Google Maps Took Me to Tokyo’s Negative Café

🔖 4 min read

In the heart of Tokyo, among hyper-futuristic skyscrapers, billboards with fluorescent pandas, and people who manage to look busy even when standing still, there’s a place that goes against the grain. You don’t need the right outfit or even a smile. All you need is to be having a bad day. A bad week? Even better.

It’s called Negative Cafe and Bar Mori Ouchi, the first place in the world where good moods are strictly forbidden. Designed for those who can’t face today — or tomorrow. Silent, full of wood and pensive plants. Created by an architect who’d just finished listening to Adele.

You walk in, order a drink, and… cry. Or simply sit there, staring into the void, as if it were the finale of a series you didn’t understand but still watched in full. Here, no one asks how you are. Because they already know. Bad. You can settle in with the worst of yourself: the breakup, the job you hate, the neighbour who beats the dust out of his rugs at seven in the morning. In this bar you can be sad, frustrated or burnt out without having to justify it. In fact, smile too much and they might just throw you out.

Part coffee shop, part gallery of apathy, part waiting room for those simply waiting for it to pass.

In Italy, something like this would never work. A place designed for bad moods? Impossible. People would queue up just to ask you ‘What happened?’, not to let off steam. The curious would outnumber the true masters of emotional collapse. The bar would turn into a talk show, with uninvited commentators at the next table:

– Did you have a fight?
– With whom?
– Is it work?
– Is it love?
– Or just because it’s Monday?

Here, there’s no such thing as emotional privacy: people want to know. They’ll watch you, interrogate you, diagnose you with the help of their gym’s WhatsApp group. Within three minutes you’re listening to the neighbour’s cousin’s tale about her separation from her husband in ’98, and before you know it, you’re caught up in a chain of tragedies worthy of the evening news.

Maybe in Milan a Negative Cafe could stand a chance. In Brera, perhaps. Velvet armchairs, a minimal playlist, stylish people in Celine glasses with tears that are waterproof-friendly. Open from 7:30 a.m., the menu would feature espresso and pre-booked weeping. Because there, pain is functional, groomed, sometimes even sponsored. Anxiety becomes a performance and sadness an opportunity to display curated vulnerability. Drama turns into experience, experience builds a CV, and a CV builds a career. And so even crying – as long as it’s aesthetically pleasing and comes with an electronic invoice – can finally become a trend.

And yet, the need is there. We’re just not ready. Because Italy is the country where pain is dressed up in irony, staged like an opera, but heaven forbid we take it seriously.
A few days later, I decided to contact the owner of the Negative Cafe directly on Instagram. Yes, him: the man who serves you a cocktail and an emotional breakdown.

I explained that his bar had unexpectedly ended up on the pages of my blog, that I found his concept brilliant, and that my style was ironic. I hit ‘send’ with the same clarity of mind I sometimes have when signing up for the gym.
All of this, in which language? Japanese, of course. With what skills? None. I relied on Google Translate, my faint memory of a course I took two years ago (attended with the same regularity with which I water plants: almost never, but with the best of intentions) and the courage of someone who has no idea what they’re doing. I have no clue what actually reached him — he may have thought I was trying to rent him a flat in Rome.

Anyway, he replied. Very politely. Or perhaps just too puzzled to react otherwise.

Here’s what he said:

‘Hi Fabiana!
I’m KOU, the owner of the Negative Cafe and Bar Mori Ouchi.
Thank you for writing about my bar!!
Even though we define ourselves as a ‘café bar for negative people’, it’s a place where you can still joke, laugh, or exchange a few words with a smile at the counter.
If you like, you can even give a TED Talk on florists or freelance psychics.
However, precisely because we present ourselves as a ‘café bar for negative people’, many customers are reserved, kind, sensitive, and perhaps don’t feel comfortable in crowded places.
That’s why even the shyest visitors can feel at ease and spend their time here in peace.
We also have small private rooms where you can relax quietly — and I personally designed all the furnishings.
I really hope you’ll come visit us one day, Fabiana.’

And then he added:
‘By the way, I’ve been to Italy once.
I was struck by the beauty of your cities — far more charming than Tokyo!
It’s a truly wonderful country!
Except for the high number of pickpockets after my wallet.
In Tokyo, pickpockets hardly exist at all. I’d say that’s the only thing in which it beats Italy.
Tokyo may not be as beautiful as your cities, but I still hope you’ll visit someday!’

Thank you to Kou for his reply and for welcoming my story with such openness — proof that kindness is the true signature of the Negative Cafe.

Written by Fabiana Moroni

Fabiana Moroni is an Italian writer and creator of the blog La mia vita è una sitcom (My Life Is a Sitcom). She transforms everyday mishaps with wit and irony into stories that blend humor and cultural observation.

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