We roll out of the elevator from the hedgehog cafe back out into the rain. Our next mission is to find a maid cafe in the area, we’d heard that they’re pretty whacky. My assumption is that it’ll be cash only so now we’re dipping into every corner store and bank trying to find an ATM that will take my card (did I mention Queenie accidentally brought her Chase credit card instead of her debit card? So if my card doesn’t work, gets stolen or frozen, we no get no momo. Why do so many banks make your debit card and credit cards look exactly the same anyways?). This ATM mission proves more challenging than expected, unfortunately, and is now cutting into our maid cafe time since we already have reservations at the Robot Cafe for 4.

The ATM at Family Mart comes through for us and we’re back on target. Seems the ATMs in 7-11s and Family Marts are the way to go. Gonna just save time and hit those from now on whenever we’re low on the dough. We truck through the rain back to a maid cafe we’d passed earlier and find a staircase around the side that goes up to the second floor.

When we get upstairs there is a door that says Honey Honey maid cafe and a rack to store your umbrellas. A girl in a pumpkin outfit opens the door and politely lets out a patron, thanking him profusely and bowing several times. He grabs his umbrella and steps right in front of me trying to snap a stealth pic of the girls hilarious pumpkin costume.

Pumpkin tells us to wait a minute and goes back inside. Then she comes out, lets us in and takes us to a table. As we walk in, a chorus of costumed cuties greets us in unison, “Happy Halloween!”.  Pumpkin sits us down with some menus and then looks down at her costume. She holds the base of it so that it flares out to the sides and she exclaims with the cutest most authoritative nod of her head, “Pumpkin!”. This is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen in my life and Queenie and I are giggling, “Yeah, it’s a  pumpkin!”

The cafe is fairly basic, just some tables, a bar and Halloween decorations hanging around. The girls are all super cute and instead of maid outfits they are all dressed in various Halloween costumes. Three of them serve the tables and one makes all the drinks behind the bar. Unsurprisingly, the clientele is 90% dudes.

The Honey Honey Halloween Party menu is amazing. It seems to be all hand drawn with cute characters everywhere.

Another girl comes over to take our order. She’s in a maid outfit but with bunny ears and contacts that make her eyes blood red. I ask for a picture but she motions that there are no pictures allowed. She is possibly more adorable than Pumpkin and although she doesn’t speak English we get an order in just by pointing to stuff. She affirms everything with cute little “Uh-Huunh”, and “Hai, hai” while scribbling into her notepad and winking at us. She walks away and then suddenly spins and looks right back at me to flash a peace sign and wink. “Ha!”, She does a slight bunny hop and rushes off to put our order in. This now tops Pumpkin as the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.

We get some TrickTonics and an omurice, a dish we’d heard about somewhere so we’re excited to try it even though we’re still decently full from Mr Farmer. I think it’s basically just an omelet that has rice in it.

Pumpkin drops off our drinks. They’re tart and sweet but you can’t really taste any alcohol in them. The music playing over the sound system is all Halloween themed songs like Monster Mash and shit. Nightmare on My Street comes on by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. Man, I haven’t heard that for a while. This is followed by Flying Purple People Eater and The Witch Doctor, each done in cute girl voices.

Bunny Maid comes back with our omurice and puts it on the table, “Huuuuhn!”. She holds up some ketchup and motions that she’d like to draw on the rice. “Yes, yes please”. She grabs a little book of flip cards attached to her belt. Each card has a cute animal face on it and she proudly shows it to us and starts to flip through them while trying to name the animals in English as she goes, “Hmmmm Cat! Ahhhhh Puppy! Dis…. Bunny!”, “Oh yeah! Bunny bunny!” and she twirls in her little outfit and fluffs her ears up, “Bunny!”.

She takes the ketchup and starts drawing a bunny face on the omurice. She makes cute little noises the whole time, “Uhhhn uhn!” and she makes a bunny ear, “Haaaaaa uhn!” and theres some chubby cheeks, “Uhhhhn!” bunny eye, “AhhhhN!!” whiskers, “Haaaaahn!” bunny smile.

