"I hope that gal's boss doesn't see how's she's dressed while handing out those fliers."

"It's part of her job to dress like that, she's advertising for a Maid Cafe."

"Huh?"

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I got to actually experience a Maid Cafe as part of a tour put on by the people who own our building. It's kind of the Japanese version of Hooters, only more sexually overt and with audience participation. The girls have to be under the age of 20, and as you can see from the poster the primary focus of their job is to look as young as possible.

The covert nature of the photos makes them blurry but this way I feel ok about posting them.

So the deal is, the guys come in and drink, the "maids" do some jerky-squeaky kind of dancing, the guys jump up and down with them and put on fuzzy bunny ears and hold rubber chickens between their legs while having their pictures taken....

That was the gist of it. In the past there used to be more of a direct link with prostitution but apparently the law has put a kibosh on that to whatever degree they can control it. It seemed like most of the men there were regulars.

I got the feeling they don't usually have women as customers, but they were very friendly with us nonetheless. It's a shame Matthew was too sick to come along, it was a quite the experience.