Just when you thought you’d thought things Japanese couldn’t get any weirder—the country that gave us elder porn, a tidal wave of singletons, fetish vending machines and possibly the world’s most technically complicated toilets has done it again.

Don’t even ask

Maid Cafes

Maid Café? Basically, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Waitresses in Maid Cafés are typically cute young Japanese girls dressed in costume; usually similar to a traditional French maid’s garb, but also sometimes popular female characters from manga and anime. This sort of thing is often referred to as Cosplay.

The average age for a café maid is twenty, and they interact with customers as if they were their own personal, submissive servants! In fact, in many Maid Cafés customers are traditionally greeted with an effusive “welcome home, master!”

Preying on Geeks?

The demand for Maid Cafés originated from Otaku: obsessive fans of anime and manga, usually male and single, often seen by others as social outcasts.

The Maid Cafés thus allow these men (and sometimes women) to engage with figures and characters from these fictional worlds, act out part of their private fantasies in the real world.

Or at least, we hope they’re acting out only a part of their fantasies!

What do you think about these so-called Maid Cafés? Harmless fun? Or freaky fetishism?

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About the author

Jenny W
First career as newspaper and magazine journalist with daily newspapers and magazines, then as an editor who successfully launched a new national Sunday newspaper and NZ House & Garden magazine. First woman editor of NZ Listener. Enjoying a second career as a business owner and entrepreneur, health products marketer, social media habitué, blogger and web marketer. Still learning and loving it.