Uchu Visits the Square Enix Artnia Cafe

This week, one of our new members took a trip to the Square Enix Artnia cafe in Japan. In his post that has made pretty much all of us at Eyes on Final Fantasy very jealous, he describes his fun experience....

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So I went to the SQUARE ENIX cafe, ARTNIA, over the weekend. It was my first time going there and it was pretty cool.

Some of you may know that SE used to have a store in a different (even more remote) part of Shinjuku, Tokyo. But they closed it and opened the cafe last year.

I thought I would share some of the pictures I took of the place. The cafe is situated next to the SE HQ in Shinjuku.


The building itself is an interesting shape, nice and curved. Kinda stands out among the other rectangular buildings surrounding it.


As you probably know, it's Halloween at the end of October(!) and so SE is getting into the spirit early by decorating the place with spooky stuff. And by spooky stuff I mean steamers that look like cobwebs and witch and black cat prints on the walls (which you may see in some of the pictures).


The main entrance way.


Below are some picture of the cafe/shop area. The shop floor is split into 2 main areas, one selling merchandise like figures and jewellery, while the other acts as both the cafe and shop, which sells things like plushies and stationary etc.


Now the main reason we went was to try some of the food. At first I was a little concerned that it would just be overpriced, but was pleasantly surprised to find to that it actually tasted pretty damn good. Still a little expensive, but not too bad. It all tasted great, even the orange juice.

Below you can see the menu and things with FF characters and memorabilia on them. Also, SE music is playing in the background. Now I am not sure if it was deliberate due to the Halloween theme, but the whole time we were there (at least 2 hours) the theme of FFVIII's Ultimacia's castle kept playing over and over again!


This is what I ordered. The main dish was rice and shrimp, while the desert was pancakes and ice cream (YUMMY!!). As I already said, the food tasted really good. There wasn't too much in the way of choice, but I think what we had was worth it. Next time we intend to try some FF cocktails.


As i mentioned, the place is split into 2 main sections. The darker and more mysterious areas sells various jewellery, figures, apparel, etc. (I did take more pictures but due to all the mirrors I am in a lot of them and it was difficult to get a good shot so here are a few.)


The first image is water falling from the ceiling around a crystal which landed on a pile of various materia.

The below pictures are the SE HQ building right next to the cafe. Was difficult to get a good shot as (naturally) it's a really tall building.