Memories are Maid of This

Maid Cafes are a popular subculture in Japan, where young, cute Japanese maids serve lonely, stressed out businessmen calling them 'master', and acting as servents. The first Maid Cafe opened in Akihabara in 2001, but they have become so popular that you cannot escape the maids on every streetcorner handing out flyers for their cafes.

 A maid advertising our cafe, PoPoPure

Akihabara is known as 'Electric Town', and is where I bought my foreign laptop a couple of months ago. It is home to endless electronic, costume roleplay and figurine stores.

So of course where else than Akihabara to visit a Maid Cafe!!? Some cafes can be rather grim and dodgy, as my coworker Xor will tell you! But fortunately the Cafe, PoPoPure we randomly chose turned out to be light, comfortable and cute :D The maids welcomed us in extremely formal language saying Okaerinasaimase, goshujinsama 'welcome home Masters and Mistresses' and sat us at a tables.

Many normal-looking customers could be seen having dessert at this cafe, as well as a couple of strange  men who were enjoying watching the maids a little too much..

Photos of the maids and interior are forbidden, but here's a photo of my food:

Melon soda and green tea cake

We were served the food, but before we could eat it, we were taught a magic incantation to make our food 200% tastier:

"Oishikunare... moe, moe kyun!"

"To become more tasty... moe, moe kyun!"

This was performed while making heart shapes with our hands!

Moe is an Otaku (Japanese anime geek) word that means to have a love for cute, innocent girls.

I paid an additional fee to have a polaroid taken with the Maid, Karyo-chan who served us!

 

Some addidtional weird and wonderful sights from Akihabara:

A man dressed as a urinal with an interesting hat..

A woman scared of an inflatable beer bottle and a bunny boy. Fair enough.