Starbucks Coffee - Kokyo Gaien Wadakura Fountain Park — Restaurant in Tokyo

Beautifully designed in a restored once owned lot by the Imperial family, this Starbucks is the epitome of where art, design, and human interaction seamlessly co-exist in harmony together with the exquisite deliciousness of Starbucks service and quality ONLY found in Japan. This is high end and concept through and through. I have the privilege of knowing the artist Ms. Yaeko Kurimata Yozan who has a number of installations, pieces, and elements placed into this space. Yaeko’s artist statement lies true to her art, where she wants to create pieces that exist together with the architecture in harmony not only in color, texture, shape and form, but also in culture. Her art is the embodiment of the Japanese spirit where care is given in places that only when recognized can it truly be appreciated for its quiet but intended execution. Her pièce de résistance, an immense wall piece created out of fishnets weaved into a delicate color arrangement belies the horrific truth these items of literal destruction that carve life, killing brutally from the ocean. Yaeko by repurposing such items into these long strands appearing to sway gently in the wind, speaks to her ability in finding beauty in anything only because she truly knows what damage these man made items do. Calling to humans’ nature to discard callously, “STOP!” Recognize your environment, give Thanks, honor life, no...

A beautiful outlet with full length windows located in Wadakura Park just opposite the Imperial Palace. The spacious park surrounding the place gives off a liberating and relaxing vibe. If the weather is good, I would recommend sitting outdoors.

However, the outlet can get extremely crowded depending on when you visit. The layout of the ordering and waiting area also aggravates the situation because it clearly can't hold so many people at one time. Luckily, I was there quite early in the morning but as I was leaving and tried to return my cutlery and cup inside the store, there was a long line waiting to order and groups of people waiting for their orders. I don't know if there is a mobile ordering function in the Japanese version of the Starbucks app though but that would have helped to alleviate the crowding.

I ordered the matcha latte and Uji matcha cheesecake which clearly had a more distinct matcha flavour compared to its Singapore equivalent. There were some items which were limited edition or seasonal ones so you might want to try those instead especially if they can't be found in your...

Manager was so unnecessarily rude because we sat down trying to figure out mobile order as we wanted to practice how to do it here as we had tried earlier during our trip and messed up. It wasn't crowded and we thought it wouldn't be a big deal. They immediately started pointing and making rude comments at us. Then the manager came in no more than a minute when we came in. We didn't have time to loiter and she asked if we ordered and I said not yet. Then said we can't stay if we don't order very rudely and said that's fine can we have a moment. She said no we need to order or get out. I get it that we didn't go to the register upon entry but we didn't get to seat for more then a minute before she was just so rude to us. Not even polite about it. Really sour our experience because they thought we couldn't understand them when they keep saying rude kind of racist stuff when I was picking up the order. The spot is...