Cosplay restaurant

Cosplay restaurants (コスプレ系飲食店), are theme restaurants and pubs that originated in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan around the year 1999. They include maid cafés (メイドカフェ) and butler cafés (執事喫茶), where the service staff dress as elegant maids, or as butlers. Such restaurants and cafés have quickly become a staple of Japanese otaku culture. Compared with service at normal cafés, the service at cosplay cafés involves the creation of a rather different atmosphere. The staff treat the customers as masters and mistresses in a private home rather than merely as café customers.

The popularity of the Cosplay restaurants and maid cafes has spread to other regions in Japan, such as Osaka's Den Den Town as well as other countries, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, and Canada.

Characteristics
In a standard maid cafe the female employees dress up as french maids (occasionally, the maids may wear rabbit or cat ears for extra cute appeal) and refer to the customers as either Master (ご主人様) or Mistress (お嬢様). Upon entering one of such stores, the customer is greeted with the customary "Welcome home, Master" (お帰りなさいませ、ご主人様！), offered a wipe towel and shown a food/drink menu. Popular dishes include cakes (sometimes baked by the maids themselves), ice-cream, omurice, spaghetti, as well as drinks such as coca-cola, tea, milk or alcoholic beverages such as beer or, in some cases, even champagne. Other options include taking polaroids (either of the maid alone, together with another maid or with the customer and which are then decorated using coloured markers or stickers), playing card or video games or even slightly more unusual ones, such as being slapped by one or more of the girls. There exists a wide range of establishments catering to specific tastes and offering different services to customers.

In other stores, the outfits and even the setting itself change. In school-themed cafes, for example, customers are referred to as senpai instead of Master or Mistress. Inside, regular tables are replaced by school desks and even the menu is served in trays reminiscent of the ones used in Japanese schools.

Other themes include, little sister (妹), shrine girl (巫女) or railway (鉄道) cafes/izakaya.

Recently, with the maid cafe scene booming, additional related services have become popular. These include ear cleaning (耳かき), a foot or hand massage, photography sessions (the customer typically rents time in a studio during which he can tell a maid which costume to wear and how to pose) or even "dates" with maids.

Butler cafe
While most cosplay restaurants and maid cafes cater mostly to men, there is also a type for women called the butler café (執事喫茶). The butlers in these cafes are well-dressed male employees and may wear either a typical waiter's uniform or even a tuxedo or tails. One butler cafe has its waiters cosplay as teenage schoolboys, in an effort to appeal to the fujoshi who enjoy Boy's Love.

There are also cross-dressing (male disguise style (男装系)) butler cafes, where female staff dress up as butlers, instead of actual men.

Variants
With the popularity of maid cafes, a number of other businesses have followed. Within Akihabara alone one can find several legitimate massage parlors, a maid eyeglass store, and at least one cosplay/maid izakaya.

America and Canada
One maid cafe which opened in the west was the "i maid cafe" located in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, and was featured in CBC's newsmagazine, The Hour. The cafe was closed in November 2007 because management failed to pay back rent.

In December 2007, Royal-T opened in Culver City, California, United States, and has been featured in several magazines, such as Elle and the LA Times. It is a combination of maid cafe, store, and art gallery.

In September, 2008, a Japanese franchise Crepe House Uni, opened in Davis, California. Their workers wear maid uniforms, but they are not exactly a maid cafe.

In popular culture

 * In the anime Lucky Star, the character Konata Izumi gets a job at a cosplay cafe. The cafe is themed after the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise, which Konata is a huge fan of. Konata plays the role of Haruhi while working, and uses Haruhi's exact voice (reason being because Konata and Haruhi have the same voice actor in both the Japanese and English versions). She even performs the Hare Hare Yukai, the ending theme dance from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
 * In the anime Pokémon: Diamond & Pearl Battle Dimension, the main characters visit a cafe that have waitresses that dress in a similar fashion to standard cosplay cafes.
 * In chapter nine of the webcomic Megatokyo, there is a scene which takes place in a maid cafe, with one character attending a meeting there while another disguises herself as a maid to watch.
 * In the Dōjin Work, Najimi Osana gets a temporary job working in a maid cafe, named Cafe With Cat - a real-life cafe located on the second floor of one of the two Comic Toranoana buildings in Akihabara. The depiction is accurate.
 * In Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens there is an episode in which Nagi & Tsugumi work in a maid cafe.
 * In Tokyo Mew Mew, the cafe the mew mews work in could be considered a cosplay cafe, as their work uniforms resemble maid outfits.
 * In L: Change the World, a Cafe that L Lawliet goes to is one such a cafe.
 * In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Mikuru Asahina and Tsuruya work at a class-run cosplay restaurant during the school's cultural festival.
 * In Kaichou wa Maid-Sama, the female protagonist works in a maid cafe as one of the 'maids'.