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 or unsmiling, grim-faced grannies reflecting a fast-greying nation.
Tokyo's Ikebukuro district now boasts Cafe Rotten meier, named after the disciplinary housekeeper in the hit 1970s anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, and has been drawing some 500 customers daily on weekends.
Patrons are greeted with a terse "welcome home" by an unsmiling Fraulein Rotten meier lookalike before being scolded for slouching in chairs or for not removing their coats in the cafe's warm, cosy environs.
There are 30 "Rotten meiers" who work shifts, including students, office workers and retired real-life grannies. Although the "grannies" range from 24 to 77 years old--with the younger matriarchs sporting heavy makeup to look old--the woman behind the concept says she is making a statement on societal pressures to stay young.
"Pressure on people to stay young is too heavy. It's unnatural. I think people are exhausted under too much pressure, anti-ageing "43 year-old artist Miwa Yanagi told AFP.
The average age of Japan's farmers, for example, is 66.
But Yanagi also sees Japan's elsewhere as a cause for celebration.
"Japan is the world's greatest nation of grannies," she said, a reference to the nation's average life expectancy of about 85 for women, the world's highest.
Yet despite this, Japan "worships young women", Yanagi said. "It loves young women, as you can see in maid cafes or images of women in subculture. Why can't there be a grannies ' cafe? "
The grannies, selected from some 50 applicants through an audition, were enjoying being old as much as clients seemed to be enjoying being disciplined said Naomi Akamatsu, a 42-year-old actress wearing fake some wrinkles.
"Young boys and girls nowadays long to be scolded," she said of the concept, which Yanagi says demonstrates the need for strong elsewhere in a nation of small, two-generation families.
