Shangri-La is attracting customers both older and younger than its senior citizen maids.

It’s been less than a year since Maid Cafe Shangri-La opened, but it’s already made a name for itself as one of the most unique maid cafes in Japan. Even more impressively, Shangri-La managed to achieve its fame while operating far away from the otaku mecha of Tokyo’s Akihabara district, as it’s located in the comparatively quiet town of Kiryu, Gunma Prefecture.

So why is Shangri-La attracting attention? Because of its strict age limit for its maids. It’s no secret that a major draw of maid cafes is the opportunity to talk with cute waitresses dressed in frilly outfits, and so most cafes tend to focus on hiring younger staff. At Shangri-La, though, management dictate an official age limit…

…that all of its maids must be at least 65 years old.

To reiterate, that’s the minimum age required to work at Shangri-La, meaning that its maids who are 65 are actually the youngest members of the waitstaff. On the first day the cafe was open for business this year, there were seven maids on duty ranging in age from 65 to 72.

Shangri-La opened in July of last year and is the brainchild of local NPO Kids Valley, an organization that creates community places for both children and seniors to gather in. Operating out of an empty storefront in a building near Kiryu Station, the cafe serves bento boxed lunches with onigiri rice balls and simmered dishes, and also offers an all-you-can-drink soft drink bar. In keeping with maid cafe industry standards, when the maids serve customers they make little heart shapes with their hands and chant incantations such as “Moe moe kyun! Become more delicious!” to enhance the flavor/fun. The maids also pose for photos with customers, and to celebrate the start of the new year one of them, who also works as an after-school program instructor, gave a brief calligraphy lesson so that visitors to the cafe could do their first brushstroke writing of the year.

The cafe is only open once a month, on the first Saturday, from 8 a.m. to noon. Nevertheless, it’s been attracting crowds of about 40 customers each day, mainly locals, but recently including young adults from as far away as Tokyo and Osaka. It’s proving to be a unique meeting point for people from different age groups, with one 65-year-old maid saying “I learn a lot talking with customers who are older than me, and it makes me feel happy and young again when young female customers say I’m cute,” and a 85-year-old man from the town of Midori, Gunma, who came to eat at the cafe remarking “It was nice to talk to a maid who’s young enough to be my daughter and to do calligraphy.”

Shangri-La’s next open day will be February 1.

Cafe information
Maid Cafe Shangri-La / 冥土喫茶しゃんぐりら
Address: Gunma-ken, Kiryu-shi, Honcho 5-51, 1st floor
群馬県桐生市本町5-51 1F

Source: Mainichi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun via Jin, Tabelog, Kids Valley
Top image: Pakutaso
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