Sunday, March 8, 2015

Rabbit Cafes - They Have That, Too

This shop sign really says it all.
I don't know much about rabbits, but for the facts that they're generally rumored to be unfriendly pets and that they're lagomorphs rather than rodents. Incidentally, that probably means I know a little more than the average person, but none the less, that doesn't leave me with much. But hey, I was willing to make a change and learn a thing or two, and so I visited a rabbit cafe for the first time on Saturday. Yes, it appears that rabbit cafes exist on top of cat cafes and owl cafes and penguin bars. This particular one was called Ra.a.g.f, which is quite difficult to read, and was located in Harajuku, but they seem to also have a branch in...Jiyugaoka, was it?
 Anyway, I went there.

 At a glance, Ra.a.g.f was suspiciously small, as if it were actually a one-room apartment turned into a cafe. It turns out Ra.a.g.f actually is a one-room apartment turned into a cafe. The business seemed to be doing rather good though, as I was unable to enter without a reservation at first, and told to come back after an hour, which I did. At first I wondered why such a healthy looking venture operated in such a tiny venue. But it turns out there's might be a reason for that, and I'll get back to that later.

 If you like rabbits, well, you'll find rabbits here. Ra.a.g.f (it's kind of annoying to write as well) has a solid dozen of the little critters, and you're allowed to pet them at will, or hold them if you ask nice enough. All the rabbits even seem to be different breeds, with one of them being particularly huge and twice the size of the other rabbits. They also let one rabbit at a time run loose in the common room, and as it turns out, the rabbits I had a chance to interact with were rather carefree and seemed to approach people without much of a second thought. The reason they only let one rabbit out at a time, I learned, is because two rabbits of the same gender are likely to fight, and two of the opposite gender are likely to mate. Fair enough, then.



Poop Machine is the only name you get.
But also, rabbits poop a lot. Unlike cats, they seem to poop indiscriminately of where they are or what they're doing, which might explain why they keep the venue small, lest they lose some of the poop. Even though they appeared to have a pooping zone, I'd say that they pooped there about 25% of the time, and that's pretty generous. And it's as much as staff can handle to pick up after the poop of a single rabbit, let alone several. And they throw it into the pooping zone, which might mislead you to think the rabbits actually poop there a lot. So if it disturbs you to sit on a spot where a rabbit might have pooped a few minutes prior to you coming in, then maybe avoid Ra.a.g.f? But rabbit poop is actually odorless and, from what I heard, edible for humans (and a recommended meal in case of a survival situation.)
 So yeah, go to Ra.a.g.f, chill with rabbits, chill with rabbit poop, eat rabbit poop,  get kicked out for eating rabbit poop, do what you like there!

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