Why not check out her youtube channel-- Here

Maid Cafes in Japan

Made Cafe

Since the year 2000, many cafes called Maid Cafes have opened in the Japanese cities of Akihabara, Osaka and Shinjuku. These cafes are referred in Japanese as ‘Meido Cafes’ or ‘Maido Cafes’. The Japanese Maid Cafes are mostly like the regular cafes serving teas, coffees, cakes, etc, with their waitresses dressed up in the costumes of French maids. Sometimes the costumes also include bunny ears or cats to increase their cuteness.

The maids in the Maid Cafes use honorific languages towards the café’s customers, like those used by the servants towards their master. Customers are greeted by saying, ‘welcome home, Master’, than a wipe towel is offered and a food or drink menu is shown. Some of the popular dishes include, ice-creams, cakes that sometimes are baked by the maids, spaghettis, omurice, drinks like milk, tea, coca-cola, alcoholic beverages like beers and sometimes even champagnes.

Generally, all the Japanese Maid Cafes charge regular prices for serving drinks. They charge extra for the extra time the customers are present that is for every 30 minutes, 400 yen. Some of the cafes offer other services like, grooming services, ear cleaning and shampoos, or fully clothed massages. Other options include, taking polaroids of the maids together, or single, or with the customer. These polaroids are than decorated with stickers or coloured markers. In one of the unusual option, the customers can get themselves slapped by one or more girls. In some of the Maid Cafes, the customers on paying an extra 900 yen can chat with a maid in a private room which are cluttered with animation DVDs, character figurines and comic books.

Nowadays, due to their increasing fad, the demand of women in Japan wanting to become maids in these cafes has been on the rise. In the country, where many adults have nostalgic dreams of their childhood fun, this offers a rare opportunity to role play by dressing up in various costumes and transport themselves away from the tough daily life. Also, many of these Japanese women are devoted fans of animation videos, comics, video games that portray maids as heroines, and thus these women enjoy themselves immersing into these characters. Patronage of these Maid Cafes among the young women are also on the rise as they hope to turn a geek into a Prince Charming.

Recently, a latest form of Maid Café has come up in Japan known as the ‘Princess Restaurants’. Here the waitresses wearing maid outfits treat the customers like royalty and show them to their ‘throne chairs’. These cafes mainly target the female customers between the age of 20 and 40. in Tokyo Ginza, the ‘Princess Restaurants’ have become very popular, providing service only to couples and women.

Thus the Maid Cafes in Japan, dispersed in their various cities add a new charm to their already interesting places.

Christmas in a maid cafe

Cute Maids Singing!

Japanese Lolita Costumes

Many Japanese young adults or teens dress amazingly in elaborate Japanese Lolita costumes and walk the streets of Osaka and Tokyo. Looking pretty, these young ladies sit around and pose for pictures taken by tourists. These costumes which they wear are glamorous and beautiful like those worn by their favourite visual rock stars.

The basic looks of these Lolita costumes include a Victorian look. The costumes have the following criteria.

i) Frilly and poofy skirts of mini size or knee length size with crinoline, which do not show under it. Victorian blouses that are ruffled and elegant.

ii) Blouses that are generally black with cuffs, sleeves and white Peter Pan collars. At the collars and the capped sleeves’ bottom, white laces are present. These blouses can be both embellished and plain.

iii) The baby doll costumes are mostly knee length, mini or sometimes below the knee length. These dresses mostly come in the colours white or black or sometimes a combination of both. They also come in the colours of pastel blue, pastel pink and red which are only worn with white.

iv) In the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ look or the French maid look, a white apron is worn over the baby doll dress of black colour. This costume which is not worn much now was one of the original Lolita costumes. Thigh high or knee high stockings are worn with these skirts or dresses. The stockings are mostly of opaque material and black in colour. Sometimes they may also be white coloured with ruffles and bows at the top or in black fishnet with or without holes. With this kind of costume wearing a black and white or a black headdress is a must. The headdress is a rectangular and small headband which is made of ribbons, lace and ruffles. The headdress is worn under the chin with a bow and at the head’s crown just above the bangs. They can also be used to hold in the hairpieces. Most of the white headpieces extend like a small bonnet over the forehead. Sometimes this costume includes a small top hat that is worn on the head askew.

v) The shoes worn are large platform shoes or platform heels of Mary Jane type. The shoes are clog like and very chunky.

vi) Ladies wear with these costumes large, short curls or long curls on their heads’ either sides, or full head of curls like that of Shirley Temple. Also worn sometimes are straight and long hair with bangs. Mostly the hairs are of black or brown colour. To achieve these shades and looks hairpieces and wigs are also worn.

vii) The makeup worn with the Lolita costumes are little or none. A pale complexion is required and shades of red lipsticks are worn with black eyeliner of a small amount with black eye lashes.

viii) Pocketbooks of large sizes are carried, which are large container like suitcases. These suitcases have various forms, from the form of circular hatbox to carpet bags. Sometimes women also carry handbags having the shapes of coffins and bats.

ix) On some occasions the costume includes lace arm warmers of opera length and lace gloves.

Costume Publishing

Many cosplay costume fans love to share each other’s costume creations, which could be hand-made or purchased. Usually the pictures of the costumes are shared and posted in web sites. There are also groups that conduct contests to choose the Best Cosplay Costume at various cosplay events. Some groups have also created innumerable tutorials and web based books with the help of cosplayers to motivate different cosplayers all over the world.

Dedicated websites provide tons of information about the Japanese Cosplay Costumes. These website highlight detailed information on the anime costuming of different varieties, and the costuming dance parties. The special feature of these websites is that some costumers have beautiful and wonderful portfolio web pages which furnish pictures of the self-created costumes with awesome designs. You could also find cosplay groups where costume designs are webcasted by the cosplay group members.

It is indeed not exaggerating to make a statement that the Japanese Cosplay Costume designs are so exquisite and intricate that anyone could just lose their heart and mind to it. The websites laid the cosplay costume information neatly using different attractive cursors and lot of pictures in them.

Japanese Cosplay Costume

Just hearing about Cosplay? Does it sound Greek and Latin to you? It shouldn’t, as Cosplay is a Japanese term that refers to Costume Play. Cosplay is just an abbreviated word to represent Costume Play and is inherited from the Western fan terminology “Masquerade”.

To make it more clearly to you, “Cosplay” translates to the meaning of dressing up in the character of a person, may be a celebrity like a sports personality, to whom you are a fan. Cosplay concentrates in itself so much to represent the character in detail, and takes care of even the minute details of the person it represents. The costumes are designed in such a way that the Cosplay exactly fits the character without any flaw.

Some of the features of Cosplay Costumes:

• Designed to match the character’s attire

• Artistic and innate

• Properly finished seams

• Accurate thread colors

• Exact fabric colors matching the character

You could opt to buy the cosplay costumes from well talented artists. If you are very interested and intelligent in creating your own costume design, you can also opt to create a self design which may take a few months to get a precise and perfect costume design.

The person or the fan in the Japanese Cosplay ideally gets dressed up in their favorite character, and behaves almost like the character in which they are dressed up. Not only the costume, but they tone their mannerism and body language to suit the character. This induces a fun and interest among the fans. The Japanese cosplay costumes can cover any costume which could be either uniforms, or any modern attire.

Costume types

Japanese Cosplay is very popular even in the United States and Europe. There are different types of Japanese Cosplay costumes towards different purposes which could be

• Anime
• Manga
• Gaming
• Tokusatsu
• Comic books
• Video games
• Graphic novels
• Fantasy movies

Gothic Lolita Cosplay Video