Manga cafe

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A manga café or a manga kissa (漫画喫茶, マンガ喫茶, manga kissa^?, "kissa" meaning café) is a kind of café in Japan where people can read manga. People pay for the time they stay in the café. Most manga cafés also offer internet access like internet cafés (ネットカフェ, netto kafe^?) and vice versa, making the two terms mostly interchangeable in Japan. Additional services include video games, television, snack/beverage vending machine, and more. Like Japanese cafés in general, smoking is usually permitted.

For an hour stay, the cost is generally about 400 yen, with most places requiring customers to pay this as a minimum even if leaving earlier. Some manga cafés offer a service where one can rest for the night.

1 Services
2 Abroad
3 Criticisms
4 In fiction
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Services

Search criterias at a search engine site ("National Net Café / Manga Kissa Search Engine (beta)"[1]) offers a glimpse of services that may be offered at a manga kissa:

Seating - reading seat, non-smoking seat, sofa, massage chair, party room, internet seat, pair seat, zashiki (tatami matted), reclining seat
PC - disc burners, office software, color printers, photocopier, TV
Facilities - movies/DVD's, Shower room, darts, magazines, PC class, music CD's, nail salon, pool table, newspapers, CATV/CS broadcast, table tennis, slot machine, tanning bed, mahjong

[edit] Abroad

Recently there have been numerous manga café opening outside of Japan. These are generally maintained and operated by fellow manga enthusiasts^{[citation needed]}. One such café opened up in France, and offers courses from a mangaka.

[edit] Criticisms

Recently, there have been complaints from manga publishing/distribution companies that say manga cafés are unfair. Generally royalties are not paid for the reading of a book, and due to the nature of the business a single manga or graphic novel can be read by as many as 100 people. The profits go directly to the proprietors of the cafe rather than the manga distributors themselves. (Public libraries avoid this criticism because they do not take profits.) Cafés such as GeraGera are competing with companies such as Kinko's for quick e-mail and internet service.

[edit] In fiction

In the sixth episode of the 2006 anime Kanon, the character Makoto Sawatari tries to get a job at a manga cafe.
Misaki Nakahara of the series Welcome to the N.H.K. works in a manga cafe that her uncle owns.