Maid non-cafes, part 3 - hair

I've already mentioned Moe Sham, one of the more well-known maid-themed hair stylists. So far, I've only been able to find one other such salon. Both places offer hair cuts, shampoos, tinting, etc. On average, Moe Sham is 10% cheaper than Obu.

Prices for a simple cut are 5200 to 5500 yen. 5200 to 6800 yen for coloring.

Shops in this category are:

Moe Sham
Obu

Review: Akiba Gakuen, Year 2, Class 1

Akiba Academy, Year 2, Class 1 is a slight departure from the regular maid and cosplay cafes here, as the staff takes on the roles of second year school girls, uniforms and all. The cafe doesn't quite have a classroom vibe to it, and few schools that I know of have a full bar in the room. Which is a pity, because that would have made most of my classes in school a lot more worth attending.

When I arrived, there were three customers sitting at the counter, comparing maid photos with the staff. I was directed to sit at one of the wooden tables, and then one of the girls came over with the menu. They were very relieved when they discovered that they didn't have to deal with me in English. Doesn't look like they have an English menu. The room is long and relatively narrow, located on the 4th floor of the same building as Eine Burg. To find Akiba Gakuen, head out across Chuu-ou Dori from Akihabara station, and when you reach Tsumakoizaka street, turn right. It's just before you get to Kuramaebashi street, on the right. near Mai:lish.

They have a full menu, including curry rice, omelet rice and the rest. The special for the evening was niku jaga (sliced steak and potatoes). You can get the entrees by themselves or as a set with a cup of soup. The prices are a little on the high side, and soft drinks are separate from the meal sets. They do have a range of desserts (between 500 and 1000 yen), beer (700 yen) and mixed drinks (900 yen). I decided to get the omelet rice set, plus hot coffee and a maid photo. With the 500 yen cover charge, the evening came to 2800 yen ($30 USD).



When the coffee came out, the server poured the milk and cream into the cup and stirred it for me, but there was no added flavor chant. When the omelet rice came out, she asked me what I wanted drawn on it in catsup. I figured I'd go with the standard "neko" (cat) and she acted horrified, saying that she can't draw cats. But, she finally settled on Hello Kitty, which came out well. When I asked if I could take a photo of the food, there was a long discussion which ended up with "only if you stand outside the door and shoot into the room". That seemed like too much work, so I passed on that. The coffee was good, as was the omelet rice (just a pile of spiced red rice with a scrambled egg on top). The soup was an onion soup, I think, with bread pieces in it. It was quite tasty. I liked the soup the best.

Maybe it's because the cafe hadn't started getting packed yet, but a couple of the "students" came over to my table several times to talk. This is where knowing at least some Japanese makes a huge difference between just having a meal in a cafe, and being able to enjoy yourself with everyone else there. Mostly, we talked about anime, and about the other cafes in the area. Also having my electronic dictionary with me was a good thing, because I had to look up a number of words I didn't know along the way.




Then came the maid photo. Akiba Gakuen has a slightly different system than other cafes that offer photos. Here, it's 500 yen for just the shot of the student of your choice. If you want to be in the photo as well, it's 800 yen. But, to make up for the extra cost, the servers go to great lengths to spice up the photo. They even have parts cases holding the colored pens, stickers, and other accessories. My student spent at least 15 minutes on the photo, going so far as to write on the back (which hasn't happened at any of the other cafes so far). The reason the photo looks blurry is that it's 3D; the scanner focused on the Minnie Mouse gummies stuck on the photo and couldn't see the photo itself some distance off the scanner bed. Because of the work done on it, my student took another couple minutes to wrap up the photo in a sheet of wrapping paper. It's certainly the fanciest photo I have in my collection.



There's also a points card. I like the design. 1 point per 1000 yen spent on food. Get 21 points to fill the card and get 500 yen off next time. Not one of the better return rates, but if you like coming here often, then the card gives you some benefit, anyway.




