The Best (and Worst) Maid Cafe in Japan
As visited on March 30th, 2007 by Phil Lee and friends

First off, a bit of backstory for someone reading this who may not be 
familiar with the concept of the maid cafe.  One of the fashion trends in 
Japan is the gothic lolita look, where women wear wildly elaborate doll 
outfits (lots of black, lace, ribbon, and frills), sometimes with matching 
headgear.  A variant of this is a loligoth maid outfit, which involves a 
maid headpiece and possibly something that once resembled an apron, all of 
which is available in pink or black.  This became rather popular among the 
otaku (read: rabid fanboy) subculture, to the point where someone had the 
bright idea of opening up a cafe in Akihabara (ground zero for otakudom) 
staffed by these sorts of maids.  Not only are the girls there dressed up, 
but they're also subserviant (addressing the customers as "Goshujin-sama" 
or "Master) and the incredibly high prices you pay for cake and tea 
gets you conversation with the cute girls, who fawn over you and will 
often feed you.  

Here's an example of this sort of thing...starring Tommy Lee Jones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoiYp3fqBU

Otaku loved it, the practice caught on, and now if you go to Akiba you'll 
see girls in maid costumes handing out flyers for their cafes.

Now, in the rest of Tokyo you just don't see this sort of thing.  Okay, on 
Sunday when everyone lets their freak flag fly you'll see the actual 
gothic lolita types hanging out at the park in their frilly finery, and 
at anime conventions the cosplay types may well be sporting the maid 
outfits, but the girls who wear the costume for a living do their 
advertising in Akihabara and basically nowhere else.

Thus, I was terribly surprised when a woman in a maid outfit handed me a 
flyer for a maid cafe in Musashisakai, where I was staying with friends.  
This is out in the suburbs where you just don't see this sort of thing.  I 
pocketed the flyer and my friends and I (our hosts Madoka and Eric, plus 
my fellow travellers Tim and Aaron) went off to get dinner at a wonderful 
bar restaurant called Panda.

http://jo3y.asoboo.com/places/Musashino+City/Musashi-Sakai/Panda

Panda proved to be a superior experience, particularly the bathroom which 
posts two claims to fame.  First off, it's possibly the smallest restroom 
I've ever used.  Second, to the left as you walk in the wall slopes down 
to create a small crawl space.  Said crawl space has been filled with 
smooth stones, with several square stone steps and a double row of candles 
leading up to a very small shrine with a small, smiling stuffed Panda 
perched on top.  It's amazing.  The food is also great, the drinks were 
tasty, Tim was able to get pizza (which is to say a plain white pizza with 
a panda face drawn on it in squid ink; delicious!), and we all had a fine 
time.  If you're ever in Musashisakai, be sure you go and check it out.

Full, happy, and slightly tipsy, we were about to leave when I pulled out 
the flyer and showed it to everyone.  Madoka was astonished ("They just 
don't have those sorts of things out here!") but considering that we were 
all in the mood for a bit of dessert and the cafe was close to where we 
were, we figured we'd give it a shot.

Cue a fair amount of wandering around until we found the place in question 
hiding up on the second floor: Heaven, established 2005.  Madoka looked at 
the door and the flyer dubiously, then warned us that it looked to be more 
of a mahjongg parlor than a maid cafe.  She suggested we go somewhere 
else.  We all stood around for a moment not sure what to do, at which 
point Aaron said, "This is the place, right?" and headed on in.  The rest 
of us followed.

Later, Madoka would explain that had she not had that extra drink special 
at Panda (when Okinawan pop music played a traditional Okinawan drink was 
half-off and, apparently, pretty stiff) she wouldn't have gone inside.  
Either way, we all immediately realized we were in the wrong place.

We were in a dimmly lit small room with a bar directly in front of the 
door, some seating to the right, and a floor-to-ceiling blue tarp 
concelaing an area further off to the right where flourescent lights were 
on.  There were three people inside: the maid I'd seen earlier, the madam 
of the house, who looked like she'd spent the best years of her life 
hanging out with yakuza, and a guy who looked kinda like one of those 
gangsters who immediately got up and went left into the kitchen.  Oh, and 
there was a small pomeranian dog.  No customers.

