Jon Siegel / ジョン 米岡

I have some guests visiting from California and what do we wind up doing one bright and early Sunday morning? Maidreamin’ Maid Cafe in Akihabara. A girl, maybe 15 or 16 years old dressed in a miniskirt maid outfit gave us a handout invitation to her maid cafe not far from Akihabara station. The guys wanted to check it out so off we went for a visit. Inside was a counter top and a few bar tables and stools. It was staffed entirely with young girls dressed in maid costumes. We ordered soda floats and sat back to take in the exotic scenery. After a few minutes, our maid returned with our floats and a special request. She wouldn’t allow us to drink the floats until we sang and danced the cue-cue-cute song. Altogether we made heart shapes with our hands and swayed back and forth singing, “cue-cue-cuuuute!” while aiming our hand heart shapes at our floats. After a minute our maid bowed and permitted us to proceed with drinking our floats.

The maids were super polite and super attentive. They even had an English menu! For a group of foreigners, we were actually well received there, although the other customers were keeping an eye on us the same way a cat keeps an eye on a dog. The table charge was about 500 yen and drinks were around 800 - 1,000 yen each.