Summary:
Name: Akiba Gakuen, Year 2, Class 1
Location: Tsumakoizaka, just short of Kuramaebashi. 4th floor.
Price: Moderately high.
Cover: 500 lets you stay 90 minutes.
Food: Along with the standards (omelet rice, pastas), they have more upscale dishes. Not quite upscale but filling is the niku jaga (potatoes with sliced steak). Set dishes include a bowl of onion soup. Prices range from 900 to 1600 yen for sets. Soft drinks are 500 yen. Desserts are 500 to 1000 yen. Beer is 700 yen. Mixed drinks 900 yen.
"Love": Drawing of your choice on the omelet rice. Staff pours the milk and sugar into your coffee and stirs it for you.
Outfits: Campus school uniforms (blouses, skirts and blazers).
Photos: 500 yen for just the maid; 800 if you pose with the maid.
Wireless Internet: (?) (No laptops in evidence when I was there.)
Specialties: A recreation of an all-girls campus.
Recommendation: Akiba Gakuen tends to be more expensive than other maid cafes, but there's much more emphasis on prepping the maid photos. And, if you can speak Japanese they'll carry on conversations with you during your entire stay. Definitely recommended if you like collecting maid photos.

Maid non-cafes, part 2 - ears

There is a practice in Japan that's not really found in the U.S. I can't comment on other countries, but I'm willing to bet that this is largely a Japanese phenomenon. And that is of having someone else clean out the wax from your ears by using a long thin wooden stick, kind of like a little shovel. It's called "mimikaki" (mimi = ear, kaki = to scratch or shovel). This practice requires a great deal of trust on the part of the person being groomed, and the person doing the work is demonstrating their fondness for the groomee by doing something that's actually fairly disgusting. Traditionally, the husband places his head in his wife's lap, and then she cleans out his ears (however, a lot of manga artists show the guy just lying on a couch cleaning his own ears out with the stick).

Welcome to the world of "head in the lap ear cleaning". There are a few ear cleaners in Akihabara where the staff is in maid uniforms. Some of these places also offer "reflexology", which is scalp, hand or foot massages. Strictly non-sexual.

Prices vary depending on the shop. Figure about 1000 yen for the ear cleaning as a rough estimate (some places quote 500 yen per ear).

Shops in this category are:

Nagomi-ya
Ramimikaki Yamamoto Ear Cleaning Lovable Retreat

I haven't gotten around to going inside either of these places yet, so I'm just highlighting them here, not reviewing them.

Review: Akiba Guild

Akiba Guild takes up two small floors of the building, on Chuu-ou Dori, just across the street from Usagi no Jinja (Rabbit Shrine), on 7F and 8F. On my first visit, I stayed on the 8th floor in the casino. To get here, just go 3.5 blocks north on Chuu-ou Dori from Kandamyojin Dori (the street that runs in front of the UDX building and SofMap), enter the doorway on your left and take the elevator up.



Yes, Akiba Guild is a maid casino where you can try your luck or match your skills against the maids in games such as roulette, baccarat, Texas hold-em, black jack and a couple of others. There are about 5 tables and room for about 5 people per table, so the place can get crowded during peak times. When I arrived, they were over half full with mostly businessmen, although one woman was enjoying herself at the roulette table. There's no English menu or instructions, but at least one of the maids will try to help you out in English. Life does get a lot easier for you if you can understand at least some Japanese.



The rules are simple. 2000 yen gets you $300 worth of chips and a free soft drink (I got an ice coffee, which was pretty good). You can play for 1 hour, after that you're expected to buy another drink. You can get more chips if you want (if I understand the chart right, another 2000 yen will get you $110 in chips). You're not playing for money. When you're ready to leave, you can cash out for one of three prize items ($300 in chips plus 300 yen gets you a cell phone screen, $1500 in chips plus 1800 yen gets you an ashtray). Prizes are available on the 7th floor. (The 7th floor is mainly just filled with more tables for playing poker as a kind of overflow room.)

