Cafe Arles, Tokyo

Why you should experience Cafe Arles in Tokyo, Japan.

Cafe Arles is a nostalgic kissaten where Shinjuku-sanchome's backstreet character, Showa-era furnishings, hearty cafe cooking and resident cats preserve the unhurried pleasures of a coffeehouse opened in 1978.

Set along the streets behind Yasukuni-dori near Hanazono-dori and just steps from Hanazono Shrine, the ground-floor cafe retreats from Central Shinjuku into a room of aged sofas, antique furniture, dark timber and decades of accumulated cat imagery. Jirocho and Ishimatsu roam among the tables as the current resident cats, continuing a tradition established by their predecessor Goemon and giving the room a domestic quality uncommon among the district's surviving kissaten. Coffee shares the menu with substantial plates led by Indo Omura, a dry-curry omelet that has become one of the cafe's signatures. The result is a Shinjuku-sanchome coffeehouse where nearly five decades of cafe culture survive through old furnishings, familiar cooking and cats that have become inseparable from the room.

What you should know about Cafe Arles.

Cafe Arles is best known for opening in 1978 and developing into one of Shinjuku-sanchome's enduring old-school coffeehouses, with proprietor Nemoto presiding over a 45-seat room that has retained its sofas and antique furnishings across decades of enormous change in the surrounding district. Cats became part of the cafe's history through Goemon, whom the owner rescued when he was young and who spent years moving among customers before dying at nineteen. Jirocho subsequently arrived through a connection with a regular customer and became the second-generation resident cat, followed by Ishimatsu from the same rescuer. Their names draw from Shimizu no Jirocho and Mori no Ishimatsu, two figures associated with nineteenth-century popular culture, giving the succession an affectionate theme extending beyond the individual animals. Jirocho developed the more commanding personality of the pair, and Ishimatsu joined him as the younger companion, with the two sleeping on sofas, crossing the room and approaching customers on their own schedules. The food has acquired its own following through Indo Omura, which wraps dry curry in egg, joining the cafe's coffee and traditional kissaten dishes with a specialty closely associated with Arles. Nearly half a century after opening, the same address at 5-10-8 Shinjuku still joins coffee, substantial cafe cooking and successive generations of resident cats inside the kind of independent room increasingly scarce across Central Tokyo.

Indo Omura brings the cafe's food character into focus through seasoned dry curry enclosed in a soft omelet, combining spice, rice and egg in a substantial plate built for lunch as much as an afternoon coffee break. Omurice and hamburger combinations extend the old-school kissaten repertoire toward familiar yoshoku, keeping the kitchen anchored in filling plates associated with Japanese coffeehouses across the postwar decades. Coffee returns the table to the cafe's simplest ritual, particularly when a long stay allows the dark furniture, old sofas and slow movement of the room to become as important as the drink itself. Jirocho or Ishimatsu introduces an unpredictable element as either cat crosses between tables, settles into a favorite place or approaches someone. Cafe Arles needs little theatrical embellishment beyond those components: coffee, curry, upholstered seats and cats have accumulated enough history since 1978 to give the room its unmistakable character.

How to fold Cafe Arles into your trip.

Cafe Arles works as the coffee destination within a Shinjuku-sanchome route connecting an Edo-period sanctuary with centuries of theatrical associations, a postwar cultural complex built around rakugo and a museum devoted to the neighborhood's development from highway settlement to metropolitan center.

Begin at Hanazono Shrine, whose history predates the Tokugawa shogunate and whose move to its present vicinity took place during the Kan'ei era of 1624-1644. Repeated fires led the shrine to finance rebuilding through Sanko-in Shibai performances of theater, dance and other entertainments, establishing a cultural connection that long preceded the modern stages and cinemas surrounding Shinjuku. Continue to Shinjuku Suehirotei, the surviving yose theater whose present wooden building dates to 1946 and whose stage continues the vaudeville tradition through rakugo alongside comic storytelling, magic and related performance arts. Conclude at Shinjuku Historical Museum, opened in 1989 with permanent galleries tracing the ward through archaeology, the Naito-Shinjuku post station, modern literature and twentieth-century urban growth; reconstructed spaces include a merchant house and early Showa domestic interiors. Cafe Arles closes the progression back near Shinjuku-sanchome inside a surviving piece of the district's late-Showa culture, where a coffeehouse opened in 1978 still pairs familiar cafe cooking with the feline succession that began with Goemon and continues through Jirocho and Ishimatsu.

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