There is a quite unique shame involved in being a white man who’s into anime – if you have any self-awareness, that is. If you don’t, life can be a magical, technicolour world of sexy cats, sexy robots, sexy fencers, sexy demons, and, unfortunately for some of the time, sexy children with big tits.
I am a vociferous exponent of Japan and Japanese culture. From my first visit, I became instantly enamoured with the food, the people, the misty peak of Fuji visible from certain high hills; the sushi restaurants with giant tanks filled with delicious, soon-to-be tortured marine life; the way every single person dressed impeccably well; the communal hot springs that banned tattoos; the bars that didn’t shut; the shops that didn’t shut; the restaurants that didn’t shut; the antiquated technology in the super modern train stations, the silence, the safety, the unmistakable vibe. I was in heaven.
That being said, I, mercifully, am not into anime at all – my interest in the genre ended with Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z circa 2004. In fact, I’m of the opinion that Western anime fans bring a great deal of shame to us cool guy Japan fans. Their circular silhouette bumbling through the narrow alleys of Tokyo, with their neckbeards and humming stink-lines filling every arcade with a miasma of virginity, completely ruining the immersion of a holiday and transporting you right back to CeX. It makes me sick.
When I’m in the adoptive motherland, the last thing I want to do is go anywhere that might be filled with ghastly otaku honkies. I stay in my cool guy lane of pokey recherché izakayas, streetwear shops that play old grime tapes, and Elvis-themed bars that have darts. I don’t want to see a Hello Kitty, I don’t want to see a well-endowed schoolgirl holding a giant blue sword, and I most certainly don’t want to see the sort of guy who indulges in these sorts of things.
So when the Usagi Maid Café opened in the shadow of the British Museum this year, I saw it as an opportunity to really stare into the heart of darkness. Maid cafés are a relatively recent phenomenon, with the first opening in 2001 in Akihabara, a place formerly known for its cut price electronics, now more famous for this kind of kawaii dress-up cosplay carry-on. The purpose of them is to let you experience a kind of hybridised sexual fantasy, part master-slave kink, part anime escapism. You go in, get assigned a maid, usually in a French maid uniform, who will serve you drinks, food, play games with you, talk to you about your favourite Kimi ni Todoke characters and generally be your mate for an hour.
Usagi Maid Café is not very big at all. It has about 12–14 covers, half of which were occupied when I arrived. To my surprise, the majority of patrons were women. The only other man there was a Sam Bankman-Fried lookalike, there with his Asian girlfriend. Of course.
While not being quite the most egregious archetype of the garden variety Japanophile, he did exhibit some of the symptoms, the primary one being affecting Japanese vocal quirks. In Japan, conversation between two people is often accompanied by a chorus of ‘aizuchi’, a regular noise by one person, often taking the shape of ‘mm’ or ‘ah’, or when surprising information is heard, an elongated ‘eeh?’. When in Japan, overhearing native chatter, this is a pleasing linguistic idiosyncrasy. But here in London, deployed by a westerner, it takes on a skin-crawling timbre, the sound of someone too far gone in the rabbit hole of their own cultural escapism.
My maid for the hour, Tani, who was, of course, beautiful and doll-like as I’m sure the job spec requires, came over to me upon entry to get me seated. The room was painted a soft pink and was decorated with maid outfits stuck high up on the walls. There was quite a substantial amount of tat you could buy, small things like stationery and keychain toys. The cutlery, an ornate fork and spoon, was arranged in a cross shape on the table. It smelled like a café, but not a particularly good one – that familiar aroma of something slightly sweet and cheap.
