Cat cafés are a dime a dozen in parts of Tokyo and the concept is not limited to the island nation of Japan (Cape Town has its own cat café, too). Pig cafés, on the other hand, are a real novelty.
Mipig, a coffee shop with lots of natural light and wood finishes where you can pet tiny piglets, opened in March in the Meguro ward of Tokyo last month.
Visitors need to sanitise their hands when they arrive, are briefed on how to handle the piglets and told to let the piglets come to them, rather than seek them out. Patrons are then taken upstairs to a room where they can sit on the floor and get used to the little piglets that run around freely in this area.
According to a local news outlet Soranews24.com, ‘these micro pigs were surprisingly friendly and filled with energy, running around the room and sniffing the humans around them.’
These ‘teacup piglets’ are not a specific breed, they are simply infant pigs that will grow a whole lot bigger.
Sorannews24 says that ‘the pigs at Mipig are extra small because they’re babies, but while regular pigs can grow to become 300kg and mini pigs can grow to 100kg, the micro pigs at Mipig grow to 40kg.’
Unlike in the US and UK where pigs are often kept as pets, in Japan they are largely seen as livestock. Mipig café hopes to change this perception and help to grow people’s affection for the creatures. The café is reportedly run by a company that breeds pigs on a farm in Yamanashi Prefecture and that imported the micro pigs from the UK earlier this year.
‘We would like Japanese people to feel more familiar with the animal and [for it to] eventually become a beloved member of the family,’ Mipig’s founders said in a statement, according to CNN.
The café was launched after a very successful crowdfunding campaign that raised 4.7-million yen (just over R600,000), more than double the 2-million yen (about R256,000) it originally set out to generate.
Pigs are known for their intelligence and, like dogs, can learn tricks with relative ease, as seen in the video below.
Feature image: Mipig/Instagram
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