Kawaii Monster Cafe, a restaurant produced by Sebastian Masuda, is unlike anywhere you’ve ever been. It’s located near the Jingumae crossing in Harajuku, Tokyo, across the street from the Laforet department store.
But all you have to do is stand in the doorway to lose the sense of where you really are.
Step inside, and you’ll be transported to another world.
Some areas are covered in lips.
The ceilings are covered in baby bottles.
Glowing jellyfish float overhead.
There’s also a mushroom forest.
The scenery is enough to make you feel you’ve been pulled into someone else’s dreams. There’s an underlying strangeness that deepens the outwardly cute style.
Waiting inside the cafe are the icons of the establishment: the Monster Girls. They run the cafe in their wild, flashy costumes. Today they gave us a tour of the cafe and took pictures with us.
One of the most shocking aspects of the cafe is the color of the food. Even the pasta is enough to keep you wondering what it could possibly taste like.
Even the dessert has its own gaudy, colorful look.
The staff explains that all the food is colored with all-natural ingredients, and it still tastes great. We got so caught up in the colors that we couldn’t help but feel like it all tasted like nothing we’ve ever had before.
The Kawaii Monster Cafe opened on August 1, 2015 with a great deal of buzz on fashion sites and social media.
Several days after its opening, Shigesato Itoi took a group of Hobonichi Employees to the cafe to go check it out.
“We’re heeere!”
(From Shigesato Itoi’s Twitter)
We took pictures together with the Monster Girls and tried their mysteriously-colored dishes.
“Quite a sight, huh?”
(From Shigesato Itoi’s Twitter)
(Hobonichi’s resident alien bird, Feathered Shiju, joined the group on their visit.)
It was this trip that prompted Itoi to set up a meeting to chat with whoever could have possibly put together such a wonderful place.
It was two months later that Itoi returned to the Kawaii Monster Cafe to interview art director Sebastian Masuda. (Today they led us into a special room away from the restaurant noise.)
This is Sebastian Masuda.
And this is Shigesato Itoi.
Despite seeming to come from entirely different backgrounds, their first meeting together turned into a very lively discussion.
Itoi tweeted about their meeting as follows:
“I met up with Sebastian Masuda, who worked on the art direction for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. I’m really glad we met. I thought we would be nothing alike, but it turned out we think in a lot of the same ways. It was fun!”
Masuda tweeted afterwards as well.
“I had a really great time today having a deep and inspirational discussion with Shigesato Itoi!”
Itoi also wrote the following on the Hobonichi website:
Yesterday I met with Sebastian Masuda, the man behind the art of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. I’d first stopped by his Kawaii Monster Cafe by chance when I was intrigued by it, but I just knew I had to meet the person responsible for all of it. It seemed like we would be from totally different worlds, but it turned out that we’d reached the same point despite our different itineraries. That was a lot of fun. Who knows, maybe you’ll see this kawaii world of color in our own TOBICHI shop at some point?
Whether you’re a fan of Masuda or learning about his work for the first time, we hope you enjoy this interview!
Sebastian Masuda’s other work is the music video for parody song “Nande Ya Nen” by Hamada Bamyu Bamyu, an idol character created on manzai duo Downtown’s comedy show, “Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!” Masuda directed and and did visual production for the video. (https://youtu.be/c64sQsABKcM)
2016-12-06-Tue
Part 2 | NEXT
