My first time in a Maid Cafe... Unexpectedly Frightening

We walked down the street of Akihabara with ONE GOAL: To find the cheapest Maid Cafe and figure out what the hype was all about.

To be fair our cheapness was probably our first mistake.

The streets of Akibabara are lined with girls advertising their cafes. All of them are dressed to match their cafe theme and most have small signs on their purses "Please NO Photos"

I approached each girl to check the prices on their flyer so we could find the cheapest cover charge. With my local friend following at a good 50ft behind me because in his own words:

“I can’t walk up to a girl on the street and ask 'how much?' ”

We finally settled on a Halloween themed cafe. The theme was fitting because what happened next was truly borderline frightening.

We couldn't find it. I would later discover that even google doesn't even know about this place. When we asked for directions from the maid on the street she immediately left her post and took us down a side road... Then down an ally in between the buildings. I call it an ally not because it was 'sketchy' but because it was ugly and dark.

The first thing I noticed about the building we turned into was that unless we were guided there, we would have NEVER found the place.Unlike the other cafes on the main street, there was no indication on the outside that this was anything more than a parking garage entrance. Just a small A-frame sign inside the empty entrance way.

We walked straight into a TINY elevator which was completely covered in dull dirty pink carpet. The lift to the 4th floor was silent except for my friends low mutter,

“Somehow I feel like I’m in danger...”

I'll honestly I found the whole situation hilarious. But maybe the only reason my danger meter hadn't gone of was because I was with a literal body builder and our maid barely reached my shoulder height.

The journey was ghetto but the establishment was clean.

...

and completely empty.

When the maid came give us our drinks, she set them down, stepped back...and STAYED THERE. She didn't say anything. Just waited and smiled. We didn't know what to do.

Our original plan was to only buy drinks and be "fly on the wall" observes as other costumers paid for performances or "cute behavior". WE WERE NOT prepared for 100% attention we were receiving. Between my ZERO Japanese and my local friend's OVER whelming shame at being drag there made the situation exponentially more awkward.

Soon after another girl with short purple hair and an all black “butler” outfit emerged from the back introduced, herself and ALSO stood in front of us.

The girls were very friendly, bubbly, and professional. They gave us a phone charger, and tried to change the music to something less...."obnoxiously otaku"...when my friend requested it. They failed at the music but they tried. I’m sure we were actually very difficult customers to entertain. So we decided to interview them about their work and clients. Withholding no odd questions.

They explained that different maid cafes had different specialties. This one was a conversational cafe. So people basically came to chat and small talk. Costumers could also pay to have the maids do things like "randomly sing like magic” or take polaroid pictures with them.You where not aloud to take your own photos of anything at the cafe. (The photos I have are all taken from their twitter account.)

The maid had a book that she gave us along with the menu with each maid and her “profile”. It gave no personal information (though they said people often tried to get them to disclose their age) but had a picture and comically morbid information like death dates to match the theme of the restaurant.

To explain the lack of customers they said that most customers didn’t usually come until about 7 when they get off of work. They usually get about 70% Japanese clients and 30% foreigners and that their local clients are men that range between 20 to 60! They said they loved their jobs but some of their clients did seem borderline pedifile-like.

Before we left we saw two separate salarymen enter. The first one walked in comfortably and sat at the bar and began talked to the maid at the bar immediately. His fluidity and ease compared to our awkwardness was shocking.

We didn’t even stay for the full hour we paid for. It was just too weird for us.

2490 yen (about 25 USD) bought us two drinks and an hour of small talk

4 yen each cover charge each

7 yen for each drink

Then of course tax.

Definitely not something I could afford to make a norm. But I'm quite satisfied with my purchase

The whole experience left me with more questions than answers but it was fun observing the different people in this one situation:

1) The Local Customers

In the US there are many people who would pay NOT to have to small talk to strangers. But for some reason there is a large enough need for communication that someone was able to capitalize on that and build whole industry.

2) My Friend.

I dragged him there and he, as a local, was appalled by the whole operation. He was disgusted with the customers and concerned for the employees. It was a perfect example of how not everyone from one country is on board with one specific cultural practice. A fact that we all obviously know, but often unconsciously forget.

3)The Maids.

Who were participating in this odd industry and blatantly said many of their customers were odd, be it otaku foreigners or local salary man. But because they like the money they smoothly and professionally carry on.

Maybe one day I'll return and visit a more popular, generic, touristy maid cafe and see if I find less odd. But until then I'll just hold this little adventure in my soul as a fabulous example of the human condition in all its strange back ally forms.

#awkward #travel #tokyo