EXBAR TOKYO plus Akihabara — Restaurant in Tokyo

Review for the cafe: like a 2/5 Review for the shop: EASY 5/5, which is why I still had to give a 5 stars overall.

If they are doing a collab you care about, I am sure it would be really cool. They were doing it for a game I have never heard of when we came, so it was not a great experience. I do believe you need reservations beforehand. The cafe host was not very friendly - he did treat us fine, but it looked like he did not want to be there at all. Was probably the worst service we had in Japan. The menu selection is pretty limited too. Honestly, just skip the cafe and go to the good store next door. You do not need a reservation for that. And now that I think about it, they did not even have general themed items on their menu, it was all only exclusive to the game currently being promoted. Go to Artnia for general themed food at a cafe.

The goods store was AWESOME though! Was literally a dream come true for my brother and me who are huge Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Nier fans. Selection I would argue is even better than the Artnia store in Shinjuku. Mainly because they actually have a lot of cheaper priced goods that are not expensive figurines, which are great for gifts. KH merch I actually thought was a little lackluster (they do have more KH plushes here compared to Artnia, but a lot of it was out of stock though). Nier merch was of course small, but seemed fine. If you like Dragon Quest, they had a few things, but you will have better luck with the Artnia store. Tied with Artnia for the largest amount of FF14 merch I saw at any store in Japan. The FF7 merch was insane though of course and with the USD-JPY conversion rate, you could get solid deals. And to round it out, they had an FF16 section too. This shop also seemed to sell some exclusive merch you can only find here, and not even online, at least in the United States. The staff was pretty nice too. They even had small Dissidia coasters near the cash register you could buy which was super cool. The store is pretty small, but the shelves are densely packed with great stuff. Oh and tons of music boxes here too if you are into that. If you can't tell by this large paragraph, we ended up spending waaaaay too much money here. But it was worth it!

If you are a fan of a major Square Enix IP, you HAVE to visit. You can actually find Square merch at the major 3rd party retailers like Animate (the one in Akhihabara has an entire floor dedicated to just Square Enix!), but this store is the...

Ignore any pictures and reviews more than a few weeks/months old - none of that exists anymore.

I'll start by noting this place had been on my to-visit list for no less than 7 years. So just imagine my disappointment, upon finding that they'd removed literally everything from their many beloved worlds to focus on a single mobile game I'd never heard of. It boggles the mind how they determined it'd be a good idea not to stop at adding some items for this 1 brand, but rather strip the menu and location of literally anything not related to it, leaving absolutely nothing for fans of e.g. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, or Kingdom Hearts.

Adding to the disappointment is that the dishes and drinks themselves weren't very good. I don't expect theme restaurants to have the most delicious food, but at minimum I'd expect some creativity and flair in what it looks like. In this case, their extremely limited menu was mainly just comprised of uninventive, low-effort ideas like slapping a sticker on some coffee or drawing a simple shape in ketchup on omurice. Especially surprising since, judging from past pictures, it does seem like they used to have pretty cool-looking stuff.

It could have been such a great experience, if only they kept a few staples around instead of transforming it into exclusively a Schoolgirl Strikers Cafe.

I can't fathom how this kind of business decision ever made sense to them (considering how deserted the place looked, it can't be working out too well), but it makes visiting this place entirely pointless for Square Enix fans who aren't specifically obsessed with this one game, and sufficiently obsessed at that to ignore the remarkably...

I visited this cafe on a recent trip to Tokyo, whilst they were promoting Octopath Traveller 2. First thing, this place is sooo hard to find. It took me about 30 mins to find it, as there was so many conflicting directions online.

If this helps, it's on the ground floor in a pedestrian passage in Akihabara station, in the Akiba Tolim bit. Do NOT go up the escalators like I did, as you will get lost in a labyrinth of restaurants and clothes shops.

After finding the cafe, I luckily was able to get a table. If you reserve online, I think you get a free drink but I did not do this. I am a big fan of Octopath Traveller and it was cool to see the cafe kitted out in Octopath Traveller decor. The menu was Japanese only but I used Google Translate to help me decipher it. The food looked amazing but tasted pretty bland. Still, I captured some great photos.

There is a small giftshop next door and I brought a plush chocobo.

Top tip - At the time of writing this, there was a Final Fantasy pop up shop in Shibuya Parco shopping mall, on level 6. This was incredible and had far more Final Fantasy items than were available at this gift shop, so I recommend...