Ask John: Do Maid Cafés Really Exist?

Question:
I saw couple of versions of the maids café on animes like Girls Bravo and Welcome to the NHK. Do they exist? And if so, would a non-Japanese speaker manage to eat there and enjoy their facilities? And please, if all these do exist, do you know any of them in Tokyo or Osaka perhaps?

Answer:
The “maid café” restaurants you’ve seen in anime do indeed exist in Japan. In fact, some of them literally exist. For example, the café that Konata and Patricia from Lucky Star work at is Akihabara’s “Maid Darts & Café” LittlePSX, and Najimi Osana, the main character of Doujin Work, holds a part time job at the Café With Cat on the second floor of the main Comic Toranoana store in Akihabara. While most of Akihabara’s maid cafes are staffed by attractive young women, male waiters may find employment at one of the numerous “butler cafes” in Ikebukuro’s “Otome Road,” a small area in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro ward that’s home to many stores catering to yaoi and bishonen fans.

The services offered by Tokyo’s maid cafes varies. Café restaurants such as Café With Cat and are conventional restaurants staffed by waitresses that wear themed uniforms. Other café restaurants serve snacks, beverages, or food, along with other polite services. For example, for a small fee, maid uniform clad waitresses at the Schatzkiste maid café will play board games with patrons. For a small fee, waitresses at the LittlePSX café will play darts or Playstation games with patrons. Some cafes request an entry fee that covers having a waitress personally sit with otaku patrons and discuss their favorite anime. A visitor to the Mai Relax café can order a foot massage from a maid. Melty Cure offers a full course of foot, hand, head and shoulder massages.

While the concept of “maid cafes” may seem seedy to foreigners, in reality, Tokyo maid cafes are typically respectable establishments that cater to a variety of male and female customers. Maid cafes aren’t exclusively for sweating otaku that labor with the weight of their latest Akihabara spending sprees. Maid cafes are equally popular with patrons that simply want a cup of tea or light snack in a peaceful, quiet, and intimate setting that doesn’t have the sterile, corporate atmosphere of a conventional fast food restaurant. I should point out that many of Akihabara’s maid cafes are rather small, some having room for as few as a dozen patrons at any single time.

In my personal experience, the With Cat Café is easy to find, and features picture menus, making it an ideal experience for foreign visitors. Other, smaller maid café restaurants like the Cure Maid Café, Maid Station, and Schatzkiste tend to be nestled neatly into Akihabara’s skyline, making them somewhat more difficult to locate for tourists that don’t understand any Japanese language. These maid cafés don’t discriminate against foreign customers, but at the same time they don’t go out of their way to attract foreign customers. Since the goal of these restaurants is to provide a soothing, familiar, and comfortable atmosphere for Japanese customers, they don’t necessarily stress easy accessibility for tourists. But that’s not to say that foreign visitors aren’t welcome, or shouldn’t attempt to visit Japanese maid cafes. As a natural exertion of Japanese courtesy, maid café staff will do all they can to accommodate guests that don’t speak Japanese. But don’t expect maid café staff to be fluent in English.

The majority of Japan’s maid cafes are located in Tokyo’s Akihabara ward. In fact, there are so many maid and “cosplay” cafes tucked into Akihabara’s electric town that the Gamers store routinely provides maps to their locations and a guide that will direct prospective customers to a café that suits their particular interests. Looking for a “little sister” café, or a café where the maids dress like cat-girls? The Nakano Broadway shopping center in Tokyo suburb Nakano is a particular otaku shopping destination, and home to several small maid cafes. I’ve personally never visited Osaka, but my understanding is that Osaka’s Den Den Town shopping district is home to a number of maid cafes as well.