Mameshiba Cafe — Restaurant in Kamakura

Traveled an hour and a half to visit this Mameshiba cafe, and here’s why you shouldn’t visit it at all:

Backstory: I used to be a Shiba Inu owner and understand their cat-like nature well. Sadly, an incident happened that resulted in him no longer being with me. After a few months, I had the courage to revisit the same breed that I loved dearly; hence the reason for my visit to the cafe.

The entrance fee is ¥1000 for 30 minutes, and you get free coffee from a vending machine. There were too many rules; in short, you can only wait for them to come to you (if they feel like it). Shiba Inus are not friendly in nature to strangers but are friendly to the people they deem familiar with - the staff. I’m afraid this is the most heartbreaking part. You will watch the dogs and staff cuddle and play together as you sit there thinking, “Oh, I want to touch it too,” but… The many staff watching the dogs will do nothing about it - they don’t care if you didn’t interact with the dog for the entire time. They won’t care about the customer’s time and effort heading down to the cafe. Who even hired/trained them? No hospitality at all.

There are more reviews below from other customers who had the same experience; I highly suggest you just save that ¥1000 and go to a pet shop.

As for the cafe and their staff, there should at least be a contingency given to customers who had zero dog interaction. You should assign someone to attend the counter the whole time or at least have a bell there to alert the staff. Train your staff more to be more attentive to customers too, not only the dogs - or if not, just close down.

I feel bad for the foreigners who probably traveled 12 hours from their home country only to breathe the same air...

Had my first (animal) cafe experience here and found it cute but also a little sad. Some dogs were clearly overweight and not too social to even skittish, others were quite fierce and some even growled at the customers. For people that cannot read dog behaviour very well, i might not recommend this cafe. They do however look adorable and the cafe has set rules of engagement for the animals I absolutely agree with.

You get a free drink from the machines when you get your ticket that you can take with you into the room. They also have clothing sticky rollers for afterwards to clear your clothes from any hairs. No toilets available in that building...

30mins of wasted time. The staff never bother to invite dogs to the customers. Very few dogs with too many people and dogs just pass by with no interaction but with staffs. I have been to many animal cafes and the staff manage the animals interact with all the customers fairly. Here, no effect was made and if you are lucky or smell stinky enough the dogs would sit with you while time or nothing at all. The Robles is they don’t have enough dogs to rotate them so the dogs are too tired and became apathetic. And many of the dogs wanted to get away from people and some of them are trying to move out of the play area. Couldn’t even take a single...