you might not get your reservation confirmation and details until the day before your planned visit.

The site claims to have a 99% success rate with finding reservations and will give you a 100% refund if they can’t get you a reservation for the café you want. (I have no experience of this refund system or how long it takes, but it’s good to have the reassurance that you’ll get your money back)

How Much Did The Reservation For The Pokemon Cafe In Japan Cost

The Pokemon Cafe, no doubt because of its popularity, is the most expensive cafe that you can book via the Reserve-Japan.com website.

We paid £24 per person for our reservations (note that you CAN get these for free if you manage to secure a reservation for yourself) meaning that we paid a frankly eye-watering £95 to get a table for four people that we didn’t pay a penny for last time.

But for us this is worth it: It was worth it to see the boys eyes light up when we told then the reservation we hadn’t been able to get was back on the table!

They can book tables for up to 6 people, which is the same as on the official website. It’s quite a small restaurant so they don’t book large groups, although you could split up and book two tables if you’re a party bigger than 6.

Further Reading

The Pokemon Cafe gets a lot of hype, but it really was worth it for our kids. They love all things Pokemon, and this was an experience they’ll never forget.

You can read all about the food at the Pokemon Cafe and everything we ate here.

And if you don’t want to bankrupt yourself then you can read my tips for booking the pokemon cafe for free here.

So what do you think, are we mad? Would you pay so much money for a reservation that you can get for free? I will admit it was something we really had to think about, but after spending so much money to get to Japan, it seemed a shame for the kids not to tick off all their bucket list activities!

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