Tokyo’s Akihabara district is known around the world as the center of Japan’s otaku culture.  One of the biggest trends in this area is cosplay” — short for costume play.

Otaku are once the target of playground insults, but today Japan’s geeks are out and proud. The otaku market generated an estimated $4 billion in 2004, says Ai Ohara of the Nomura Research Institute, which has studied the otaku phenomenon.  Akihabara is proof of geek spending power. Otaku are excited about mega, animations and computer games.  They are excited spending money for them.  As a result, the industry creates new products based on the demands they see.

Because Otaku are mostly anti-social and have trouble communicating to girls, another innovation to serve the geeks was born: the maid cafe.  Inside maid café, waitress dress up as characters from animation and greet customers with “Hello, master.”  These waitresses wear sexy maid costumes and create a fantasy world for otaku.  Waitress will get down on their knees to stir their tea and generally treat them like Kings. One would think this type of “restaurants” will be hard to survive in the U.S.  In fact, there is a maid café just opened in L.A; making it the first so-called “Maid Café” in the U.S.  Lucky me, this café is actually in culver city.  I am going to check it out sometimes this weekend then.