Dear readers,

How time flied since I wrote my last article here about Angelus. I wish I could write more often, and I’m sorry I can’t. But thank you for still being here and reading my blog even if I don’t post that often.

Heisei era is finally over. Reiwa started 2 weeks ago or so. I still can’t believe we are now in a new era.
I feel so grateful I could live this moment. I’m born at the end of Showa but as a foreigner I didn’t grow up in Japan during Heisei. But still I could taste the taste of the late Heisei. And now I’m living the beginning of a new era. Usually it’s a sad event as we are changing when the emperor dies. But this time it’s different so I felt like we should be happy and celebrate.
So, to enjoy our last moments of Heisei era we went to few different restaurants and ate their “end of heisei special menu”, we went to Karaoke few time as well and sang only Heisei hits, we watched a lot of famous 1990’s movies. We really enjoyed those moments a lot. We made a kind of “one week heisei celebrating” and it was a lot of fun!

But at the same time a very famous kissaten was closing… Just at the end of Heisei, on April 27th, Acacia served its last coffee.
It was a big shock to hear about it and it made me sad but a part of me wasn’t so surprise. The building has been there since 1927 (Showa 2) even if Acacia itself opened much more later, in 1973 (showa 48). It got quite old and apparently became dangerous so they planned to destroy it to avoid any trouble or accident in the future. It’s sad they couldn’t renovate it instead.

The first time I went there was in 2012. I’m not a big fan of Akihabara but I went with my friends there and we decided to split for one hour and half as everyone wanted to do/see something different. I’m not so into manga/anime culture so I decided to just have a walk. And I saw Acacia for the first time. I couldn’t read katakana at the time but the “Coffee” written in capital letters and the old building made me feel like trying to it
I remember saying “hot kohi onegaishimasu” and couldn’t answer to what the mama said to me after that but she just smiled and a little bit after brought me a cup of hot coffee. The cup was cute. I saw the name of the coffee on it and I was happy to know it.
For one hour I just sat here, looking around me. At the time I wasn’t so experienced about kissaten but I felt very comfortable.

After that, every time people wanted to meet in Akihabara, I would bring them here. Sometimes I had to commute between Iwamotocho station and Akihabara station very early in the morning so I always tried to have some time to grab a quick coffee there as the place opened at 7am.

Finally I decided to go there one last time, the day before the closing. The place was full. A lot of customers came to say good-bye, some of them brought gifts for the owners. I had a small chat with the mama. Few years ago I couldn’t say a word in Japanese but that day I could tell her that I was very happy the first time I came. It was good to thank the owners one last time for their hard work.

After the closing I searched for pictures I took of Acacia and then I realized I never took that much pictures. But I really wanted to share some with you…
Sharing with you the picture of the last kissaten closing in Heisei.

Thank you so much for all these years of good coffee and smiles to the customers. I’m really happy and grateful that I could conclude my Heisei era with such a good coffee one last time. I really hope the owners will enjoy their retirement a lot.