Electric Town/Eccentric Town/Ecletic Town
Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan is one of the strangest pop culture places on Earth. Famed for its bright neon lights, technology (hence the nickname “electric town” [lol it should also be called "eclectic town" or "eccentric town"]) and cosplaying festivities. Now it is also famous as one of the first places that housed specialist cafés. However, other districts, towns, cities and even countries are now also housing these weird establishments.
The Cosafe Cafe, Singapore (apparently). Maid at a maid café is one career that Connexions (career advice for young people) definately won’t be covering any time in the future.
The most famous and possibly one of the first is the “Maid Café” or “Meido Café”. Several of them now exist in world-wide. On entering the café, the maids greet customers with “Welcome home, Master”, and often have “moe” (pronounced mo-eh) manners and dress (when people have a love for fictional characters and behaviour etc.). These cafés are mostly for male customers, and are usually decorated in Victorian English manor house style with all the English tea works-cream teas, sconnes, jam, cream, butter, marmalade, coffees etc. Here are a list of them courtesy of Wikipedia:
- @Home Cafe
- Cafe Doll Tokyo
- Cafe Mai:lish
- MerryHeart cafe&bar
- Mia Cafe
- Pash Cafe NAGOMI
- Maid-san
- Amu Amu (Seoul, South Korea)
- Akiba (Bangkok, Thailand)
- i maid café (Ontario, Canada)
- Cosafe (Singapore)
“I is bare posh!”
However when one fangirl, or should I say fanwoman, got bored of trawling across Maid Café advertisements, she decided to create a “Butler Café” (editor is gushing at this point lolol!). Emiko Sakamaki is the business woman behind the Swallowtail Café, whos aim it is to cater for women in their 20s-40s who grew up reading stories and comics containing “pretty boys”. Butlers spend months studying the tea leaves, foods and waitoring service.
Here is a list of “butler cafés”, partly courtesy of Wikipedia:
*Evil glare* “You made us in to poorly paid trannies!”
However, there is one more butler café that is slightly different, called Checkmate. It is the sister café of the darker Pinafore, a maid café in Akihabara. According to Black King Soshi, they aim to be the “No. 1 butler café” and cater for both men and women.
“Ya…I met the pope!”
If you’re feeling a bit repentant after perving at maids or butlers, you can go to St. GraceCourt. This café’s decorum is similar to that of a Church, complete with pews, crosses and rosaries.
Cat fans will be pleased to know that there are now cat cafés, where you pay a certain amount per hour to stay there. You can buy coffee while playing or watching the cats, or just simply bask in the company of cats. This concept originated in Taiwan and of course, Japan has imported it to Osaka and now Tokyo. Here’s a list courtesy of Chopsticks of cat cafés:
If you dog lovers out there are getting jealous, like me, fear not! The ultimate eating luxury for doggies is now available, and it all started in France in Mon Bon Chien patisserie. There are also dog hotels. For more information go here and here. I have also heard that these have been exported to Japan, along with places where you can rent dogs weekly(!).
This concludes my post on specialist cafés and establishments. If you happen to have visited any of these places, please tell me what they are like and if you have heard about any other similar establishments. I would be delighted to hear about them and I may add them here.
“Who gives better tea service? Cosafe or Checkmate? =_=’”
