Hale Hale Cafe Closing Down

One of my favorite restaurants in Osaka, Hale Hale Cafe (ハレハレ カフェ） in Shinsaibashi, is going to be closing down August 27th. If you live in the Osaka area… Or even if you live anywhere in Kansai, please get down and check this place out before it closes.

I have listed instructions on how to get there in the “shops” page on this site, check it out under Osaka area shops.

Hale Hale Cafe is an organic restaurant located right in the middle of downtown Osaka (south side). The shop is in an old house, a huge Japanese style house that can really bring you back in time. The place is amazing. A great tatami interior, wide open spaces, and a small Japanese garden in back. I could live there.

Sadly, the reason Hale Hale is closing is that while the shop owner doesn’t own the land the shop is on. The owner of the land has decided to sell it, and the new owner has decided that he doesn’t need an organic restaurant or rustic house. Owning land downtown anywhere in Japan is extremely costly, so the owner of Hale Hale cannot afford to just buy up the land.

So Hale Hale will close, and the house will be torn down.

What a waste!

This is one of those stores I frequent often enough that the staff remembers my face. Granted, that’s not so hard in Japanese shops with few foreigners, but still… It’s really too bad that this place is closing down. I will also be leaving Osaka at the end of August to move to Yokohama, so it’s kind of like we’re leaving at the same time.

It’s going to be weird coming back to visit Osaka and not having Hale Hale in Shinsaibashi.

- Harvey