Da Kaze

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.

Comments

[Carl Horn]

From The Voice of America:

"Mr. Aso's appointment (as the new Foreign Minister) is certain to raise eyebrows in other countries. He has a reputation for speaking in a manner more appropriate to the saloon than the salon and is an avowed nationalist who has called Japan 'a one-race nation.' He has also suggested Japan attract - in his words - 'rich Jews' to help reverse the country's economic direction and dwindling population."

It looks as though you may be in trouble either way with this guy. He is also understood to have meant these rich Jews were to be strictly confined to Akihabara, henceforth to be walled off and known as Pale-Akiba; within to study the Talmudic Shi'ur Qoma, that, in giving detailed dimensions to God's limbs, as well as their secret names, sounds astonishingly like the free blueprint which came in the February 1982 ANIMAGE.

As for the maids, they will be relieved to know all communication thereafter will occur only through a hole slit in the gauze, so theoretically they can wear whatever they want. But speaking as that nondescript mid-30s salaryman directly across from you, I should say that the woman who cuts my hair charges the equivalent of 8000 yen, and, although bisexual, neither consents to dress up nor discuss the third season of LUPIN III. But I should like to see the girl who would. Discuss the third season of LUPIN III, I mean.

[Steve Harrison]

Babylon was one of the GOOD Lupin III films? INFIDEL! I call jihad on your ass!

Dude! Just for that whole gawawful 'chase thru the billboard' with the super regretful stereotype background characters...JEEZE!

I did like Lupin part III overall...storywise much more pleasing than most of 'New Lupin' (aka second series) tended to be.

But what do I know? I still fixate over the JAL Mamo dub... ;)

[Patrick3]

Was it a JAL thing? Thought it was just a Toho International dub, with maybe Bill Ross at the controls. Can't believe Carl lost his tape of it. Best anime dub ever. Opening scene...

Zenigata to guy in coffin:

"Lupin! Trying to live forever by doing the same thing as Count Dracula!"