Yes, drag maids have come to the Akihabara.
Tokyo's Akihabara district is the go-to for "Maid Cafes" — cosplay restaurants staffed by ersatz maids, if that's your thing. And if it's not, well, you're in luck, because the Akihabara has evolved to include everything from "chubby maid cafes" to Eyeglasses Cafes, Ear-cleaning Cafes, Scientist Lab Coat Cafes and, yes, Butler Cafes. But what they didn't have is cross-dressing Maid Cafes. Until now.
As InventorSpot reports, Hibari-tei is the world's first and only cross-dressing maid cafe. And it's staffed by drag maids who, for the most part, work at assorted IT industry jobs in the Akihabara area. The cafe is "floating" - read: doesn't have a permanent location — but sets up shop in other cafes for events like the famed "nostril challenge." I guess you could view this as a step for open-minded progress, but given that nowadays the Maid Cafe is all about tourist fetish-lite (and originally designed to explicitly play to the fantasies of male manga fans), it's hard to get too excited about the social implications.
Welcome to Japans first cross-dressing maid cafes! [Gizmodivas]
Male Maids Serve It Up At Japan's First Cross-Dressing Maid Cafe [InventorSpot]