???

The Alley ("It's Time for Tea") is a tea cafe that opened in Taiwan just four years ago, in 2013, and with a presence now in seven other countries, including Japan, where there are five branches, all in Tokyo.

The Alley Lu Jiao Xiang in Lumine 1, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.
We visited the Alley cafe in the Lumine 1 building in Shinjuku on Saturday evening. In Japan, the chain is known as The Alley Lu Jiao Xiang, the Chinese characters for Lu Jiao Xiang meaning something like "Deerhorn Street." The store logo therefore features a deer with prominent antlers.

We had seen The Alley Lu Jiao Xiang before - both here and on Omotesando (where there is another famous Taiwanese cafe: Ice Monster). We were drawn by the idea of it being a tea cafe, as neither of us are big coffee drinkers, and by its New Age cred, in that everything, from the sugar cane syrup, to the tapioca that features in many brews, to the naturally roasted tea leaves, is supposedly "handmade," or at least prepared in-house or according to the store's stipulations.
Having tapioca in tea is another draw, for the novelty of it.

There was a modest queue at the little stand-up cafe that the Lumine Shinjuku branch is, and we only had to wait a minute before we were served.

 Tea-and-cocoa at The Alley Lu Jiao Xiang in Lumine 1, Shinjuku (complete with little chocolate bear!)
The Alley Lu Jiao Xiang in Lumine must be doing good business, because there were no less than five peopl...