Today, I donned purple lips and fake eyelashes, Sailor Moon hair, and a Victorian maid outfit. Antoine de Caunes and I took “maid lessons” at Cos-Cha cafe and goofed around for French TV (I had to speak en Francais the entire time). I love my job.

Akihabara is famous for its maid cafes, where the cute waitresses dress in skimpy French maid outfits. (Hm, I wonder why guys flock to these eateries?) I photographed about a dozen of them for my Crazy Wacky Theme Restaurants: Tokyo book.

Warning: in almost every case, photography is NOT allowed inside maid cafes! I had to get special permission to shoot, usually when there were no customers around.

Why are cameras kinshi (forbidden)? The waitresses and customers want to maintain their privacy (not all of them want to advertise that they frequent maid cafes). Also, the cafes make money by selling decorated photos of the maids to their devoted customers.

You’ll often see girls in maid/cosplay outfits giving out flyers on the streets of Akihabara. Again, no photo! If you try to take pictures of the girls, they’ll turn their backs on you and walk away.

But that shouldn’t discourage you from visiting a maid cafe. The girls are charming and will even spoonfeed you. (Today, we played a disgusting drinking game… you’ll see what went down soon!)

Other maid cafes offer massages and even ear-cleanings. (We filmed a hilarious scene yesterday at an ear-cleaning parlor.)

For more peeks into the odd world of Japanese maid cafes, please consider my book Crazy Wacky Theme Restaurants: Tokyo (click for info). Photos from the French TV documentary shoot coming right up!

In random news… there’s an article about my Tokyo Theme Restaurants book and Andrew Zimmern Bizarre Foods TV appearance on FOX NEWS. It’s also on Flash News with a photo. When they say “Transformers-themed diner” in the “nerdy district,” they mean the Gundam Cafe in Akihabara. As my friend Comte de Sang puts it, “Some people seem to think that the US public still cannot fathom any piece of Japanese pop culture that hasn’t been transformed into an Americanized line of children’s toys and adapted into some god-awful Hollywood film by Michael Bay.” Sigh.

Come read my new CNNGo article: Asia’s 25 most ridiculous stress relief products. Japanese fake bubble wrap and girlfriend knee pillows, wahhh?

Have you ever been to a maid cafe? Parlez-vous Français? J’ai appris la langue à l’école… vous pouvez m’écrire en Français, si vous voulez!

Japanese Word of the Day: False teeth = Ireba
Song of the Day: Calmando Qual – Insanity (I’m seeing them live in Tokyo!)