Café & Sweets · Yanaka

Kayaba Coffee カヤバ珈琲

A 1938 corner kissaten at the top of Yanaka's main street, rescued from closure and restored with its black-and-white facade intact, locals come for the fat egg sandwich and the "Russian" (coffee shaken with cocoa).

About

Kayaba Coffee has stood on the Kototoi-dori corner between Ueno Sakuragi and Yanaka since 1938, and for decades it was the neighbourhood's living room. When it closed in 2006 after the owner died, a local preservation group and a new operator brought it back with the original two-storey wooden shophouse, its curved signboard and dark wooden counters intact. Downstairs keeps the Showa kissaten mood; upstairs is a tatami room with low tables where you sit on cushions under exposed beams. The menu mixes classics, thick tamago sando, now on sourdough, and the Russian, a mocha-like mix of coffee and cocoa, with seasonal cakes. It opens at 8:00, which makes it the perfect breakfast stop before walking Yanaka cemetery and the temple lanes while the streets are still quiet.

Highlights

• Original 1938 timber shophouse with its hand-lettered Showa signboard
• Upstairs tatami room with low tables and window views over Kototoi-dori
• Signature tamago sando (egg sandwich), now on sourdough
• The "Russian": coffee and cocoa served as a house speciality
• Opens at 8:00, one of the earliest sit-down breakfasts in Yanaka

Tips

• Arrive before 9:00 on weekends; by late morning a queue forms on the pavement.
• Ask for the upstairs tatami room if you want to linger, shoes come off at the stairs.
• SCAI The Bathhouse gallery and Ueno Sakuragi Atari are both within a two-minute walk, so build a little loop.
• Hours shorten on weekdays (to about 17:00); weekends run to about 18:00.

Open in Google Maps · Info checked 2026-10-09

Nearby

• SCAI The BathhouseLocal Secret · 70 m away
• Ueno Sakuragi AtariLocal Secret · 140 m away
• Kan'ei-jiTemple · 270 m away
• Yanaka Himalayan Cedar CornerPhoto Spot · 290 m away
• Yanaka Cemetery & Old TownLocal Secret · 320 m away
• Former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen StationPhoto Spot · 370 m away
• Sogakudo Concert Hall of the Former Tokyo Music SchoolLandmark & Tower · 420 m away
• Tokyo Metropolitan Art MuseumMuseum · 480 m away