The Maid Cafe

Today, Kana and Emi (ESS [English Speaking Society] members) took me out to Sannomia as a farewell party. At first they wanted to take me 2 hours away on the north side of Hyogo Prefecture to a famous soba shop, but I said I didn't have enough time. "Well, how about...(a bunch of Japanese I didn't understand)" and then, "Otaku kafe mitai." It's kind of an Otaku cafe. "Holy shit! Let's go!" I say, and we were off. (Otaku can be roughly translated as "nerd" but is slightly different. It's someone who is close to or obsessed with manga, hentai, anime and the like).

Justin, Kana, Emi, and I walk by the cafe shrouded in mystery. Fluffy white curtains cover the windows so we can't see in, and we approach the entrance. Two girls in their 20's dressed in French maid outfits greet us and escort us to our seats. That's the appeal of the place: young girls dressed in maid outfits and fluffy curtains. After she systematically pulls out each chair for us individually, we sit and look at the menu. It has all the items one would expect, coffee, main courses, ice cream and such.

The waitress comes over and we order. After taking our order she stiffens her back and bows. But this isn't any ordinary bow. It was the coldest, slowest, most emotionlessly intense bow I have ever witnessed. She bowed slowly until her upper torso was parallel with the ground, and her eyes didn't move a millimeter . I looked over at Justin to make sure we witnessed the same thing. His face was pushed to the side, surprised, smiling cynically as I was. I guess we looked more than shocked, because a table of two girls in front of us started laughing hysterically just after this, trying to hold it in and not look at us. Every time she brought us food or drinks the waitress would be as gentle as possible with the dishes, place them in front of us, and if there was even so much as a tiny *cling* she would say, "shitsureiishimasu" I'm being rude, or sorry. Then she gave the exact same bow as before, each time making me more and more curious as to what lays behind this Otaku culture.

There's a lot to it, and I don't know enough about it to try to make an analysis here. What I do know, though, is that it is completely removed from reality and relies heavily on the mother figure as a symbol of complete comfort and erotic sexuality. I spoke to Makoto about this later, and he told me about more hardcore メイドカフェ (maid cafe's) that actually spoon feed their customers, quite literally. In addition to this, if you ask them to slap your face, they will politley say ごめんなさい (I'm sorry), and then give you a nice smack.

I'm aware that it sounds like I'm exoticizing this a bit, but this is type of stuff that truly surprises me, and I feel the need to write about it. Anywho, I'm sure this kind of thing exists in The United States as well.

As a short note, I apologize that there are no pictures to post, but it's a rule that pictures can't be taken there. I'm sure if one really wanted to see it though, they could find it on a Google image search.