Manga Cafe Mika opened its doors to the Kintetsu Building in San Francisco's Japan Town in late April of 2008. The establishment follows a business model followed by the popular “manga cafes” popular in Japan. The basics are simple, the establishment has a private library of books that you pay to read by the hour. Some refreshments are available to order on the side while you read. Unlike most libraries, though, the books in manga cafes do not leave the store.

Mika follows this exact model, offering customers an impressive collection of 20,000+ volumes of manga, many of them popular titles throughout the years in Japan. Everything from classics such as Tezuka Osamu's Astro Boy, to more obscure titles such as shojo manga not well known outside of Japan, to the currently popular Bleach can be located throughout the store. Genres are widespread and they keep in stock the latest issue of weekly and monthly serial magazines.

Director of C-Cube Co., Ltd. Claude Kikuchi offered his goals in opening shop in San Francisco. With the growing popularity of manga and Japanese anime, he wishes to spread Japanese culture to Americans through Mika. The manga, although the core shelves are dedicated to notable or popular titles, are mostly those that have yet to be translated into English, offering readers a chance to look into the manga that many American readers have not yet had a chance to see.

To further keep up with the latest releases from Japan, an LCD TV is set up to show unsubbed videos of anime recently aired in Japan. To keep it legal, Mika keeps advertisements that were recorded along with the anime itself. Kikuchi explains that the commercials are not only a fair way to show the anime, but that "Japanese commercials are in a sense, a kind of Japanese culture as well."

For the first hour, customers pay $6 for entrance, and then $1.50 for every hour after. Snacks and sodas are also available for purchase, but nothing too complicated. The premises does not have a kitchen, so drinks are limited to sodas in a can, or maybe a cup of coffee, and for snacks: cup-noodles (a staple in Japanese manga cafes) and other Japanese snack foods. A solid menu was not yet available when The-O Network came to visit.

In addition to checking out manga and anime, Mika also has a few computers for surfing the net, just in case you really find a strong urge to wiki a certain series or e-mail yourself a title or two.

For now, as Cafe Mika gets up on its feet, the staff has invited a doujin artist to sit and draw for the store. P.N. Kizuki Sakura (http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Spade/6335/) has been contracted to sit in Mika for the next 3 months or so to show the public how manga is drawn.

Pictures and our network entry can be found at: http://www.t-ono.net/Bay-Area/7-Manga-Cafe-Mika/View-details.html