Article: Pop Tart from women24

But the main ingredient on the menu at the maid cafés is not sex or even subservience, it's moe, a Japanese word that refers to the blossoming gushy warm feeling you get from cute things.

And the girls dressed in maids' uniforms from full-length Victorian outfits to mini-skirted French maid fantasy gear are nothing if not cute.

They giggle a lot, address their customers as "my lord" or "my lady", play chaste and cheesy games including the hot favourite rock-paper-scissors and pour their love into the hot coffee and scrumptious cakes they serve you with adorable obsequiousness. (Get a sneak peek compliments of Tokyo Eye here.

Delicious edibles
Some bright entrepreneur realised that the concept of fawning young pretty things serving up delicious edibles might work just as well on geek girls as geek boys and so the Edelstein café was born, based on a popular manga set in a German boys school. Full story and pics here. .

Catering to the growing market of female boy-love manga fans (yep, as in gay relationships), Edelstein is a pseudo private boys school where waiters posing as teen schoolboys serve tea and cake to women posing as wealthy benefactresses and talk poetry or flower arranging.

It's a little odd that women are fetishising school boys, considering that actual school boys tend to be zitty and fumbly in bed (speaking from my own long-ago teen experiences).

Maybe it's only to be expected that the gender roles would be reversed in a culture that has long fetishised schoolgirls. But what's really weird is that the cafés and the women who frequent them are fetishising the idea of boys who aren't even interested in women.

You see, the café has its roots in the boy-love manga tradition (ie. graphic homoerotic comic books which range from tender love stories to disturbing tales of gang rape), a quickly growing market among female otaku or "fujoshi" – rotten girls.

What's the appeal?
Now, obviously this is a niche market, but I can see the appeal in being served by beautiful boyish men with manicured hands and soft-spoken manners. I don't think I'm alone among womankind in nurturing crushes on some of my gorgeous gay friends.

But I can think of some things I'd appreciate more in a theme coffee shop and I'd like to suggest the marketers branch out.

Personally, I'd like punky boys with spark and intelligence who can talk interesting movies and books and art and big ideas and would at least entertain the thought of sleeping with a woman.

Several among my friends would prefer a Prison Break canteen (we could even stick with the boy-love theme) with ripped and tattooed Wentworth-lookalikes in uniforms.

We could do a Survivor-theme or Lost on a desert island beach with pina coladas and half-naked young men with designer stubble and sun-bleached locks.

Or heck, let's cater to what women really want and have a café filled with shoes, chocolate and gambolling baby animals ala Cute Overload.

Now that's moe .

What do you think? Would you pay this café a visit? Tell us in the comment box below.