Before reading this post, please answer two questions: Do you live in Northern California? Are you awesome?

Wait a sec... if you live in Northern California, you're awesome by default. Nevermind. 

Anyway, this post is mainly for San Francisco-ites, but it involves a business model that - hopefully - will begin to crop up and take off and proliferate wildly in other metropolitan areas. A brand-new business, Manga Cafe MIKA, is opening in Japantown Mall this weekend (April 26). MIKA promises a fresh new experience for NorCal manga maniacs, with over 20,000 manga volumes (in both Japanese and English), food and drinks, and a pleasant and welcoming environment for manga enthusiasts. Sounds great to me! Though MIKA has a very rudimentary website, the pricing structure is still unclear. Is it like a Japanese manga cafe where the facility charges a flat fee per hour for free manga and drinks, or is it a more Western-style model where buying (usually somewhat overpriced) food and drinks allows you free and unfettered access to the books on the premesis? I guess we'll know after this weekend!

While Manga Cafe MIKA doesn't look like it'll quite match the level of service of Japanese manga cafe chains like GeraGera and Manboo (which offer extensive internet, gaming, and even showering and sleeping facilities) it's still a concept I'd love to see really take off Stateside. I'll try and make it down there sometime soon - look for a review of MIKA here on Jtor in the near future!