Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The Maid Cafe (メード喫茶店)

You can see pictures below from my trip with Doshisha University students to Osaka Castle and other sightseeing areas in the city. I enjoy these joint sightseeing trips because they are a great opportunity to speak Japanese; however, walking around a crowded city with a group of indecisive students always proves to be trouble.

A group of us went to the “electric town” area of Osaka, but didn’t manage to make it into a single electronics shop due to inter-group indecision. We finally ended up at the technologically innovative McDonald’s and ate special edition fries flavored with spicy basil. At least the fries were right.

The Doshisha University students (probably the male ones) decided that we should all go to a maid café after our sightseeing was done. However, since our group was entirely too big to fit into one small café, we played simultaneous sudden death matches of “jan-ken-pon” (rock-paper-scissors) to decide who would go to which café (there were several in our immediate vicinity since we were in Osaka’s pervert district).

I remember the Japanese jan-ken-pon method for deciding things from my first trip to Japan way back when I was a middle-schooler. My opinion on the subject has not changed since then, namely, Rock-paper-scissors ties with ancient Chinese oracle bone divination as the most idiotic way to decide something.

No matter who you are with, it always goes something like this: Everyone huddles around in a circle and throws their choice. If you win, you keep playing – if you lose, you keep playing. After about 10 rounds, to see all the different permutations that can arise between rock, paper, and scissors in a circle of 12, everyone wears stupefied looks on their faces until someone arbitrarily numbers the group members off into smaller sections. Our jan-ken-pon decision making had us standing in a circle in front of a Chinese grocery store for 15 minutes.

My group ascended a staircase to the second floor of a nearby building and entered our maid café. You can best imagine a maid café by first picturing a Starbucks where, instead of the green apron-clad baristas, you have young, attractive Japanese females who wear revealing, doily-laden, black and white maid costumes. Also, instead of Starbucks’s signature compilation CDs and wireless hotspots, you can peruse picture books and hand written diaries in sparkly pink and purple colors that feature candid photos and writings from the 20-something year old maids designed to tempt to hearts of socially awkward men.

Our maid’s name was Yumi, and according to her sparkly pink picture and profile on the wall, she liked shopping and puppy dogs. Some other Stanford Center kids said they were hit by a "wave of perversion" upon entering the café and started to feel sick to their stomachs, but honestly, I didn’t really want to leave. How can you not love a place where, upon entering, your own personal maid puts her arm around you and escorts you to a table, all the while making small talk in that high pitched squeaky Japanese schoolgirl voice? Just like Cheers – where everybody knows your name!

My iced café ole cost six dollars – a small price to pay when you consider that it was personally delivered and prepared by a maid. I rang a tiny green plastic bell and Yumi came over to serve me. She bent down to meet me at eye-level (a difficult task because I was seated in between to other students). “Say stop,” the words fluttered from her puffy, pink lips as she began to pour the sugar syrup into my drink. I heard myself say “stop,” when I yearned to say, “Longer, longer, don’t stop Yumi, don’t stop, more, more, MORE!!!” Yumi looked at me head on - her dark brown eyes glistened in the overhead florescent lighting. She stirred my drink ever so slowly, ever so gently, in a clockwise motion. Once around…twice…three times. She bends my straw…she removes the covering…we’re done.

I was already coming down from my high when Yumi started with the student seated to my left. Then – heartbreak! A middle-aged man on the other side of the café orders some sort of huge ice cream banana parfait. Yumi winks at him slyly with one leg raised as she puts her hands together with index fingers extended. “Bishoooo” she squeals as she shoots an invisible charm from her fingertips across the café towards the banana parfait man. The banana parfait man says, “Arigato.”

What was that!? I clench my fists. Yumi, I thought we had something special babe, I thought we made a connection. I could be wrong, but that clockwise stirring thing went beyond the simple call of the job, the textbook training in how to prepare a caffeinated beverage. The stirring touched me, and now I can’t rid myself of your spell.

I watched Yumi deliver the mountainous parfait to the middle-aged man as I sipped my café ole. I finished the drink, but at that point, I couldn’t even taste the sugar syrup anymore.

B.E.W.

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