Bangkok’s first maid cafe closes its doors for good
One of my big regrets from my time in Bangkok is that I never got a chance to visit the maid café at Siam Square. Being a fan of anime, the idea of a shop where you can buy comics and DVDs, eat and drink, and mingle with real-life anime characters sounded great to me. But alas, the store has already closed down.
The concept behind a maid café is that all the staff dress up as cartoon maids. It sounds cool in theory, but in practice I think the girls at Akiba were all very young.
The Akiba maid café was apparently corrupting the minds of Thailand’s youths. The shop was investigated in July after complaints that kids were only going there to gawk at naked hentai girls in adult comic books. I can believe this, because when I worked in a school, we used to catch kids with these sex comics every day.
The two managers of Akiba have been arrested for… exposing minors to obscene Manga. Business started to fizzle out after that, and the shop has now closed its doors before I got a chance to go there. (DPA)
The store even has a website. Here’s a picture I stole from it. Make of it what you will.
September 21st, 2007 at 8:29 am
Innovation always has to struggle to come to existence and to survive ! ;-p
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 am
I hate it when the first time I hear about a cool place is when it’s closing it’s doors.