Shinjuku Ni-Chome, by the way, is a part of town with a lot of gay bars. Advocates is one such, though that’s not to say that it’s a place that makes non-gay people feel unwelcome or anything. I’ve always felt welcome here, at least.

Advocates is small but it opens out to a wide sidewalk, and when the weather’s nice, you’ll find dozens of people here, and “Advocates” becomes the sidewalk and even the street around the bar instead of just the physical environs of the bar itself. Particularly during the time of day (7 to 9) when they have “beer blast” going on (all the beer you can drink for 1000 yen).

Anyway, it’s a very nice place. Plan on stopping by some time — especially on a day when the weather’s clear and comfortable.

It has a bit of the feel of a college coffee house, except that instead of having a view out to some “quad” or whatever, it has a 5th floor view out to a neon-lit busy Tokyo intersection.

Other particulars: a full drink menu, including liquor, sake and shouchu, beer, wine, juice, tea, and coffee. Nice lighting, nice staff, usually good music. Seating for about 30 people and not usually crowded (so a good choice for impromptu gatherings). A selection of decent light food. And reasonable prices. A variety of interesting books and magazines you can borrow and enjoy along with your food and drink.

Also, a real rarity in Tokyo: outlets into which you are free to plug in your laptop’s AC adaptor and/or keitai charger.

And to top it all off: it’s open until 3am every night, including Sunday and Monday.

To find it, just ride the Ginza line to Gaienmae station, take exit 3, and you’re there. Well, almost. What you’ll see at the street level when you come up and out from the exit is a place called “Sign”. Office is in the same building, just on the 5th floor. So just go around the corner, left from the entrance to Sign, and climb the stairs (no elevator) up to Office, and enjoy.

Also attempted to find a new place nearby called Lotus Root Gallery — somewhere in the midst of a mostly residential area. But once we got to the general area where it’s supposed to be, could not spot any sign for it even though we probably spent 10 or 15 looking and had to have been just a few meters away from it, wherever it is. At one point Satori pointed out a young hipster-type guy to me and said he must be looking for the same place because she had seen him already, circling around just like us.

Anyway, that little side trip wasted at least 30 minutes altogether — on a day when we had already gotten a late start — so Lotus Root Gallery is now officially on my shitlist.

But we did manage to get back to Le Deco and I did have time to see more of the Tokyo College of Photography “apartment” show, and to talk with one of the photographers, Priyash Karmacharya — who was kind enough to bring us some tea. Also, Funiku Ookami of the “7″ show there (also ended today) gave Satori a couple of shoe creams, and another photographer from the “apartments” show gave her some cookies, so she went away pretty happy for the day and fairly successful as far as scoring of sweets swag goes.

On another floor you’ll find a installation with some dark, moody 3D work by Tacji Kikuchi (ends today).Other floors have more photos (which I had to rush through because I was running very late) and some CG animation video work.

Highly recommended. Go. I plan on going back again tomorrow, with my daughter.

(Note: This entire post was moblogged direct from keitai.)

I go through Shinagawa station almost every weekend, and take the Keikyu line from there to pick up Satori in Yokosuka, where she lives with her mother. Often we end up coming back through Shinagawa to Tokyo, and going to Kodomo no shiro or to a museum. Sometimes we go to Kawasaki to watch a movie, because the theaters there (Cinecitta and the one near the Keikyu station) have more showings dubbed in Japanese. The theater at the Prince Hotel is nice too, but doesn’t have as many dubbed showings.

Anyway, I’m thinking about buying Satori a digital camera for her eighth birthday. She loves to take photos. She seems especially fascinated with taking pictures of her own shoes and the ground around her feet. But as far as pictures of shoes and the ground go, hers are usually not so bad. So if I give her a camera, there’s no telling what she might get fascinated with next. Or maybe she’ll specialize and become the world’s most accomplished photographer of ground-and-shoes images.

(This posting was moblogged direct from keitai.)

Notice that the line is comprised of thick raised dots―so that blind people can tell where it is.

(This posting was moblogged direct from keitai.)

Jean Snow (the hardest working blogger in Tokyo) has written quite a bit about Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro. (see his postings at MoCo Tokyo, at Gridskipper, and at his site), and I’ve been wanting for some time now to visit it. So today I stopped by to check it for myself.

