Princess For a Day (Butlers Cafe Edition)

Butlers Cafe is a restaurant located in the Shibuya area of Tokyo and thanks to my friend Lois who found it and researched it we had a really fun afternoon there! The cafe has been open for 7 years and was created after a bunch of "maid cafes" had opened up all over Tokyo. The Butlers Cafe is for women customers to come and enjoy a relaxing atmosphere with good looking male waiters who are actually all Western so the Japanese women can practice speaking English with foreigners. On the day we went, the "head butler" was Japanese, but all the others were from France or Australia.

Notice our tiaras!!!

Before we venture down this very unique day, I would like to share with you some of the house rules of Butlers Cafe... there was a full page when we arrived that we had to agree to before we became "Princesses."

-No taking pictures (you must ask a Butler to take pictures for you)
-Ring bell at table for service
-No cell phones
-You must be escorted by your butler to the powder room
-No pulling out your own chairs/holding your own purse
-2 order minimum per person
-No asking personal questions to your butler or trying to find them on social media (you will be banned from cafe)

You get the idea... after reading the rules we were all a little nervous, but it was great fun! After we finished reading the rules, we rang the bell to alert our butler we were done... I lifted the bell and a beautiful sound rang out... then in unison all the butlers at the cafe say "yes my princesses" as one of them comes over to see what we need... oh boy!!! We were served rose water and given the menus to look over... A lot of the food is Italian and then there are drinks, teas, and cakes! I ordered apple rosemary tea served in the cutest tea cup and saucer ever!!!

One of the most interesting choices on the menu was a surprise drink that is made especially for you by the butler looking deep into your eyes and asking you a few questions... Lois was brave enough to try this out! Butler Maxime from France came over to the table and asked her a series of questions and also asked us for some input... then he looked deep into her eyes for 5 seconds and came back with this drink about 15 minutes later! It has some sort of alcohol in it, but he explained why he chose each color for the parts of the drink... the bottom is pink because her favorite animal in the Koala and Koala's are cute and so is the color pink. The top is red because the way her friends describe her means she has a big heart, and most importantly the middle is blue because when he looked into her eyes he could see forever like the ocean or the sky!!!! This was pretty awesome!!!

When our orders arrived all of the butlers came out to the table together to present our meals... they made us close our eyes as we waited for them to set up the table... when we opened them we were pleasantly surprised to see our plates had been customized using a little information form we filled out when we first arrived! Very cool!!!! And the chocolate cake was absolutely delicious too! With our meals came our tiaras! They each put a tiara and now we were officially princesses! I do have to say it was really nice being called "Princess Beth" all day long... poor Damian didn't know what hit him when I came home later that night... I obviously insisted he refer to me as "Princess Beth" for the rest of the evening... which didn't really work out for me to say the least ;) hehehe

Before leaving I was able to get a picture with one of our butlers (for a small fee of course) and he wrote a little note on the back! Too funny! When it was time to leave the butlers first de-crowned us and took our tiaras (booo) then collected all of our purses and then escorted us all to our chariot (the elevator) where they gave us a chocolate candy and bid us farewell. We had such a fun time and laughed so much! Only in Japan would you be able to do something so unique!

Japanese Word of the Day:
Hime (he-may): Princess