Maid in Japan

Source: http://admintell.napco.com/

"I don't think I can do this," Jenn said, quite reasonably.

"Guys, come on," I replied. "We can totally do this. It's an important cultural experience! Besides, it's Steve's last day in Japan, and we need to show him the weird side of Japan, right?"

We steeled and screwed our various positive qualities and marched resolutely down the block towards the inscrutable hot-pink sign. Grinning like fiends, Jenn, Steve and I walked by the door and, with all the spine and grit of three of the less dignified Little Rascals, peered in the window at the den of sin (peered, that is, casually, from the sidewalk, at great distance and increasing speed). I continued our charge to several safe paces beyond the doorway before anyone could see us.

"No, I don't think I can do this," I whined. "No way." We loitered there for a second and caught our breaths, the only people standing on the block.

The time: New Year's Eve 2009, 4 p.m..

The place: In the middle of one of Osaka's hepper districts, Den-Den Town, the one-stop shopping district for all your electronics, porn, and fanboy-related needs. More specifically, about 30 feet from the door of メイドドルチェ, meido doruchie, a real-life Maid Cafe. Go ahead and read the Wikipedia entry -- we did before going, which explains our sheer terror at the prospect of going into one of these places.

Pictured: the den of SIN.

It was Steve who managed to marshal our courage enough to actually go inside. In the grand tradition of Henry V and General Patton, he squared his jaw and told us that he really, really needed to pee. We had no choice.

Maid Cafes are, in a nutshell, cafes where all of the waitresses dress and act like maids. I'll let that sink in for a minute. There. Customers are addressed, more or less, as "Miss" and "Master." Tables are equipped with little silver bells for summoning your server, who is paid to smile and make conversation with you. Our cafe, Dolce, had a very low Maid-to-customer ratio (about 1:1, actually). Some wore what I had expected, the traditional French getup immortalized in costume shops everywhere, but more were pushing the boundaries of what is considered "Maid." Some had cat-ear headbands. One wore a male butler's outfit with the addition of high-heeled boots. One wore full-body cow pajamas. And somehow Wikipedia asserts that there's nothing sexual about these places.

There was a wait for the restroom, and I tried not to think about the reasons for this...the least icky possibility is that the bulk of Dolce's sales came from diuretics like liquor and coffee. We were greeted by all of the maids as we entered and were led to a table. The place was actually a little dingy. Surprisingly dirty considering how many Maids it had standing around at all hours. The walls were bedecked with glossy photos of the Maids in various costumes and positions, as well as calendars that featured photos and the Maids' birthdays. Honestly, the closest equivalent in the States would probably be Hooters. Except without sports.

Eyes bugged out, shit-eating grins on our faces, we tried to get over the fact that we were probably paying by the hour for the privilege of enjoying the service of these women (and, being freethinking feminists all, the greater moral implications of this fact, specifically the ones that rhyme with frostifrushun).

We were not unpleasantly surprised to see that Dolce dealt in a wide variety of cocktails, each only 500 yen. They ordered margaritas, I took my chances with a goddofaaza, which turned out to be a huge portion of whiskey served over big, manly ice cubes in the biggest, most masculine glass I have ever seen. Badda-bing.

After a short period where we divided our time between sipping our drinks and avoiding making eye contact with the Maids, one of them (ohgodohgod the cow PJs one ohgod she's coming right over here) approached our table and showed us some photo albums, using her best English. It was a nice conversation, I guess, though she seemed pretty disappointed when I answered her "Do you like manga?" question honestly.

In the end, we each paid 300 yen for our hour of taking up their table space, not counting the drinks. Massages were offered at seemingly reasonable rates, but we had had our fill of Temporary Consumer Servility (plus, we probably would have exploded if we had actually had physical contact with any of the Maids; being in the same room was hard enough). It was a time as bizarre as it was short. Incidentally, there are no pictures from us because they charge you to take pictures inside the sacred demesnes of Cafue Doruchie. That's how they roll.

Ever since we went, Jenn has been saying, "I still can't believe we went to a Maid Cafe." I think Steve summed up all of our feelings very succinctly when he broke our awkward silence by saying, "I hope I can still live within 100 meters of a school after coming to this place."