Ikebukuro (where Cafe Pause is located) is not known as one of the hipper places in Tokyo, and isn’t a place that most people find themselves having a lot of reasons to visit (unless they happen to live close by). In fact, for me personally — despite the fact that I live not too far away from Ikebukuro (in Shinjuku, only 4 stops from Ikebukuro on the Yamanote loop line) — the only reason I can remember for wanting to go to Ikebukuro any time recently was just to visit Cafe Pause.

Anyway, I’m glad I made the trip out here today. The walk to Cafe Pause from the Ikebukuro JR station takes less than 10 minutes. And it’s not too hard to find because once you get nearby, you can pretty easily spot the big lighted “Cafe” sign outside (see the photo). Inside it’s basically one big room that seats maybe 25 or 30 people (to get a better idea of what it’s like, see Jean’s photos at Gridskipper and at at his own site). It has windows on two sides that run the whole length of the walls, so that you can watch the foot traffic outside as you sip your tea/beer/wine. The spot where I was sitting has a view that was kind of nice, looking down a sidestreet towards what looks like it might be part of a temple or shrine.

Internet friendly

As a Net vagabond, one of the things that makes Cafe Pause comfortable to me is its Internet friendliness. It’s not just that they have WiFi access (which, kudos to them, they even note prominently on their home page), but they also have electrical outlets. Ones that they’re happy to let you use. So if want to hook into the Net from there, you’re not limited just to staying only as long as your laptop or notebook battery might hold out. Bring an AC adapter and hang out as long as you like. Or bring your keitai charger and charge up your keitai while you’re there. At most supposedly Net-hip cafes in Shibuya, if you have the gall to ask the staff if you can plug your laptop or notebook into their AC, you get at best a “We’re very sorry but…” mock apology, or at worst a reaction of genuine suprise that you would even think to ask such a thing.

As far as the Wifi, if found two open and unencrypted WiFi access points there when I checked — one with a “YBBUser” (Yahoo BB) ESSID (which I think may be the official one that Cafe Pause provides), and one with a “livedoor-free” ESSID. Though the Yahoo BB one is slower (11Mbps) than the Livedoor one (54Mbps), the Livedoor one appears to require that you have a Livedoor account to use it. Which I don’t, and don’t want, so I didn’t bother. And really, 11Mbps is fine for remote use at a cafe (or for most other uses, for that matter). I had no problems at all logging into or using the Yahoo BB access point.

Staff, food, drink, atmosphere

Cafe Pause has a full drink menu — ranging from lemonade, “lemon cola”, “triple berry soda” and a variety of tea and coffee drinks, to beer, wine, and cocktails (including some of their own original cocktails, with names like “May”, “Lily”, “Jun”, “Teany”, and “Florent”). The food menu is more limited, but they did have a couple of “light meal of the day” choices (today, a soup one and a sandwich one) and three kinds of toast sets, as well as an assortment of side dishes (otsumami), snacks, and cakes and sweets.

The menu I ordered from was Japanese-only and I’m not sure whether much of the staff speaks English or not (we spoke in Japanese). But they were friendly and accommodating, so I reckon that even if you don’t speak or read Japanese well, they’ll do what they can to help you with food and drink ordering and making you feel comfortable.

As far as the atmosphere: The music while I was there was listenable, cafe-style down-tempo stuff — nothing too unusual or attention-getting, but then again, nothing annoying either. The lighting in the daytime is really nice — mostly just natural light coming in through the big windows. In the evening, they keep the lights down pretty low, so it’s also real nice then.

In a nutshell, I found Cafe Pause to be a comfortable, friendly place and plan to head back again soon. If you live around Ikebukuro, you really ought to stop by and check it out. If you do, I reckon you might like it enough to make it one of your regular hangouts. (By the way, there’s also an interesting stationary stored nearby, called Voxx, which Jean has also written up.) And even if you don’t normally come by Ikebukuro, perhaps you ought to make a special trip (as I did) just to check out Cafe Pause. Especially if you find yourself looking for a place free from the kind of uptight attitude you sometimes run into in cafes in Shibuya and its surrounding evirons.