Petits Rabbit's -- Nantonaku Mirai（なんとなくミライ）

I couldn't quite believe it when I first heard about this Japanese cafe's existence in Toronto (as of this writing, it's been open for about a year). Not that I didn't think that a Japanese sweets establishment would actually show up in my city (we've been getting a diversity of Japanese restaurants over the past decade: ramen, izakaya, udon, tonkatsu, etc.), but I had never assumed one with that particular name, Amausaan Uji Matcha, existed.

The reason is the anime "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか?）which deals with happy-go-lucky teenagers taking care of their own distinct cafes. The prim and proper young lady with a subversive streak, Chiya Ujimatsu（宇治松千夜）, is the proprietress of Amausaan「甘兎庵」, a cafe specializing in traditional Japanese sweets. If I'm not mistaken, the same kanji is used to describe the one that I went to yesterday afternoon, and with that rabbit logo, I just had to go "Hmmmm...". Getting back to the real Amausaan in Chinatown, apparently, Toronto is the latest in a number of branches in Asia and North America with this particular one being the biggest in floor size.

I had the matcha mille-feuille cake along with the cold hojicha. The cake was good and had both sweet and bitter tastes, and I was surprised that my hojicha was quite sweet...truly like iced tea from down south. It was also nice that it wasn't too busy during our hour there; don't let the interior photo fool you, customers did come in after the photo had been shot.

Since we're on the topic, allow me to throw in "Nantonaku Mirai"（Somehow The Future）, the ending theme for the finale of Season 2 of "Gochuumon". Unfortunately, I could only find the truncated version but it's good enough to give you the idea of how the two seasons and movie have been like in terms of atmosphere: all very positive and gushingly cute. Performed by the main cast in the form of Petits Rabbit's (you can see the cast names in Labels under the article), "Nantonaku Mirai" was the coupling song for "No Poi!"（ノーポイッ!）, the 3rd single by the unit released in November 2015 which peaked at No. 4 on Oricon. Prolific anime lyricist Aki Hata（畑亜貴）was at work here along with Tadashi Tsukida（ツキダタダシ）for the adorable music.

The thing is that when "Nantonaku Mirai" was playing over the ending credits for that second season finale, it just seemed to me and I'm assuming much of the viewing audience that the producers were putting a big period at the end of the "Gochuumon" sentence. However, a movie did come out and an OVA is scheduled for this month followed by a third season sometime next year. The gift indeed keeps on giving.

I don't get a chance to go downtown all that much but I figure that I will probably meet up with a fellow translator for lunch sometime this month and he was pretty eager to try out a new tendon place, Akimitsu, not too far away from Amausaan. The walk between the two establishments will come in handy, although calorie guilt will arise at the end of that day.