Maid Café

CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on the new-ish phenomenon of "Maid Cafés." I gathered from the report that they are most popular in areas of Japan where there are a lot of (male) "geeks." Here's a description from a Boston.com article on these restaurants:

"Welcome home, Master," says the maid as she bows deeply, hands clasped in front of a starched pinafore worn over a short pink dress.

This maid serves not some aristocrat but a string of pop-culture-mad customers at a "Maid Cafe" in Tokyo's Akihabara district, long known as a Mecca for electronics buffs but now also the center of the capital's "nerd culture."

"When they address you as 'Master', the feeling you get is like a high," says Koji Abei, a 20-year-old student having coffee with a friend at the Royal Milk Cafe and Aromacare.

Here's a wikipedia description-- discussing how these cafés pull various cultural practices-- Japanese manga, anime, Japanese geishas, and French (or English) maids. Apparently, there are now Maid Cafés in Canada and Hong Kong (the one in Hong Kong is called the "Master-and-maid café"). Here are some videos as well-- from the U.S. news, and from Japanese news (sorry it isn't translated). These might make for an interesting discussion on culture, globalization, and gender.

Gendering Homes

These images come from the Panasonic: Ideas for Life website. This is the "home of the future." What do we learn about the home of the future?

Men work in the office:



The only other image of a man alone is in the home theater room. There are no images of a man focusing on or interacting with a child.

Women make sure the kids are ready for school:



And women teach the kids to cook:



The caption to the kitchen image says, "In the kitchen, the mother is the teacher and her children are the pupils."

Thanks, Patrick C.!


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Pillows for Japanese Singles

'Boyfriend's Arm Pillow' - Strong Silent Type. Likes to Cuddle.


Via: USA Today


'The Lap Pillow' by Japanese toymaker Trane Co.

Via: Tribune India

Hello Kitty, Buy Buy Boys & Naughty Girls

In an effort to expand the Hello Kitty brand, Japan's Sanrio Co. has come out with a line of products for boys and men. Gone is the ubiquitous pink and Hello Kitty's face!

And, for girls and women who would rather be bad than good, a winking Kitty who's pulling up her skirt.

Via: AP

The Commodification of Sex and Love

The Great Happiness Space is an amazing full-length documentary (available in full online) about "host" clubs in Japan. These clubs service women, mostly sex workers, who buy time with men (hosts, who also get a cut of all the money the women spend on alcohol) who pretend like they love them. The women establish long-term relationships with their hosts, spend sometimes 10s of thousands of dollars in a night, all to have the feeling that someone cares for them. So they earn tons of money giving sex to men and then they turn around and give that money back to men who give them affection (and sometimes sex). The hosts make between 10,000 and 50,000 a month. Also a great study in cross-cultural gender differences.