When you pay your entry fee, you get to pick the game you want and then you're led to the appropriate table where you get your chips. The chips are color-coded by player to make it easier for the maids to tell which bets came from which players and printed with the name of the game you're playing. So, if you decide to change games in the middle, the maids have to change your chips around to one of the free colors at the next table. You play until you're out of chips, or when you decide to cash out. You are given one$1 chip that you're expected to give to the maid at the end as a "thank you" present, which lets them know you're out of the game.


(Events calendar)

There is food on the menu, in the 400 to 600 yen range, including soups, chicken rice and chahan, but I didn't see anyone eating at the time. Soft drinks (cola, coffee, tea and juices) are 200 to 300 yen, and floats (soda, coffee or juice plus ice cream) are 400 yen. Ignoring the fact that you're essentially paying a 2000 yen cover to enter the door, as long as you keep winning chips, the prices for the food are very reasonable.

For the most part, the staff is no-nonsense. The dealers are friendly, smiling when you win and saying "nice catch". But there's not a lot of conversation during the games. However, when I was between games, the maid that greeted me at the door, "Kaeda" (meaning "maple" in Japanese) was very friendly and eager to make sure I understood the house rules. She was also happy to answer my questions at the end when I wanted to get enough info to write up this review.



Maid photos are 500 yen. And there is a "members card" that gets you some perks whenever you return to the Guild. There are various events during the week, and tournaments held regularly for those that want to advance in ranking against the other players.

I enjoyed myself, but I'm not really a good gambler. I ran through all my chips after about 30 minutes at the roulette table. One of the other players had a very haphazard way of throwing his chips all over the table that generally resulted in his having the biggest stack of chips of the group. The one female player was also holding her own by taking a more conservative approach by playing the corners of the number bets. The players at the card game tables kept quiet, but there was some serious playing going on there.

If you like playing no-stakes games, or if you're new to poker and just want an inexpensive way to get in some practice, Akiba Guild is a good place to go.

For an idea of what the Guild is like, check out the videos on their youtube channel.


Summary:
Name: Akiba Guild
Location: Chuu-ou Dori, near Usagi no Jinja, 8th floor. 3.5 blocks north of Kandamyojin Dori.
Price: Moderate. This is primarily a casino, so drinks are cheap as long as you keep playing the games.
Cover: No cover, but you need to buy 2000 yen in chips to start, and order a drink once an hour.
Food: Light entrees and soups, but I didn't see anyone eating. Soft drinks and floats.
"Love": "Okaerinasai" when you enter. Otherwise, no special chants or drawings on the food.
Outfits: When I was there, a blue blazer with white scarf and maid cap.
Photos: 500 yen.
Wireless Internet: (?) (No laptops in evidence when I was there.)
Specialties: Gambling. This is a casino where you're playing for the fun of it. No cash payouts. When you cash your chips back in, you can get a cell phone screen or an ashtray. Tournaments are held regularly where you can advance in the rankings against other players.
Recommendation: If you just want to sit down and have some fun playing against other people for $20 USD or so for an hour, this is a great place to do it. The staff is friendly, but there's not a lot of chatter between players. You're not playing for cash, so don't expect the games to get cutthroat. Games include roulette, poker, Texas hold-em and baccarat. Recommended.

Maid non-cafes, part 1 - ASCII Weekly

This is actually part 1 of the "Maid non-cafe" series. I want to start off here talking about Weekly ASCII, a free advertising booklet that can be found at various shops around Akihabara. A lot of the ads are for computer stores, electronics parts and regular restaurants. However, there's a map with a legend sorted by business type. Two of the categories are "maid cafes" and "maid other". On their website, they have an interactive Flash-like map that lets you more easily locate businesses by putting the mouse cursor over the map. The problem is, the list of shops is out of date (that and there's no English version of the map). "Cafe with Cat closed its doors several months ago, and Mai Dreamin' 3 (opened in July) isn't in the list. The paper vision of the map is a little more up to date, but it's still incomplete.

In any case, the ASCII weekly map is a good starting point in collecting a list of maid cafes, and "maid other". This second category is fairly broad, and includes a couple hair stylists, some bars, a mahjong parlor, a darts bar, Little TGV and Candy Fruits Optical. I've cleaned the list up a bit, included English or romaji versions of the names, and confirmed that the links to the web pages work. I've also added a few shops that I've found that were missing from the ASCII list. The ultimate goal is to at least add descriptions of the shops in English, if not outright reviews.

