If you were to tell me that I could walk into a café in New York City and be served sweet tea and cake by a gaggle of giggling teenage girls in French Maid costumes, I would think you were confusing the café with an off-Broadway show. But, according to a recent article in the NY Daily News, you can visit such a place. Go to Maid Café in New York City’s Chinatown and you will be served smiles, winks and bubble tea by waitresses dressed in maid costume.
It’s the brainchild of Satoshi Yoshimura who opened Maid Café in August.
“Americans take it as a sexual thing, but we Japanese don’t see it like that,” said Satoshi Yoshimura to the Daily News. “My goal is to give a sense of [Japanese costume] culture to New Yorkers.”
In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, there are thousands of these so-called maid cafés, where men and women can pay by the hour to be served by maids who will pose for photos, squirt ketchup or chocolate sauce onto food, squish a hamburger between a bun, and even hand-feed patrons. Physical contact or even asking a maid for her number is strictly prohibited.
The idea is that the whole spectacle is adorably sweet, much like the maids serving you green tea ice cream. Yoshimura says he is working hard to make sure his ode to Japanese maid culture isn’t lost in translation. What do you think? Is the idea of Japanese maids culturally informative as well as entertaining? Or, is this idea creepy no matter how you serve it?
