Featured

maid cafe

Grand Theory of Moe: the Past, Present and Future of Maid Cafes

Grand Theory of Moe: the Past, Present and Future of Maid Cafes

When it comes to Japan, Akihabara is one place you’ll find on almost every tourist’s map. The name alone immediately brings to mind everything from games, manga, anime, figurines and AKB48 to Gundam, computers and electronics. Still one thing stands out as being particularly iconic: maid cafes.

Most visitors to Tokyo have stopped by one of these cafes at least once, and even if you haven’t, you’re probably familiar with the concept: cute, young women in fluffy “maid” skirts serving drinks and food while giggling with customers and, often, putting on shows. But have you wondered where these cafes came from? Read More

McDonald’s Turned into Maid Cafe in Taiwan

McDonald’s Turned into Maid Cafe in Taiwan

While McDonald’s Japan has been known to run some customer-pleasing promotions in the past, no amount of free hamburgers can top the stunt performed by the young female crew of one Taiwanese McDonald’s, who dressed up in pink maid outfits on New Year’s Eve.

Read More

Shady Maid Cafés Found in Osaka Ask; “May I Clean Out Your Wallet, Sir?”

Shady Maid Cafés Found in Osaka Ask; “May I Clean Out Your Wallet, Sir?”

For the Osaka otaku with cash burning a hole in their pocket, Nipponbashi is the place to be.  Also known as Den-Den Town, this shopping district specializes in whatever nerdy obsession you have from vintage 1985 video games to knives that look like they came from a Klingon’s rec room.

The highest concentration of these shops can be found next to the main street in a lane known as Ota-Road (otaku road).  Here among the crowded shops you can find extra treats like street performers (I once saw a one-man death metal band perform) and girls in maid outfits handing out flyers for the 30 plus maid cafés packed around this 300-meter strip of asphalt.

While these young women may help the wonderfully absurd ambiance of Ota-Road they may also be violating Japan’s Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Law (mercifully shortened to the less redundant Fueiho), the law regulating the sex industry in the country.

Read More

Moscow’s First Maid Cafe is Russian-Made, Japan-Approved

Moscow’s First Maid Cafe is Russian-Made, Japan-Approved

Maid cafes have become a quintessential symbol of Japanese otaku culture and many foreigners who visit Japan make a trip to one an essential stop on their travel itinerary.

In recent years, some enterprising foreigners have even opened maid cafes back home, though some argue that they don’t translate well into other cultures and that foreign girls look awkward trotting about in stylized French maid costumes. In some cases, it is (see the video at the end of this article).

However, doubters need only look to Moscow’s first ever maid cafe, Otaky, which boasts a staff of young Russian maids so cute that even Japan acknowledges they’re doing it right.

Read More

Zombie Maid Café Serves Up Terror in Tokyo Before Halloween

Zombie Maid Café Serves Up Terror in Tokyo Before Halloween

Despite their irrepressible desire to rip off and devour our flesh, people love zombies. Zombie movies, zombie books, zombie games, zombie theme park events… people are just as obsessed with “consuming” zombies as they are with consuming us.

And now, with Halloween just around the corner, there are more ways than ever to get your zombie fix. In Japan, for example, you can even sit down and have cute zombie maids serve you coffee at the zombie maid café, Maid of the Dead.

Read More