Check out my Pokemon cafe reservation tips guide below featuring tips and tricks for foreigners. There are two Pokémon cafe locations in Japan: Nihonbashi, Tokyo and Shinsaibashi, Osaka.
Who You Are Up Against
First and foremost, I must say that getting a reservation for the Pokémon Cafe is difficult because you are not only up against real people who want to visit the cafe but you are also up against people who are taking up the reservations and selling them to clients who enlist them or to whoever wants to buy them. The reservation does not take a credit card which makes it easier for people who want to flip the reservations for profit. See the section on reservation services below at the end of this post.
Pokémon Cafe Reservation Date & Time
Pokémon Cafe reservations are released on their website at https://www.pokemoncenter-online.com/cafe/reservation.html at 6 PM JST, 31 days before your desired reservation date. For example, today’s date is May 10 2024. You would be booking for June 10, 2024.
You can verify by going to the reservation page and seeing which date has “未開放 or NA” which is not yet released in Japanese. 満席 means full.
So for most foreigners, it would involve waking up in the middle of the night to get the reservation. 6 PM JST translates to 2 AM in Los Angeles/Vancouver or 5 AM New York/Toronto.
English or Japanese?
It has been recommended to just leave the page in Japanese because the English translated pages do not show the dates and times accurately. Plus you probably do not want to waste time clicking your browser to translate the page.
Reservation Tips & Tricks
When the reservations open up at 6 PM JST, the system is swamped and based on my own experience, the reservation page in basicallyinaccessible. By the time you get to the reservation page, all the reservations are gone.
HOWEVER, I have had most success getting reservations at 6:20 PM JST and 6:30 PM JST – that is, at the 20 minute and 40 minute mark, unfulfilled reservations are released.
So, say at around 6:19 PM PST, I would continuously refresh my browser using my keyboard shortcut of F5 (instead of hitting the refreshing button on the browser with my mouse) and wait for reservations to open which will be coloured in blue.
My next tip is to zoom out of your browser (to say at least 50 % or less) so that when the reservations do open up, you can see everything that is available.
I found that people tend to look from top to down on a page so the earlier reservations might be snapped up faster. So for my best chances, I hover my mouse around the bottom time slots on my zoomed out reservation and click around the area of the later reservations after I hit the refresh (F5 on my keyboard) to try to get a reservation. In the past, I have add most success getting reservations near the end of the day which might mean you are there for dinner or even later but at least I got in.
If you did not get any reservations at the 6:20 PM JST time point, I would give the 6:40 PM JST time point a try because I have had success then as well.
Pokémon Cafe Reservation Services
If you are looking for a reservation service, that is people who can make the reservation for you, I would recommend going on Facebook and Fiverr and searching for the term, “pokemon cafe reservation service.” I do not have any recommendations because I got the reservations myself. However, I have seen online about people enlisting these services and having success. Below is a screenshot of some reservation services on Fiverr. I think a reservation service might be more appropriate for those who really want a specific time or date but even so the people who run these services ask for some flexibility.
Last Minute Reservations
If you did not plan ahead of time for try to book 31 days in advance of your idea reservation date, I would definitely try to look for openings two days, a day before or same day. You will just need to refresh and keep checking. I have personally seen reservations open up 2 days or 1 day ahead of the date. They send reminder emails 7 days and 2 days before the reservation so some people might cancel if they can not make it and if they are nice to do so.