JapanNewbie

Maid Cafe: e-maid

Posted on 21. Mar, 2006 @ 11:27 pm by harvey in Crazy Consumers, Culture, Food, Osaka Views: 877

Maybe you’ve heard of the “maid cafe” in Japan. They are most well known in Tokyo’s Akihabara, but there are many of them in Kansai as well. I visited e-maid in the Osaka in Namba area near Electric Town.

The cafe has wireless lan, a shelf full of comic books, and of course all of the staff are wearing cute maid outfits. They’ll even recharge any model of cell phone for you for free!

As tempting as it may be, photography of the maids themselves is strictly prohibited (that’s a no-no, but I should have snuck one). There are also a host of other rules for the cafe as well. I was able to get pictures of objects inside of the store though.

The menu is completely normal for the most part. One interesting item is the Otona no Okosama Set (大人のお子様セット）for 1200 yen. An Okosama Set is basically a “kids” meal. Most family restaurants in Japan offer this as a cheap option in small portions for families who bring their kids to restaurants. Otona in Japanese means adult. So, this is the kids meal for adults. How cute.

Here’s the Otona no Okosama Set.

The portion is huge! Yum.

In the maid cafe, the maids address the customers in extremely polite Japanese, saying things like お気をつけていってらしゃいませ (oki wo tsukette itterasyaimase), the polite form for something like, “take care on your way out”. 旦那様はおもどりになりました (danna sama ha omodorininarimashita) an extremely polite for of, “the master? has returned”, and they say this whenever a new male customer comes into the shop, even if it’s their first time. For me, all this sounds odd. For Japanese, I guess it adds to the “at your service” feeling of the cafe.
Check below for more on the “maid cafe thing”.

- Harvey

Tokyo Times on Maid Cafes

Japan Times article on Maid Cafes

Mainichi News article on same!