We all gawk at each other for a minute, then the madam tells the maid, who 
is a bit confused at having a gaggle of white people walk into the place, 
to seat us.  The cover is 700 yen each and we're obliged to pay just by 
walking in the door.  Okay, fine.  We're seated, menus are bought out, and 
we star to realize what we've gotten ourselves into.  The items on the 
menu are entirely generic Japanese bar snacks, with one exception: the 
Love Love Pancake, "served with love from the maid's hand to your mouth".

This is not what we expected and it doesn't look like we're going to 
get cake and tea.

After a moment the maid is hustled back over by the madam and she gamely 
tries to take our order.  Madoka explains that this isn't quite what we 
expected, and we had come hoping to get dessert of some sort.  Our 
attention is directed to the Love Love Pancake but we try to explain that 
this isn't quite what we'd expected and we were probably just going to 
leave.  The maid asks the madam if we should get a refund and she makes 
frantic negative motions with her hands.

Cue negotiations, with Madoka acting as translator.

Madoka:  Well, we don't really see anything on the menu we want, so I 
guess we'll just pay the cover and leave.

Madam:  Well, how about you play mahjongg?

Madoka:  We don't know how to play mahjongg.

Phil:  I'd like to learn how to play!

Madam:  Great.  I'll teach you!

Phil:  How about the maid?  Can she teach me?

Madam:  No.

Phil:  Of course, it's getting late and I'm pretty tired, so perhaps I'll 
learn how to play another time.

At this point, the madam decides to show off her mahjongg setup in the 
hopes that maybe we'll play.  She draws back the blue tarp and reveals a 
brightly lit adjoining room that is completely full of mahjongg tables and 
a notable lack of customers.  She then bustles over to one of the tables 
and shows off an impressive bit of technology: at the press of a button 
the table opens up in the center, she shoves all the tiles in, the center 
closes, the machine makes all manner of exciting grinding noises, slots 
open up around the table, and sets of tiles rise up from out of the table, 
face down and ready for play.  It was almost enough to get us to want to 
play mahjongg, but not quite.

The madam and Madoka negotiate a bit more and it ends with the madam 
explaining that she feels bad for us (though not quite so bad as to forego 
our cover) and that we can have an item off the menu for free.  Okay, 
fine.  We decide to order the Love Love Pancake, to be served to us with 
love from the maid's hand to our mouth.  While we're waiting for said 
pancake we spend some time chatting with the madam.  She tells us about 
her dog, who was named after a particular mahjongg move, and how her 
prized siamese cat was stolen.  Then, the maid returns from the kitchen 
with dessert.

She places before us two very small pancakes, with a lump of butter on top 
and syrup drizzled all over it.  "I tried to write the character for 
'love' on top," she explains in a mildly distraught manner, "but the syrup 
was soaked up by the pancake."  She then wanders off, apparently unwilling 
to serve us the pancake from her hand to our mouth, with love or othewise.  
Thus, Madoka and I take matters into our own hands and alternatingly 
referring to each other as "Master" or "Mistress" respectively, we eat the 
pancakes, which are utterly generic and rather cold.

At this point we all pay up and get ready to leave.  On the way out we 
talk to the Madam about how the maid cafe business is going.  Apparently 
she used to have a good business going as a mahjongg parlor with a lot of 
local students coming by to play, but business had dried up over the past 
year.  Then she heard about maid cafes and figured if they were popular in 
Akihabara perhaps she could liven the place up.  Part of this plan 
involved decorating the bar with otaku paraphanelia, which in practice 
meant a handful of cheap figures that looked to come from the bargin 
bins.  We then chat with the maid, who tells us that she has a co-worker 
who would normally be there but she had taken the evening off to hang out 
with her boyfriend.  This was disappointing, as apparently the co-worker 
wears glasses, which I would have greatly appreciated.

Finally, we head out into the night.  The moment the door closes Tim and I 
look at each other and begin to laugh ourselves sick.  Madoka vehemently 
exclaims that she never would have done that had she been entirely sober.  
Later, we decide that the place was worth the price of admission for the 
story value alone and that it probably beat the hell out of trying to go 
to a real maid cafe.

If only we'd been served the Love Love Pancake by hand.  Ah well!