One of my favorite things i got to do in Japan was going to an owl cafe! I should preface this by saying I love animals but birds freak me out more than i care to admit. So while I was in animal heaven I might have also been a bit freaked out. If you get a chance to go to one of these cafes I highly suggest you do it. They’re picking up popularity in the U.s. primarily with cat cafes but I wouldn’t be surprised if we started to get other types of animal cafes before too long.
The cafe I went to had instructions on how to interact with the owls with pictures so people who didn’t speak Japanese could understand. There were ways to pet them while keeping both people and owls safe. We had to use the back of our hands to pet them and we were able to feed them using tweezers for the meat so the owls got food and no fingers were harmed in the process.
Each of the owls had a sign with it’s name, how old it was, and the type of owl it was. There were ones as small as the Northern White-Faced Owl and others as large as the Eurasian Eagle Owl. Some of them you were allowed to hold with the direction of a staff member. For one of the smaller owls they gave you a glove to where and sat the bird on your hand. To interact with the larger one I had to place a towel on my shoulder and then the bird was placed on that. Having a bird of prey stare at you from your shoulder is a different experience to say the least!
The cafe also had hedgehogs which was odd to me because i would have thought the owls would try to get to them but most of them had little tethers to keep them close to their areas. I was surprised that the owls didn’t try to hurt each other or the hedgehogs but maybe the combination of being well fed and used to the other animals had something to do with it. The hedgehogs were cute and while i was used to handling them as I had a friend that had some,it was really nice to have the gloves to wear. They just curled up in my hands and walked around a bit when they woke up.
I can’t wait to go back to Japan and visit other animal cafes as well as OwlPark! If you’re ever in japan head on out to OwlPark in Ikebukuro and enjoy your visit!
Sincerely Yours,
Pocket Elf Travels
