I am on the mend, doing a bit better. It's time to report about the more interesting things that happened when I first arrived in Tokyo. For the first 3 days I was hosted by my friend Ryuichi Nakajima in central Tokyo. In a 3-day crash course that he called 'forced immersion' I was shown the ropes on life in this city (and Japan in general). One tour led us to a Maid Cafe, something quite bizarre.
Apparently there exists a whole society of anime-obsessed nerds who fantasize about being Master to a maid. These individuals can actually experience this fantasy in special Maid Cafes. In a nutshell, for almost 10 dollars a coffee you can enjoy a few moments of mastery over these young girls and pretend to be some anime superhero. The mastery doesn't consist of anything more than sitting there and watching them run around catering other people, just like a normal restaurant, except for the outfits (see photo).
So the whole experience is based on fanstasy; people with the fetish just sit there and pretend to be in charge.
Nerds aren't the only ones that go to these places: tourists, non-nerds and even girls come here too. According to Ryuichi, the maid cafe tends to be a pick-up spot.
I don't really understand the whole idea, but hey, it's Japan.
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