Cafe | Accumulative Junkie / Random Collection of Stuff

Jan 12th – Bit of a slow morning as had to sort some things out for the return trip, namely arranging my transfer to the Airport for the next day. Skipped the hotel breakfast – safer option.

Met up with Ferlyn at Akihabara in the afternoon, and the weather was horrid, rainy and windy and very cold. Exactly what we didn’t want for wandering around outside. After a bit of battling through the crowd of umbrellas, we arrived at our first stop the @Home Cafe – this was huge, 3 floors of Maid cafe, and each one has a different theme. The queue was incredible, went down the stairs 3 floors. Decided not to wait and were about to go when we found the lowest floor of @Home had a traditional Japanese style theme – and NO Queue! So we went in. I can see why this place was so popular, really good decor, the costumes were really good and the service was great. We were lucky enough to catch (and be part of) a game of paper scissors stone – I was out first round, Ferlyn got to the second, eventually it came down to 2 very nervous Japanese gentlemen, who then had to compete up in the centre with the Maids. Was all good fun, even if I couldn’t remember the sequence of actions properly lol.

We had a desert and I got a green tea, which the maid prepared in front of us – then came the adding of the love – we had to perform this ritual before being allowed to enjoy the tea, it basically consisted of bringing your hands together to form a heart shape, then saying a couple of words in Japanese, and all 3 of us had to do it at once – the purpose is to add love into the tea to make it extra special. Took a couple of attempts, mainly down to me again not quite getting the sequence right, but after it must have worked – faith – as the tea was great. We also had to partake similar rituals of adding love for each item ordered, and for our desert the maid would pour the source on, but would only stop upon making the correct “mew mew” sound. The cute cat theme was present in other areas, such as part of the paper scissors stone sequence involved a couple of cat like actions, including making of cat ears on our head, all very cute and was good fun.

Then we had a look round one of the big stores which sells like everything, spent a bit of time there looking in the costume section – so many different ones and such amazing designs. Also had a look at the other @Home cafe in there, again big queue, and quite a bit smaller. Then we had dinner at a Okonomiyaki restaurant, and this was quite different from what I’d tried before, but we had 2 different dishes and both were really good, also very filling and couldn’t eat all of it, but glad to have tried it before I left Japan. Then it was time to head back, and took the JR line back to Shinagawa.

Didn’t take any photos that day as the rain and wind were so bad, so here’s a random photo of Ferlyn (on the left) as a maid from back in March at Cosafe. Actually its not random, I love this photo 🙂

The second photo is from Christmas Eve at Cosafe (Ferlyn in red), for more Cosafe photos see this post.

Dec 30th – Deciding to waste no time, I made my first full day a trip to Akihabara. For those who are not interested in Anime, Maids, or Maid Cafes – you might want to skip on a section :).I spent the entire day hunting out Maid cafes and electronic shops like the average geek, and to be honest thoroughly enjoyed it. The first Maid Cafe was a Studio Cafe, I wont give its name here, and was a little disappointing, was quite small, and the main serving person was not even in any costume. As they didn’t speak any English, I used the little Japanese I had to get an hot coffee and a hot dog. It turns out my Japanese was slightly miss-understood however, as I ended up with an ICE Coffee and a Hot dog. Regardless of this, no stirring service from the maid.

After alot of wondering, I had come accross another Maid Cafe, however they had a sliding door, and this extra complexity to entry, put me off at first. I later returned to this place to find a small group of people out side, also complementing entry. I decided to be slightly more brave and hang around the middle of this crowd. It was at this point a maid appeard, obviously wondering why so many people where gathered outside and not entering. As per a classic moment from hundreds of sicoms, as she arrived, all the others in the group, all Japanese, stepped back in uniformally perfect timing, leaving only myself standing right at the front. When she gestured for me to enter, I casually pointed to the rest, only to discover them now standing firmly behind me. It was quite comical, if not a bit embarrassing. I finally thought “what the hell?” she had removed the door complexity by coming out, so I decided to go in. Following my great bravery, the rest of the crowed suddenly followed right BEHIND me. The maid was clearly slightly bemused by this, and assumed we were all together, a bit of pointing and partial explanation by the others in Japanese corrected this, and we had to wait for the tables to be free. The gentleman who had initially hid behind me in the line, then took that moment to thank me, in Japanese, for going ahead and allowing him to come in as well. I only wish I could have explained to him how I had been just as nervous 10 minutes before, and had walked past for the same reason as him, and how it was the presence of the group which helped me.

As it turned out, this was the best Maid Cafe I have visited so far in Tokyo – they had performances every 10 mins or so, dancing maids, paper scissors stone with the audience, stirring service, photo service, decorative service on your food and even a cat basket under your table to put your bag in when you sit down. This was Moe, real Moe at its best. I even shelled out for a polaroid with my maid – see photo above.

The following are some photos from Akihabara, these were taken on different nights, but take a look at this car – amazing, would love a car like that, there were a few people stopping to look at take photos, such detail as well. I want 1!!!!