Week Three: Sean and Hager

For our final blog post, Hager and I will be covering a cafe that we found near the outskirts Mukogaoka-yuen Station. The cafe was called Cafe Gusto and unlike the other eccentric cafes that we have covered in this blogpost, or very heavily themed cafe, it was extremely normal. However, what's normal in Japan would still then be different from the contemporary cafe that is seen around Calgary.

The cafe was a normal cafe where the waiters and waitresses did not dress up in any fancy clothes. They were in fact, just normal waiters you'd expect to see in a any normal restaurant. The cafe was also not themed in any specific way that caters to any individual's specific and or eccentric taste. It was a normal cafe you would expect in Japan - normal foods, a drink bar, and a very normal atmosphere. This normality is different from the normality that is seen and felt in Calgary cafes, in the sense where despite it being a cafe, it also functions as a restaurant, and has a higher quality service and food than that of the typical cafes like Quickly's or OCup in Chinatown Calgary. The food, although there are very cafe-like foods such as desserts and certain drinks, is also different from the typical cafe foods in general, because it has foods meant to be served in the restaurants such as hamburger steaks and so on. In addition, the ambience was something that of a cafe - its lighting and music gave it a very nice feel, which is not translated into Calgary's cafes in general.

The food was reasonably priced, they even had glasses of wine for only 99 yen.

Overall, for what is known to be a normal cafe in Japan is set to be a higher class than those in Calgary. The atmosphere and foods served seem to give off the vibe of that of a higher-classed society. In addition to this, Japan's normal cafes adopted a drink bar, which allows guests to have an all-you-can-drink scheme. This scheme in itself is already better than that of Calgary cafes, which served drinks at about $5 each. The Calgary cafes are generally more expensive and more backward than those compared to both Japan's normal and themed cafes.