Nothing says Japan quite like a pale, corn-fed Ohio girl dressed like a scantily clad au pair. And while any sane person would be quick to point out that the Land of the Rising Sun is over 6,544 miles away from The Buckeye State, that didn’t stop the intrepid teens of Joyyou Maid Café from getting their “otaku” on last month at a Bexley, Ohio creperie.
But something got lost in translation somewhere between Ohio and Japan and a recent Japanese-style maid café party held by the group went terribly wrong.
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What is a maid café party, you ask? Well, first: what is a maid café?
Maid cafés are a type of cosplay or theme restaurant found originally in Japan. The first maid café has been traced to the late 1990s; there are many in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. In the typical maid café, the servers dress up as French maids, a staple of Japanese anime. Butler cafés are a new variation. The service of tea or other beverages, foot massages, and even ear-cleaning are options. Guests are greeted with a “Welcome home, master.” So of course, we have globalization and Sailor Moon to thank for the inevitable arrival of New York’s first maid café in 2014.
Maid cafés, like so much in Japanese culture, have a lot of kawaii or “cute” elements. The maids sometimes wear bunny ears, their costumes emphasize the girlie, and the maids affect a sweet attitude. But maid café culture is known to blend the innocent and the not-so.
One reviewer, for example, said New York’s original maid café looked like “a combination between child nursery and Victorian drawing room.” According to Metropolis, Japan’s English-language magazine, “Maids [in maid cafés] in the original sense are not sex workers, though this is perhaps not always the case at the 200-plus cafés around the country.”
In the last few decades, the maid café has become increasingly popular. And what’s the natural evolution of this idea but the maid café party, in which young girls—middle schoolers, high schoolers—dress up as maid café workers.
What kid wouldn’t want to sip on a dopio alongside a tentacle rape-monster and a Converse-clad Pikachu downing some canapés?
Maid café parties are now a thing. And that thing went wrong when a group in Ohio tried to rent out a creperie called C’est Si Bon in Bexley.
Here’s what happened.
Billy Strickland, owner of the creperie, agreed to rent out C’est Si Bon one Sunday when the restaurant is typically closed. The group who rented the place sometimes goes by the moniker of Joyyou Maid Café, a fact that may or may not have been known to Strickland.
According to reports, six girls got to the restaurant early, three of whom seemed to be in middle school—one said she was 14—and three who looked to be of college age. The girls went into the bathroom, changed, and came out looking a little different than when they went in.
“They had on outfits almost like French maid outfits,” Strickland said. “They were dressed very skimpy, very provocative.”
Stickland was put off by the girls’ attire, to say the least. She also said she noticed that the girls seemed nervous. One asked, “If you guys see anything crazy or weird happening, can you help us?”
All was lost when two men in their 60s or 70s arrived. Strickland said, “I had to just shut it down.” So went what may have been the first and last maid café party in Bexley, Ohio.
Maybe it was all just a cultural misunderstanding. In any event, Ohio is still awaits its first maid café.
