Manga Café (09/05/2024)

There is a chain “Manga Café” in front of the station about a 10-minute walk from my residence.

As I move from place to place throughout the day, I was curious to see if I could make use of it, so I went there this week.

I had visited a Manga Café a few times in the past to read a lot of manga.

However, this is the first time I have been to this place in the six months since I moved into my current residence.

Manga Cafés, as the name implies, are places where you can read tens of thousands of paper manga in a private room while sipping on a free soft drink.

At the 24-hour stores, there are dozens of private rooms of about 4 square meters, separated by partitions and simple locks, where you can read manga or take a nap.

To use the rooms, you need to create a membership card for the application in advance.

When checking in, users hold up their membership card to have the charge automatically added to their bill according to the time they have spent in the room, and when checking out, they hold up the barcode on their receipt to the checkout machine to have the charge fixed.

A fixed minimum fee of 300 yen is charged for the first 30 minutes, followed by 100 yen for every 10 minutes thereafter.

Packaged rates are applied for 3, 6, 9, 10, and 12 hours, respectively.

For example, if you leave the room at 2 hours 50 minutes to 2 hours 59 minutes, the fee is 1,700 yen, but at 3 hours, 1,100 yen is applied, and if you leave at 3 hours 10 minutes to 3 hours 19 minutes, 1,200 yen is applied.

After 6 hours, packaged rates are set lower at night than in the daytime, with 1,300 yen applied for 6 hours, 2,000 yen for 10 hours, and 2,400 yen for 12 hours.

It is assumed that customers will come to the store at night, take a nap, and check out.

The night rate is cheaper than the day rate because customers who read manga and eat/drink less at night than customers who read manga and eat/drink during the day do not require additional cleaning work by the staff.

When I Googled the web page of this manga café, I saw the introductory sentence, “Our store has good access to Disneyland.” This implies that not a few customers use it as a place to stay on their way to or from Disneyland.

It is a cheap hobby (in a good way) to find a manga series in the store and read it, but the dark lighting in the store made me feel sleepy.

For customers who arrive in the morning, there is a 5-hour package rate of 1,300 yen.

For less than 300 yen per hour, you can rent a desk, chair, free coffee, restroom, and manga during your break, if you decide to bring in a book or computer and work here for five hours today.

I entered at night, so it is dark inside the restaurant and I am in the dark in my private room unless I turn on the desk light.

Even with that desk light on, the area of brightness was limited and felt a bit inadequate for reading manga.

Furthermore, it illuminates my hand from the upper left, so the shadow of my left hand holding a pen falls on my notebook.

The smallness of the room is not a problem once you get used to it, but if you want to use it for self-study, a library where you are exposed to the eyes of others is definitely better (for me).

(Whenever I pass by a café, I see people spreading out their Macs and doing something, but the noise bothers me, so I can't imitate them. I prefer to use cafes when I go out to the city to rest my feet or wait for an appointment.)

In the restroom, there was a poster advertising a part-time physical labor position.

I had seen a story on the news a long time ago about some homeless people who use comic book cafes as their regular lodging, so I was reminded that this is a place where a variety of customers come.

Other stores also offer (for an additional fee) the use of fully private rooms with locks.

I found this manga café to be somewhat less relaxing than my downtown library.