It is an interesting and novel experience interacting with adorable micro pigs at Japan's Mipig Cafe!
I had chanced upon Mipig Cafe when I was looking for dog cafes to visit in Osaka, Japan. I was attracted by how cute the micro pigs look and the favourable reviews online relative to other animal cafes. Well, after our visit, I can tell you the pigs are absolutely adorable and the visit was a really interesting and memorable experience!
But one visit is good enough for us. We probably wouldn't visit a second time, one reason being it's quite expensive to begin with and we enjoyed interacting with dogs more than the pigs - this is in comparison to Hogoken Cafe, a rescued dog cafe we visited when in Osaka.
Still, if you're in Osaka and want a novel and interesting experience at an animal cafe, MiPig Cafe is a good choice. Here's our review and 5 things to know if you're planning to visit MiPig Cafe in Osaka:
1) You need to make reservations
As with all popular attractions in Japan, you'll need to make reservations ahead at MiPig Cafe's website in order to visit the cafe. But the good thing is it's not popular to the extent that you need to make reservations way in advance. We could secure a spot about a week before we visited and there still looked to be many timeslots available when we made our reservation.
But don't leave it to the last minute too as reservations are required and MiPig Cafe's website states clearly that they don't take walk-ins.
2) It can costs almost S$100 for a family of four.
The cafe is not the cheapest and our one-hour visit cost us around S$100 for a family of four. First you need to pay an entry fee of 660 yen per pax. For adults, it would cost another 1,100 yen for the first 30 minutes, and the next 30 mins would be 550 yen.
For elementary school students (I believe it's 6-11 years), it's 550 yen for the first 30 mins and 330 yen for the next 30 mins. Pre-school children only have to pay the entry fee. The entry fee comes with one drink which you can choose from a good selection at the cafe's vending machine.
If you want a private room, which is what we opted for, you need to top up another 550 yen for every 30 minutes. BTW these are payable at the cafe, not during reservation.
3) The pigs are friendly
The pigs are generally quite friendly and staff will brief you on how to handle them. They do like to climb onto your lap (you'll be given a blanket to put over your lap) and snuggle/sleep there. But that also means they might just choose one person's lap to sit on and then fall asleep, so other people in the group can only sit and watch in envy!
I think the pigs are generally quite good natured and okay with children. One of the pigs did burrow its snout into the blanket and when the blanket shifted, it tried to chew Little E's jeans button and ended up biting her through her jeans. It wasn't very painful but just remember to cover yourself well with the blanket in case you get one that likes to burrow! The staff there was very nice to ask if Little E was okay and if we would like to change a pig because of that (we didn't as it wasn't a big deal).
At one point, the pigs also got rather restless after they were awaken by the staff as we wanted to move them to another lap. They started squealing quite a bit and wanted to leave the room (we felt a bit sorry for them!) and then a staff came in to put them onto another lap and they were soon snuggling and sleeping again. We didn't want to disturb the pigs after that and just let them rest on one person's lap. Lesson learned: it's better to let sleeping pigs lie.
4) You can choose between a private room and main area.
We opted for a private room thinking that it would be less crowded and we would have more time with our assigned pigs - you're given two pigs in a private room (see vid below for a better look of the private room!). I do like the privacy but the pigs do tend to like to snuggle and sleep together, which means like I said earlier, sometimes two will be sleeping on the lap of one person for the longest time and the others in your group can only watch.
The main area is a large area where the pigs roam about. It looks very spacious and when we were there, every visitor had a pig. I believe if you don't have one, the staff will help to lead a pig to your lap. So in hindsight, the main area is alright too. Oh, and we spotted a rather large pig at the main area!
5) An hour is quite enough
We booked for an hour and you have the option to extend for another 30 mins if they do not have reservations thereafter. I think one hour was just right for us - half an hour would have been a little short.
Yup, so overall this was an interesting and fun experience for us as we've never interacted with micro pigs and they are really cute. But like I said, once is enough for the novelty!
The Osaka Mipig Cafe is located at 2F, 2-10-32, Nishishinsaibashi, Chuo-ku, Osaka.
Disclaimer: We paid for our visit, and my opinions and reviews here are strictly my and my family’s own.
©Vivian Teo. All content and photos are copyrighted to Vivian Teo unless otherwise specified.