LD's Guide to Japan

Here’s a Japanese phenomenon I just learned about this weekend: Tsundere (ツンデレ)

Tsundere is a fairly new term in the Japanese language that has spawned from Japan’s manga culture.  It’s a combination of two onomatopoeias: tsun-tsun (ツンツン), which means cold, cranky, and belittling, and dere-dere (デレデレ), which means warm, sweet, kind, and affectionate.  The term is used to describe a female personality archetype that has apparently gained popularity over the past few years, in which a girl is very tsun-tsun with her boyfriend in public, but becomes incredibly dere-dere when they are by themselves.  You can imagine the kind of drama that would ensue from being in a relationship with a girl like this, and I suppose that’s what makes it such great fodder for manga.

The tsundere type female has become such a hit within the Japanese otaku (nerd/geek) subculture that it has given rise to the tsundere cafe. I‘ve watched a few videos about this (including the above) and they all feature the same restaurant (in Tokyo’s Akihabara district), so this may in fact be the only tsundere cafe in the country.  Like the classic Japanese maid cafe, the waitresses wear a cute maid-like costume, but at a maid cafe the hostess greets you by saying something along the lines of, “Welcome home, master. I’ve been waiting for you.”  When you walk in the door of a tsundere cafe, the hostess greets you with a cold, “What the hell are you doing here?” or, “What took you so damn long?” and “Hurry up and sit down!”  They then continue to berate you for the duration of your meal.  The idea behind this particular cafe is that the waitresses treat you the way a bratty younger sister would treat her brother when he comes home after being away for a while.  They’ll throw the menu at you and say, “Hurry up and order!” and after you’ve told them what you want they might respond with, “ugh, what a pain in the ass,” or “No, I’m not making that for you,” or if you take too long, they may just snatch the menu from you and bring you whatever they choose.  When they bring your food they say, “now eat and get out!”  If you call for the waitress, she will probably ignore you, or perhaps even yell “shut up!” from across the restaurant.

The missing ingredient in this, you might think, is the dere-dere—where is the sweet, affectionate personality promised in the tsundere name?  That doesn’t come until after you’ve eaten and gotten up to leave, when suddenly (like an insane, bipolar girlfriend) the waitress(es) will become upset to see you go, and say things like, “I’m sorry, don’t leave because I was mean to you!” or “Please don’t go so quickly!” or “Don’t be gone long; I’ll miss you!” or some combination of those.

I kind of want to experience this place for myself, but it seems like a waste of money. If it’s anything like a normal maid cafe, then it’s probably overpriced, and if I’m gonna pay a good amount of money for food, I want to be treated well (and I want to get whatever I want to eat!).