Maid Cafés treat Japanese 'geeks' as regal lords

Tokyo: "Welcome home, Master," says the maid as she bows deeply, hands clasped in front of a starched pinafore worn over a short pink dress.

This maid serves not some aristocrat but a string of pop-culture-mad customers at a Maid Café in Tokyo's Akihabara district, long known as a haven for electronics buffs but now also the centre of the capital's "nerd culture".

"When they address you as 'Master', the feeling you get is like a high," says Koji Abei, a 20-year-old student having coffee with a friend at the Royal Milk Café and Aromacare.

Maid cafés dot Akihabara, which has become a second home for Tokyo's "otaku" roughly translated as "geeks".

In the cafés, girls dressed in frilly frocks inspired by comic-book heroines wait hand and foot on customers, mostly male, who might have once been obsessed with naughty schoolgirls and nurses.

At one café, maids get down on their knees to stir the cream and sugar into the customer's coffee.

At Royal Milk, diners can follow up a meal with a range of grooming services, including ear cleanings.

Maid cafés have mushroomed since they emerged four years ago and Akihabara now boasts about 30 that cater not just to male geeks but also to couples, tourists and the curious.