When my partner and I travel, we don't do a ton of planning for specifics so if we're in a big city we'll usually pick a neighborhood or 2 for the day and bebop around until we're tired. The start to any day is almost always finding a coffee shop and doing the crossword during our first cup. In Europe depending on the city this can be difficult because a lot of coffee shops just pump out overextracted espresso and then give the option to add water for an americano. There's still tons of amazing cafes in the European cities I've visited. Some really memorable ones are Café Tacuba in Lucerne, Faro in Rome, and Monks Coffee Roasters. in Amsterdam.
In Tokyo, we actually started off with a pretty mediocre coffee because nothing opened before 10 besides a cafe chain, but after we got adjusted we couldn't stop finding great spots. The first day we were going to the national museum and found AOYAMA COFFEE ROASTER in Yanaka. At first the owner was a bit standoffish because we were 2 Americans coming in at the very beginning of the day and I assume she has a lot of bad experiences with tourists, but we started talking after she noticed my portafilter/coffee plant tattoo and had a really great time. For the rest of the week, we walked into shop after shop that had at most 4 or 5 seats with one barista making drinks and each one felt special.
The one that connected me most to this post was the one from our day in Sumida City when we were going to a bunch of small museums (highly recommend the Hokusai museum). We stopped into CHILL OUT COFFEE &...RECORDS and it was one of the coziest coffee experiences I've ever had. The shop is a coffee bar with a couch and a couple of chairs. I forget what kind of cup I had but I remember it being just a really balanced cup with a little bit of berry and chocolate notes. I wish we could've stayed longer but after about 15 minutes a family of tourists with 2 toddlers came in and we figured it was time to go after we finished our drinks.
In Seoul, the shops we visited were all a lot bigger but one thing I couldn't help noticing was that all of the baristas were so deliberate in their movements. This is something that was probably true of folks in shops in general in Tokyo and Seoul, but I noticed it with baristas because I tend to think about it a lot when I'm making drinks at home. You could show me a silhouette of baristas making drinks in Tokyo and some western city and it would be night and day. I feel like that goes a long way in illustrating the differences between eastern and western culture even though we're all making and enjoying the same hot bean water.