Welcome home, Master,” says the maid as she bows deeply, hands clasped in front of a starched pinafore worn over a short pink dress.
This maid serves not some aristocrat but a string of pop-culture-mad customers at a “Maid Cafe” in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, long known as a Mecca for electronics buffs but now also the centre of the capital’s “nerd culture”.
Maid cafes dot Akihabara, which has become a second home for Tokyo’s “otaku” — roughly translated as “geeks”. They’re known for their devotion to comics and computer games and can easily be identified by their standard outfit of track suit, knapsack and spectacles.
In the cafes, girls dressed in frilly frocks inspired by comic-book heroines wait hand and foot on customers, mostly male, who might have once been obsessed with naughty schoolgirls and nurses.
Here’s another article from the Japan Times.
I think this might be a great cure for Japanese geeks suffering from Hikikomori. It’d certainly get me out of my parents’ basement!
I am listening to twit AS I TYPE THIS!… yay.
bye.
Yes, but Amercia has Hooters!
Hooters is over-rated, bunch of flat-chested floozies (I’m coining that term)
I’ve actually been to Cure Maid Cafe in Akihabara… last March. I wasn’t very impressed. The waitresses were unenthusiastic and their maid costumes were practically Victorian in style, unkempt and dirty. Far from being a titillating atmosphere, I found it to be even less than a run-of-the-mill coffee shop.
I was all excited trying to find your site and register and all when I heard you on the twit podcast talking about an article involving apple moving to windows. and then i get here and learn about japanese hand maidens. I’m not complaining. Not really, anyway.
“otaku” ha eigo de “geek” dewa nai !
Otaku is not “geek” in english it means “enthusiast” or “fan boy”
but I am being picky
mata ato de
I ‘ve been to this place few times. It’s not that great drinks are overprices, the gals aren’t that cute i rather buy my wife a costume. Cost-play cafe is surely booming soon in Japan. I am living in here by the way so before this out from the news cost paly cafe is already about 2 years but it’s pop like mushroom and easily gone after few months.
Not too surprising. The Japanese are perverts. Just look at all their anime/porn, rape comics, porn in vending machines, female robots, etc.
I totally agree with AB CD. They are perverted, what can you do when the population is sexual depressed. Count me out though…!
Japanese men treat women like property. Plain and simple. I know many Japanese women who are married that invite me to their parties and get-togethers because I treat them like humans BUT also retain my powerful masculinity. That is the trick. To be feminine in the sense that you understand women and their subleties while at the same time demonstrating masculine prowess. That prowess is natural as long as you have a sex drive. Men have sex drives but they have been suppressed by every society. They become hidden. Then, because that sexual energy MUST manifest in the real world, it shows up as deviations and pathologies. Japan suffers from it. America suffers from it. I look into women’s eyes and I see the loneliness that envelopes them. They want a man but men are afraid to be men.
Yesterday, I was on the subway. A seat became available so I sat down next to a very pretty young girl. She was reading a book. Between us was a postcard flyer and some papers that were left behing by someone else. I was curious so I picked it up. I asked the beautiful girl if it was hers. She replied no. I read the folded papers. It was a company letter. The postcard was more interesting. It was an advertisement for a beauty makeover at 50% off with that flyer. I played with the card in my hands. I looked over. I started folding an inch wide section from the edge of the postcard as the girl looked from the corner of her eyes. After folding it a few times to get the crease deep, I ripped it apart from the rest of the postcard. On that cut portion it read in pink and light blue lettering: “Love you.” My stop came. I reached over and stuck the card into the girl’s book crease. She was surprised. I told her, ” I made you this bookmark”. She melted as we looked at eachother and smiled. I’ll never forget her eyes as long as I live. She said, “thank you” with a breath that felt like a slight breeze on a calm beach on a beautiful sunny day.
No sex involved. no number. no names. Just experience of unrequited love manifested in a crowded train by two strangers that will never see eachother for the rest of their lives. But will be remebered.
David,
You got to love the “drive-by”. It’s a classic. Low rejection, fond memories.