Her name is Momo. Nice girl. Funny. She’s 18 and just
graduated from high school. She’s wearing a maid uniform, and floppy cloth cat
ears. Her long straight black hair falls down between a pair of beautifully
crafted black angels’ wings.
She is massaging my feet, her fingers weaving in between the
toes. This will go on for twenty min. Then, she will go to work on my hands and
arms until the time limit is up.
Welcome to “maid reflexology and massage,” Akihabara’s latest offering
for all good otaku.
The conversation, naturally, revolves around anime and
manga.
“Is it true that Satoshi’s name is Ash in the American
version of Pokemon?” she asks.
“Umm, yeah, something like that” I mumble staring back at a
nondescript mid-30s salaryman directly across from me. He’s getting worked over
by a girl cosplaying as ‘Halloween,’ which means a black and orange dress,
pumpkin antenna orbiting her head.
The place looks like a makeshift hospital. Thin gauze
curtains separate the customers from each other. The antiseptic smell of
lotions and sprays hangs in the air. The floor is cold white tile. You sit in a
leather reclining chair while the girl kneels in front of you. The cleavage and
panty shots you get from this elevated vantage point are part of the 2700-yen
admittance fee.
To my left sits Watanabe Denki, a manga-ka with a strip
currently running in Manga Action weekly. It was his idea to come here. He even
wields a member’s card for the place. “After 10 visits, you get to take a
picture with the staff.” His card is almost full.
I can see why Watanabe would want to come to a place like
this. Every time his phone rings, he reaches inside his backpack and produces
rough pencil layouts of next week’s comic. Much discussion ensues as the stress
level clearly rises.
“My editor,” he explains.
Watanabe began his career as a manga artist as an assistant
to the famed and beloved (beep), of who he says, “he was a monster. He could
finish 200 pages in a single night. The thing is, I was his assistant for two
years and I never once met him in person. Everything was done through the mail
or on the phone.”
The maids too are stressed out,
“We hate Yodobashi-Akiba,” Momo says, speaking of the new
family friendly electronics store that’s recently opened nearby. “They are the
enemy. Those kinds of people don’t come here for business.”
Watanabe agrees. “Last year was the peak of Akihabara. Then
they opened Tsukuba Express train line. Families and couples started coming in
from Ibaraki and Chiba. They are not interested in the good old Akihabara.”
Who is?
“Sometimes, these huge groups of Korean and Chinese tourists
come in here,” says Alice, who is Watanabe’s maid clad in Lewis
Carroll refinery. “But they don’t speak Japanese, and there’s too many of them,
so it doesn’t work out so good. Should I dye my hair blond and get blue
contacts?”
Once time is up, we sit in the foyer drinking complimentary
tea. Momo puts on a show. She’s a master of imitation and takes requests. One
second, she’s a moonwalking Michael Jackson, the next, she’s doing Pink Lady’s
UFO dance. Next is Spider-Man, and she gets the fingers on the web spray just
right. Alice keeps asking her if she’s ok.
“Can you imitate a maid?” another customer, a young guy
who looks more Shibuya than Akiba, says.
Momo promptly steps into the corner and bows her head. She
flips her hair so it covers the right side of her face. The life momentarily
leaves her and she looks like a display figure from the Tokyo Hobby Lobby.
Then, without saying goodbye, she dashes behind a curtain marked 'staff only'. The last thing we hear on the way out is the sound of her
breaking into laughter.
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