Maid Runner's List of Maid-related businesses in Akihabara.

Review: Schatzkiste

(Day and...)

Schatzkiste has taken on an interesting motif - a German tea house/library combined with an American board game meeting room.


(... night.)

Schatzkiste describes itself as a German library, and it does have a couple hundred books on the shelves, but they also host gaming sessions for people wanting to play TCGs like Yugi-oh or Magic: The Gathering. They also have a selection of board games to choose from if you want to challenge a friend or stranger. The maids wear "elegant black dresses with white aprons and white lace hairpieces". The floor space is fairly narrow, and you're expected to share the tables with everyone else. Maximum seating capacity may be 30 people. The woodwork is a dark mahogany, and antique clocks show you the time.


(Around the corner.)

There's a cover charge of 500 yen per half hour, but this includes free tea. While I was there, the hot tea served was a Ceylon. They also have ice tea. The menu is limited, including a plate of tea cookies, some light cakes, and a bowl of hot soup. The soup is so thick that you can eat it with the provided pieces of bread like a fondue. All items are between 300 and 500 yen.


(Flier for cafe)

There's no maid photos here, but they do have a points card. 500 yen per point, and the points have a purchasing power of 5 yen each if you want to get the branded items at the cash register (post cards, tea, etc.) The customers were about 80% single men (salarymen and college students) and the rest mixed couples.


(Closeup of the signboard at the front of the shop.)

The seating arrangement encourages strangers to talk to each other (although, in Japan, talking to strangers is not a normal activity) and to engage each other in the board games. One of the other guys at my table started by asking where I'm from, and eventually got around to challenging me to an older German game called "Geister", or "Ghost" in English. Originally released in Germany in 1982, Geister is a very simple game that has a very complex strategical element. Two players start out with 4 red and 4 blue ghosts each. The ghosts face the player so the opponent can't tell which is which. Players take turns moving one of their ghosts one square on the playing board (forward, back, left or right). If you land on the square with an opponent's ghost, you take that ghost. The goal is to either take all of your opponent's good (blue) ghosts, give up all your bad (red) ghosts, or be the first person to get a good ghost to the "exits" at the opposite corners of the board and then off the board. It's a bluffing game, and you never know if a ghost that's making a run for an exit is a good ghost trying to win the game, or a bad ghost threatening your back line. We only played one round, but I won by accident (I still had no real idea what I was doing.)


(Points card)

From September to October 31, Schatzkiste is doubling as an art gallery, hosting the works of the famed Akiman. Akira Yasuda started at Capcom as an artist for the box art on the NES version of "1942". He then worked as a planner on the Street Fighter II series, The Punisher and Darkstalkers, and as a character designer for Gundam: Giren no Yabo. He left Capcom in 2003 to go freelance. He's also credited as a mecha designer on the "Code Geass" anime, and character designer on the "∀ Gundam" anime series. He's done some DVD box art and has had at least one book of his own work published. The pictures shown at Schatzkiste are all incredibly well-executed, with Chun-lee showing up several times, but there is a bit of etchi-ness to a couple of them. I don't know if the following is related to the exhibit or if it's a regular feature of the cafe, but there are several sketch books lying around with artwork from the customers. A large percentage of the sketches are professional grade, and it looks like you're allowed to do your own drawings if you want to.

Overall, this was one of the more fun, relaxed cafes I've been to in a while. There is a refined element to the cafe, similar to Cure Maid, but I haven't really being able to sit down and just play a game like backgammon against someone at a cafe like this since I last lived in Minneapolis.

