Japan's Sexy Geeky Boarding School Cafes

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I need to get to Japan, and pronto. Not just for the natural beauty, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines. Not just to climb Mt. Fuji or shop Akihabara. But to experience the utterly fantastic weirdness of stuff like this. It's the equivalent of a maid cafe, but created to play to the fetishes of female otaku, rather than male. Whereas maid cafes, managed by young women in cartoon-like frilly outfits, have indulged the stunted sexual fantasies of male otaku for a decade, businesses are only now considering the commercial potential of the female market.

This is the latest twist in the evolution of Japan's enormous otaku industry, which began as a fringe culture rooted in anime movies and manga drawings but recently flowed into the mainstream before migrating to Western countries. These cafes staff pretty young men who dress as English schoolboys and play the role of a privileged boarding school students. In addition to the fantasy, food, and drink, one new "boarding school cafe" called Edelstein also "rewards" its regular customers by offering photo opportunities with "pupils." This surreal scene could be at Eton College, or any of Britain's exclusive public schools. But this is Harajuku, the colourful hub of Tokyo's occasionally unhinged youth culture. And Edelstein is not a school at all. Rather, it is the first of a new type of cafe that satisfies the fantasies of Japan's female otaku — a term given to fashion-challenged, socially dysfunctional geeks who collect anime cartoons, manga comics, dolls, trading cards and video games.

Edelstein's manager, 27-year-old Emiko Sakamaki, explains that "my concept was to hire young men who could play the part of beautiful boys that privileged families would send to a good boarding school" — a fetish of female otaku, many of whom grow up on "boy's love" comics full of homosexual relationships. Weird? Yes. Wonderful? That, too.

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