Japan’s frilly ‘maids’ go grey
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TOKYO —Japan’s famed “maid cafes” featuring coy young girls serving tea in frilly aprons and bonnets have been given a new twist — a cafe of unsmiling, grim-faced grannies reflecting a fast-greying nation.
Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district now boasts Cafe Rottenmeier, named after the disciplinary housekeeper in the hit 1970s anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, and has been drawing some 500 customers daily during weekends in November.
Patrons are greeted with a terse “welcome home” by an unsmiling Fraulein Rottenmeier lookalike before being scolded for slouching in chairs or for not removing their coats in the cafe’s warm, cosy environs.
There are 30 “Rottenmeiers” who work shifts, including students, office workers and retired real-life grannies, as part of the Festival Tokyo contemporary arts gathering being held until the end of November.
Although the “grannies” range from 24 to 77 years old — with the younger matriarchs sporting heavy make-up to look old — the woman behind the concept says she is making a statement on societal pressures to stay young..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101201com6.html
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