eorzea cafe osaka and booking

Heyhey, so I've been checkin out this place and got most of it figured out. Going to be tripping in Osaka-Tokyo in July and current travel plan allows me to check the cafe out on sunday (I know, weekend and all so bad). I might be able to get to Tokyo cafe on Mon/Tues but that's a bit tight.

Anyway I read that you NEED a japanese phone number (hotel etc) for booking, that's not too bad, but the main prob seems to be picking up the tickets. Some video I watched said to pick em up about 2 weeks prior from a Loppi machine, which might be a bit hard as my trip will be only a week-long. Somewhere I saw mentioned that if you pay with credit card you can pick them up as late as 3h before the seating.

Any info on this/tips for the cafe in general?

I used to live in Japan and did a booking to the Tokyo cafe back when I last visited in 2015.

Since me and my friend went on a weekday evening, we ended up booking the cafe a few days before we left for Japan (about a week or two in advance of when we would be in Tokyo) and then picked up the tickets from the local Lawson in Osaka about a day or two after we landed. If I remember right, reservations based on cash payments are only held for three or four days and you need to pick them up before then. If you pre-pay with your credit card, then you're right, you can pick them up up to three hours in advance. It certainly wouldn't hurt booking the cafe before you begin your trip and making a point to find a Lawson as one of the first things you do when you get there to ensure you've got the best chance of booking a busy slot.

Only fiddly part of it was having to enter the booking details into the Loppi itself, in my experience, but that's just me being dumb. Apparently they use QR codes for this now so it's much easier.

This page is really good for going into specifics.

Enjoy the trip! :)