Mysteries of the maid cafe solved!
Ahhh…the maid cafes.
I was first made aware of this about a year and a half ago and I found it…weird.
But I guess after a while I got desensitized to the whole phenomena. But until today, I really haven’t entered one. In my mind, it was kind of embarrassing to go alone….
But this trip, K wanted to go and I said sure…why the hell not? So I asked one of the guys I knew here who frequent these places (big fan of figures and Akihabara and the whole maid thing) for some suggestions of where to go and he sent me a list and a map. Of all the places, we decided to go to the very FIRST maid cafe in Akihabara. The one that started it all.
Oooooooooooooooooh
So today after shopping in Asakusa (H, I got you what you wanted!!), we headed out to Akihabara and since it was around 11:30, we decided to first hit up the maid cafe before it got too crowded.
So off we went to the Cure Maid Cafe! Click on the pic for the web page…don’t worry…it’s very very tame.
It was on the 6th floor above a store filled with those toy dispensing gumball machines. If you didn’t know where it was, you’ll totally miss it. Thankfully I already knew the location of the store and we headed on up.
As expected, we were greeted by a cute girl in a maid outfit and was told we’ll have to wait a bit. She was in a long skirt though and was pretty but nothing special. In another words, the outfit was NOT what you’d think of whe you think French Maid. No short skirt. No plunging neck line. Actually it was long sleeved and high necked. Very very conservative.
We only waited for less than 10 minutes though before we sat down. In all honesty it was kind of a let down… Nothing lurid. Nothing nerdy. It just looked like a nice little western style restaurant where the waitresses just happened to be wearing long maid outfits. We sat down, ordered some Japanese style curry, and kinda went “huh….what’s so special???”
Don’t get me wrong. The girls were very cute and even their voices were soft and sweet. Service was good…but really…that doesn’t take much. The food was…ok. Nothing to write home about. It took me a bit to fully realize what the draw truly was…and that’s the point. See…this just isn’t a place for guys like myself and K.
The key here is, if you’re a guy who’s not shy around girls…if you’re a guy that can talk to a cute girl without freaking out…hell…if you’re a guy who has the ability to look a girl in the face, especially a cute one, without losing it…you won’t fully appreciate a place like this.
The reason I found this out was, there was a dude sitting alone in the table next to us. He was a stereotyped otaku. In the US, I suppose you’d call him a geek or a nerd. You’d be right of course…but it’s not exactly the same thing….not exactly. Probably a big fan of anime and anime girls. Probably collects figures of anime and video game characters. Can talk to fellow otakus for hours about the differences and the positives and negatives about the anime series Mahoromatic (where the main character is a sweet cute robot maid girl that can kick ass) but has NOOOO idea how to relate to a living breathing woman.
This is the store for him. The girls are cute. The girls are in costume. And he can sit there and occasionally glance up to stare at them off in the distance then look back down at his food again. But he can feel comfortable doing so. No one will look at him weird, especially the wait staff. Even if he doesn’t make eye contact with them when they come over to give him a refill on his water or ask him if he wants anything they’re still really nice to him. And of course, the girls aren’t agressive at all and it’s not all “in your face” like a Hooters. Hell…if I dragged him to Hooters in the US, he’d probably totally freak out, not be able to eat a bite, and leave the first chance he gets (not that I go to Hooters either since…well….the food blows and the girls…eh….)
That’s the answer to the maid cafe popularity riddle. It allows these guys to be around their fantasy girls in a comfortable non-threatening, non-agressive atmosphere.
I can understand this. As did K. It’s not about the girls being sexy. Hell, even the guy that gave me the list actually wrote for one cafe that “it’s ok but in truth, I like longer skirts so I’m not a big fan of this place”. It’s all about the “moe” (pronounced mo-e). The non-sexual warm feeling towards cute, pure, innocent (at least in character) girls. Note…moe has evolved since then to include deviant feelings…..*ahem*…but the original use of the term was quite clean. Like the protective feeling one might feel towards a younger preteen sister.
Yes…the maid are older…but they also have that feeling of innocence and purity.
This may be a very Japanese thing and I may not be explaining myself clearly enough. But truly that’s the case. Now, if we went to the one with shorter skirts, they may have been more agressive….maybe that’s why he didn’t like it. Maybe next time I’ll check that place out. Because in all honesty, I would have no problems at all going to places like this alone. It’s actually a nice way to spend some time in an air conditioned environment and rest your feet after a day of shopping.
Maid cafes….now I know why you only really find them in Akihabara.
(-_-)
