Maruzen - Kyoto Main Store — Local services in Kyoto

Good place for having a great cup of tea and some sweets surrounded by books. Even though there were many people in the cafe, everyone was speaking in quiet voices, so we could really feel relaxed and at ease while catching up over a cup of coffee and a slice of cake ;) The coffee came in this cool scientific-looking flask (which automatically got them bonus points as I'm a chemist myself 👩🏼‍🔬) and did not just look cool but tasted great, especially with the cream 😋 We got the lemon cake to go with it, which apparently is the speciality of this shop as it has to do with the famous Japanese short story "lemon". Apparently this café is mentioned in that story so that was a nice little backstory :) The location is in the basement of a department store in the centre of Kyoto, so very central! In summary a slightly unusual, but very standardly comfortable place to enjoy some great-tasting afternoon food...

One of the best bookstores I've been to. The floor dedicated to Japanese language books is immense, and although the English language section is a fraction of the size, it is stocked incredibly well, particularly in the areas of psychology and philosophy. The stationery section is also very good. Unfortunately the Japanese language mangas are all plastic wrapped, so you can't browse them, but some of the English language mangas are open to browse, though the range is limited in comparison. Oddly, the section for translated Japanese literature was not sorted in any comprehensible way, though the range of authors was very good. My only complaint is that the prices here are somewhat high. After browsing for some time we stopped at the cafe on B2 for tea and a waffle with ice cream - delicious! The service was excellent and pricing of...

Of course, if you are a fluent Japanese reader, this place is known to you already. But if you're a visitor and looking for English-language books of all varieties (contemporary fiction, academic research, pop-non fiction, and more) this is also the place. Head to the lowest floor, and get lost in the stacks. On the higher floor, an amazing range of local and international stationery is available. Especially cool are the unusual extensions to common ranges like MD or Kokuyo that you can get lucky and discover.

Also the siphon coffee - Star Blend - in the cafe is the sweetest, softest, most delicious coffee in town for me! The Hayashi rice is...