She finishes and stands up very proud of her bunny and bows for us, spins and skips away.

This makes us think we should open a Snoodle cafe. Queenie could draw Narcopiggy and friends characters all over dishes like this.

I’d heard that you could play games with the girls in Maid Cafes like connect four or board games, but that doesn’t seem to be happening here. Most people are just getting coffee or drinks and hanging out together. I was wondering how this would differ from the hooker bars we found in Cambodia and… well all of South East Asia. It doesn’t seem to be nearly as greasy. Or greasy at all really. None of the girls were propositioning the clientele for sex or asking you to get them drinks or anything like that. It was really just hot girls acting super cute and waiting on you.

A quick time check tells us we’ve got to get on the move so we tell Bunny Maid that it’s about time. She brings over the bill and we pay, and then she asks us something in Japanese that we completely don’t understand. Hmmmm, I dunno. She makes a little square in the air and says something. Queenie and I look at each other, nope, no idea what’s happening here. Bunny Girl thinks for a moment and asks for help from the guy at the table next to us. He doesn’t really speak English either but he pulls out his phone and opens Google Translate. I see him putting in words but the translations make no sense either. One says ‘To Dismiss” though and I think I know where this is going, “Walk us to the door?”, “Ahhh hai hai! Exit!”, “Oh yes, yes arigato!”. And we thank the kind gentleman and Bunny Maid walks us to the door to let us out.

All the girls in the cafe say “Happy Halloween” as we go by and some “Arigato” and other Japanese niceties. Bunny Maid opens the door for us and Pumpkin rushes over too. They are very grateful and bowing kindly. We grab our umbrella and thank them and wave goodbye as we go back down the stairs. “Bye byyyyyyeeee!”, those girls are just too cute.

Well that was fun. What’s next?

Nearby is a cosplay shop called Polka Polka so we go in just to check it out.

There is a girl at the front with a sewing machine and lots of other sewing paraphernalia. It’s a small shop with about 5 rows of outfits all in those plastic dry-cleaning type bags. Does she make all of these? There’s a lot of stuff in here.

We start going through them and it looks like mainly they are the outfits from prominent characters in manga and anime shows. They’re pretty cool and not really all that expensive. Damn, ok I’m totally sold on getting a new outfit for Halloween now. Screw those bacon and egg outfits. Queenie and I scour the racks for something cool that may fit. Oh maaaaaan… is this gonna fit?

Cuz that’s pretty funny. Even if it just ends up being a belly shirt I think I can make this happen. We’re laughing about it in the aisle as a couple other people come in to look around. I take the costume up to the front and express to Stitcher Girl that I’d like to try it on. No, they don’t do that. She also thinks that it will be too small in the, in the, in the… “Shoulders?”, “Hai hai”. Ok fair point. That’s too bad.

Ok we still have a couple of days. New mission: School Girl Halloween Costume!

Nothing in here is going to fit either of us so we thank Stitcher Girl, collect our umbrella and go back out into the rainy streets of Akihabara. Well it’s almost robo time, maybe we can hit the 7 story sex shop on the way back to the subway?

We pick up our pace through the rain but as we get closer to M’s sex shop I call an audible and decide we don’t really have time. “We’ll probably get lost or take the wrong subway or something on the way to the Robot Restaurant, I don’t really think we have time for the sex shop today.” Queenie agrees and we descend into the metro and hop a train back to Shinjuku.

We get there and, sure enough, trot off in the wrong direction for a bit. Correct ourselves and get back into the red light district of Shinjuku. I really really like this area. So much to do here. There’s a vibe in the air. We start getting excited as we get closer to the Robot Restaurant. We’ve just seen some pics and whatnot. Don’t really know what to expect.

We start seeing signs and the excitement builds…

We’re there. Oh yeeeeeeeah. What the hell am I even looking at?
Yep, this is going to be awesome!