Dog Heart from Aquamarine

You should only visit a dog café if you truly love dogs. You need to love that they will climb on your lap and lick your iPhone and make your hands smell like dog and fight over bones and possibly do their business on the floor right in front of you. If you’re visiting Dog Heart, in particular, you should also love toy poodles since they make up the majority of the pups here (there was also one beagle in the mix when we visited).

Like many animal cafés, the café section is not a big feature of the place – it’s hidden at the back and only as we were leaving did we notice the table and chairs peeking out. But that’s okay, since your main reason for visiting will be to make friends with Ribon, who has clearly mastered the art of dominating attention by charging for your lap the minute you sit down and not budging, no matter what histrionics play out around you.

We only stayed for 30 minutes (¥950) but you can also rent one of the dogs for an hour (¥3,600) and take them for a walk to nearby Yoyogi Park. Either way, it’s bound to lift your mood, as dogs do.