RIO Puppy Cafe

It's really hard to find a good dog cafe in Japan knowing how Japan is really not the best at upkeep with animal cafes (I guess cat cafes are the easiest to take care of) but I think this puppy cafe is decent. Seemed like the workers there really try to care for the dogs and clean the place up quite often. Upon entering the cafe you pay for an allotted amount of time to be with the dogs. You're giving some dog treats to feed them and you are given lockers to put your shoes in and wear slippers in the dog room.

The space itself is appropriately sized. Most of the dogs are on the smaller side so they don't take up much space and the space does look adequate enough for them to manuever around. Most of the dogs are friendly but also will leave you alone once you have no more food to feed them. A few of them will stick around just because they want some pets. You can go through petting several varieties of dog breeds your entire time there. They just kind of go back and forth around the room to each visitor.

When my friend and I visited (around the evening time) there was I believe 4 or 5 other people there. Each person seemed to have a good amount of dogs around them. I'd say there's probably like a dozen dogs (maybe a few more than that) in the cafe. So there's ample amounts of dog time for people I would suspect even when it gets a bit more busy. You usually end up bonding with one or two of them. I particularly liked this one Maltese dog and this French Bulldog. All they wanted to do was sit on my lap which I enjoyed.

You can also purchase additional treats for the dogs but we just got the initial treats that came with paying for the entrance to get in. There are canned drinks in a cooler fridge at the far end corner of the room that you can consume as much as you want. I do think it's a better idea to have canned drinks instead of the typical fountain drink machines you'd find at the cat cafes.

Overall I'd recommend this place. Much cleaner and the employees seem like they know what they're doing. Especially compared to some other dog cafes I've been to in Japan. Location is great too. It's right in the middle of Shimokitazawa which is a very hip and cool place for younger people.