I first stumbled upon the Perregaux cafe one evening last fall as I was walking around the Kagurazaka area of Tokyo looking for a place to have a glass of wine before a dinner reservation. Its outdoor seating and French-style chalkboard menu caught my eye and then — although perhaps I should have guessed from the name — I discovered it also sells and repairs vintage watches.
In all the years I have written about watches (and eaten at cafes), I had never encountered a place that combined both interests. “It’s probably the only place of this type in the world,” said its owner, Kunio Sado, 70.
As for the name, “it’s an homage to François Perregaux,” Mr. Sado said, referring to the 19th-century Swiss watchmaker and businessman who is credited with bringing the first Swiss wristwatches to Japan.
Inside the 20-seat cafe, jazz music was playing and the furnishings included a Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos, a 1960s version of the celebrated table clock, which Mr. Sado said was not for sale. “The interior is based on all my inspiration from travels and feelings that stayed with me,” he said.
Mr. Sado’s interest in horology began in the 1970s. Over the years that followed, while he supervised air traffic control for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, he accumulated 700 to 800 pieces, many of which he now is selling in the shop.
By January 2013, Mr. Sado had retired. “I knew I wanted to open a watch shop, but I felt like only a watch shop would be too weak,” he said. “If I only sold and repaired watches, my scope of customers would be very limited. I wanted to broaden the concept to a cafe and bar to attract more customers.”
“Sometimes customers just come in for coffee or a drink, they see there are some watches for sale and discover something they like,” he said. “Or customers come back a second time and find a watch.”
On this particular day, about 60 watches were displayed in four glass cases on the counter along with another case that contained some vintage jewelry and pocket watches.
One of his favorites among the wristwatches, Mr. Sado said, was a rectangular 1920s Rolex with a stainless steel case, priced at 1.5 million yen (about $10,400). “Back in the day, Rolex used to have a lot of variety; now their models are more limited,” he said. “Between 1900 and 1920, it wasn’t so much about the brand but about how you wore it.”
Other watches that caught my eye were a Zenith that could double as a table clock (¥674,000) and two 1920s Harwood models from Switzerland that were designed without crowns, the knob commonly used to wind a watch. One, in a yellow gold case, used a rotating bezel to set the time (¥1.6 million), while the other, a square automatic model, had a rotating wheel on the case back.
There also was a 1908 design by the British brand J.W. Benson with a silver case, porcelain dial and black leather strap (¥600,000). “I made the strap by myself, because I could not find any artisans around me,” said Mr. Sado, who has a small workshop space behind the counter for his tools and scraps of leather.
He taught himself to make watch repairs. “When I started this company, I had no idea how to run it and looked everything up, like accounting, and I learned everything from scratch,” he said. “I look things up, collect information from people.”
Mr. Sado chose to open the cafe in Kagurazaka, an area nicknamed “Little France,” because it is home to a large number of French expatriates, the Institut Français du Japon and a multitude of cafes, wine bars, bakeries and pastry shops. It also was near the Tokyo University of Science, where he was a student. And the nearby Akagi shrine, a historic site that was completely renovated in 2010 under the direction of the celebrated Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, attracts both locals and tourists.
“We have a wide range of customers — not just locals but people from everywhere in Japan; some came from as far as Kyushu after reading about the cafe,” Mr. Sado said. “I don’t depend on advertisement on the internet, and I don’t do online sales either. It’s too much trouble.”
Two large TV screens were mounted on the cafe walls: One showed a flight-tracking map, a nod to Mr. Sado’s days working in aviation, while the other displayed various photographs of Europeans landscapes and airplanes. “I was inspired by Joe Tatsuya,” said Mr. Sado, referring to the Japanese actor and narrator who became famous in the 1960s for a radio program called Jet Stream. “He had a moody voice, and I wanted to create a similar atmosphere.”
Jay Liu, a watch collector who lives in Tokyo, recently visited Perregaux after hearing about its antique timepieces. “A retirement dream, you might call it: sharing one’s passion without pretense, inviting strangers to linger among the delicate mechanical art of another era. Cafe Perregaux is something like this,” he wrote in an email. “Each piece feels chosen not for value, but for quirkiness — a fascination with intricate and sometimes forgotten things.”
The cafe, which has three employees, is open daily, except Mondays, from 11:30 a.m. until 6 or 7 p.m., depending on how busy it is. And sometimes, for reservations, it will stay open even later.
Mr. Sado said he enjoyed running the cafe and was determined to keep on doing just that. “This is the beginning of a new chapter in my life,” he said. “I want to live happily.”
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