Cosplay Restaurant

Cosplay Restaurant

Cosplay restaurants (コスプレ系飲食店, Kosupure-kei inshokuten?), 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, Meido kafe?) and butler cafés (執事喫茶, shitsuji kissa?), 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 cosplay restaurants and maid cafes has spread to other regions in Japan, such as Osaka's Den Den Town as well as to places outside Japan, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, and the Philippines.