One of the most recent trends in Tokyo (particularly in Akihabara electric town) has been the increase in Maid Cafes. Given that this place is most commonly associated with geeks it is probably no surprise that these cafes are supposedly filled with the kind of guy who has probably never talked to a real girl instead preferring to spend his time on-line chatting to and fantasising about virtual girls dressed up as their favourite manga characters or sexy maids.
That is where these maid cafes come in and cater for these people and lots more besides. In the name of research Tokyo Fox went to a couple of these places with one of our mates. Nothing particularly special about them. Basically just a starbucks or doutor with a cute (Japanese people are obsessed with cute which maybe explains why people of all ages love Disney-related stuff) girl dressed as a maid serving you your drinks. Gives you something to look at and talk about I guess but these places were far from seedy like I thought they might be. In fact, we (by we I of course mean my friend!) were probably the only ones in there paying any remote attention to the maids.
Overall just somewhere to go and pay a bit more for a coffee served by someone who will play ‘janken‘ (rock, scissors, paper – used to make all important or non-important decisions here) with you and if you win then you get to choose a special maid card which are not too dis-similar from the football or baseball cards/stickers that people collect when they are young.