Summary:
Name: Schatzkiste
Location: Kuramaebashi, just east of the Jonathan's at the intersection with Tsumakoizaka. On the ground floor.
Price: Moderate.
Cover: 500 lets you stay 30 minutes.
Food: Some light pastries, like tea cookies and chifon cake. Does include a bowl of soup with bread. The tea is all-you-can-drink.
Service: Very elegant and friendly, but reserved. The maids don't speak English and there's no English menu. However, the menu does have pictures of the food.
"Love": No special "added flavor chants", no writing on the food.
Outfits: Long black dresses with white aprons and lace.
Photos: No maid photos.
Wireless Internet: (?) (No laptops in evidence when I was there.)
Specialties: This is a library of sorts that lets you sit down, read, play board games or chat with friends. From September to October, the cafe hosted an art display from Akira Yasuda. Future art exhibits may be possible.
Recommendation: Schatzkiste hosts various trading card game and board game events, as well as just acting as a place for people to sit and play 2-person games ala go and shogi. The atmosphere is refined, and free tea is provided as part of the cover. The menu is limited to cookies, cake and a bowl of thick soup. The cafe is modeled on a German motif. The only caveat is that you're paying 500 yen per half hour, rounded up. Highly recommended.

When is a Maid Cafe a Maid Cafe?

Or, the question should probably be, what is the definition of "maid"? Yes, I did address this issue a little bit back when I started up Maid Runner, but I didn't cover all of the bases at that time.

First, in Japan, "maid" refers more to the costume than it does to the occupation. This is part of the reason why we also see "maid shampoo" and "maid reflex". It's not that these places are maid cafes, but rather that the female staff is wearing maid uniforms. Then, as part of the maid image, the female staff will also greet customers with variations on "welcome home master". Western writers (such as those at the Metropolis) will make a point of commenting on places with "maid" in the name as not really having maids. This misses the point. The idea is that various types of businesses want to cash in on the maid concept and therefore dress their female staff up as maids. It's not much different from McDonald's or Wendy's forcing their staff to wear coordinated uniforms and welcome their customers with formulaic greetings. The difference is that at a maid hair stylist, the staff is having more fun in the role than at a "normal" hair stylist.

If a maid cafe is a snack shop or restaurant where the servers dress up in maid uniforms, and "maid sham" is a hair dresser where the stylists dress up in maid outfits, what do we call a "maid cafe" where they don't use maid uniforms?

Specifically, places like MIA Cafe and Little TGV serve food (TGV is more of a bar, though), but MIA's staff dresses up in costumes from various TV anime shows, and TGV is a train-themed izakaya where the staff dresses up in train personnel uniforms. They're still grouped under the heading of "Maid Cafe" in the Akihabara directories, but they're really not maid cafes because they don't use maids uniforms. Instead, these places are generically called "cosplay cafes" or "cosplay clubs". I'd prefer to call them "theme shops" or "theme cafes", but within Japan the title used is "cosplay". Of course, there are cosplay bars as well, but I haven't encountered cosplay hair stylists yet.

Naturally, there's no reason to expect a strict division between the two types of shops. Many maid cafes have "cosplay events" where the staff dresses up as specific anime characters, or in other outfits (such as elf uniforms for Christmas). In the case of Mai:lish, from opening to 5 PM is "maid time", and from 5 PM to closing is "cosplay time".

We can muddy the waters further by introducing "butler" and "dansou" cafes, where "butler" generally refers to guys dressed up as butlers to cater to a female clientele, and "dansou" are women cross-dressing as butlers for the same customer base. While it's appropriate to lump these two (along with "little brother" cafes) in with cosplay cafes, it's probably a good idea to keep "maid" and "butler" separate largely because they are aimed at different target audiences. On top of which, I've yet to find a "butler hair stylist".

Now, why am I going on with this diatribe (other than the fact that I dislike the way the English press represents the entire maid movement)? Because I'm preparing to start up a multi-part blog entry on non-cafe maid-related businesses. My criteria is that the business follows the maid motif (uniform, greeting, treatment of the customers, etc.) As mentioned above, I haven't found many cosplay shops that aren't cafes, but if I do, I'll include them in the series. For the moment, I'll focus on Akihabara, simply to keep things under control. If anyone wants to talk about places in Ikebukuro, Yokohama, Osaka or elsewhere, please free to add a comment.