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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 2000. They include maid cafés (メイドカフェ, Meido kafue?) 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 the Cosplay restaurants and maid cafes has spread to other regions in Japan, such as Osaka's Den Den Town as well as other countries, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, and Canada.

Meido (メイド Japanese phonetic of maid) is also a jargon term amongst some otaku to refer to a type of stock female character in manga and anime. The characterization can have a cute or ecchi connotation depending on the writer. Most address their employers as goshujinsama(ご主人様) or ojousama（お嬢様） (especially the former. The latter is generally used for the employers' daughter).

The character differs from the traditional image of a typical housekeeper in being young, highly attractive, and usually wearing a maid outfit vaguely similar to a classic English or French design. In shōnen and seinen the outfit is almost universally fetishized: low-cut to show off the legs and chest, excessively colorful and/or frilly, and usually with white apron of variable length.

Meido are often written in a comedic light, having employers with variably subtle embarrassing personality quirks which they put up with, having completely different personalities when "off the clock", or reprimanding their masters like children.

Many bishōjo shows which contain scenes of characters in large households or doing spring cleaning inevitably produce art with the characters in these sorts of outfits.

The maids are often dressed in a combination of french maid-styled uniforms in attempt to look "moe". They also behave in a "cute" and "moe" manner. Sometimes, the maid outfit is augmented with cat or bunny ears. At maid cafes, most service staff members are female, and male jobs are typically limited to bar-backing and janitorial duties.

Some homepages of maid cafés offer pictures and profiles of the maids.

When a person enters the café, the maids typically give an extraordinarily humble greeting, such as "Welcome home, Master" (お帰りなさいませ、ご主人様！, Okaerinasaimase, goshujinsama?) in order to play the role of a house servant. In order to enhance the illusion that the customer is indeed the master, they often serve the customer in a very deferential fashion. For example, staff sometimes kneel to mix sugar or milk in teas or other drinks. The purpose of the maid cafés and their service is to make customers feel as though they are at home and to encourage them to relax. Although exemplary customer service is typical of Japan, maid cafés take special care to pamper patrons.

Recently, with the maid cafe scene booming, additional related services have become popular. These include ear cleaning (耳かき, Mimikaki?), a foot or hand massage, or a photography session (the customer typically rents time in a studio during which he can tell a maid which costume to wear and how to pose). Not only can you take pictures with the maids but also, certain cafe's have special performances. With the new game consoles, some cafes also have gaming time when you can ask your favourite maid to play with you but there are also traditional games such as "Jankenpon" (じゃんけんぽん), which is rock paper scissors.Akihabara even features a "maid megane" (maid optician)

While most cosplay restaurants and maid cafes cater mostly to men, there is also a type for women called the butler café (執事喫茶, shitsuji kissa?). The butlers in these cafes are well-dressed male employees and may wear either a typical waiter's uniform or even a tuxedo or tails. One butler cafe has its waiters cosplay as teenage schoolboys, in an effort to appeal to the fujoshi who enjoy Boy's Love.

There are also cross-dressing (male disguise style (男装系, dansō-kei?) butler cafes, where female staff dress up as butlers, instead of actual men.

Male hosts pour drinks and will often flirt with their clients, more so than their female counterparts. The conversations are generally light-hearted; hosts may have a variety of entertainment skills, be it simple magic tricks or loads of charisma with which to tell a story. Some host clubs have a dedicated stage for a performance, usually a dance, comedy sketch, etc.

Hosts are often an age between 18 and their mid-20s. They will take a 'stage name' (源氏名) usually taken from a favourite manga, film, or historical figure, and will often describe their character. Men who become hosts either cannot find a white-collar job, or are enticed by the prospect of high earnings through commission.

While hostess bars in Tokyo often have men out on the streets getting clients to come into their clubs, hosts often go out onto the streets to find customers (referred to as 'catch' (キャッチ), but these are usually the younger, less-experienced ones. A common look for a host is a dark suit, collared shirt, silver jewellery, a dark tan[3], and bleached hair. Recently clubs where hosts wear casual clothes have been increasing, but still the norm is the smart suit look. At these clubs there can be a 私服デー (shifukudee) or 'own clothes day' where the hosts can wear their normal clothes.

Pay is usually determined by commission on drink sales, or uriage (売上), with hosts often drinking far past a healthy limit, usually while trying to hide their drunkenness. Because the base hourly wage is usually extremely low, almost any man can become a host regardless of looks or charisma (depending on the bar). However, hosts who cannot increase their sales usually drop out very soon, because of the minimal wage. The environment in a host bar is usually very competitive, with tens of thousands of dollars sometimes offered to the host who can achieve the highest sales.