Maid Make-over!

[Sakunyuusha]

From what I could understand, this was a pretty funny piece, but if I got anything wrong, feel free to correct me.

The show begins with one of the hosts explaining that they have a stage somewhere else in the studio and, gathering in front of that very stage at this moment, is a collection of genuine Akihabara otakus. (One of the other hosts can't seem to get over it that they're "the real thing." XD) It's explained to the audiences' amusement that the otaku were lied to: they were told, "If you come with us, you'll get a chance to see Itoh Misaki." (Here's a better picture.)

Anyway, in the mean time we find out that this middle-aged woman named Tomochika went to Akihabara a couple of weeks ago and met with some ota that had written in, asking her if she'd let them help her to make herself more "moe." When she gets to the boys, she demands an explanation. And -- LOL -- the ringleader says that pretty much everything about her is in need of a moe makeover. One of his sidekicks even dares to say that she looks like an old woman (おばさんです). XD

She humorously breaks the ice by pretending to be an obtuse commoner with zero understanding of the ota world, and triesto relate to them by mentioning Densha Otoko. When she comes out of the fitting room wearing her train uniform, they tell her that this is the wrong approach. And so she follows them to where they plan to transform her. (2m30s)

More to come!

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I think that, like non-fluent me, you can appreciate most of what follows without a side-by-side translation. But I do want to at least translate a few things. XD

The store opens for business at 11:30am, and Tomochika -- whose maid name is "Tomocchi" or Tomochi -- hilariously delivers her lines. She accidentally falls out of sync with the girls, and then deliberately deviates from them by telling one of the men "Thanks for all your hard work"-style of speech as opposed to "Welcome home from your tiring day at work"-style of speech.

Hysterically, when she serves her first customer, she says to him お帰りなさいませ。。。ご無沙汰. "Welcome Home! ....... it's been ages [since I last saw you]." XD It just sounds so awkward. And I love her deadpan delivery of the line, and how the ota recoils from her. XD But then what does he tell her?

"This is my first time."

Hahahahahaha.

Behavior-wise, she behaves more like a barmaid than a house maid, asking him if he'll be having alcohol today and shuffling her way dutifully but ungracefully past her coworkers as if she's ready to take his order at a Steak 'n' Shake or a pub. XD

While he sits down, Tomochi is distracted by her client's face, and she asks him, "Haven't we met before? Remember? That time in front of that one store in Akasaka?" Embarrassed, he tells her he doesn't frequent Akasaka, and Tomochika laughingly orders around one of her co-workers to go hang up this man's coat. XD Not very maid-like, is she? XD

To be continued!

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I had to look this next one up. Maybe it's a movie quote or a famous proverb? But anyway, here we go. In the next scene, the girls are making omelettes and they write cute little messages in ketchup on the plate and/or omelette before serving it to their customers. Well, what does Tomochi write?

人生には3つの坂がある。上り坂と下り坂、そして、「まさか」。

"In life, there are three hills." She's literally speaking about hills (as you'll see in a sec), but I think it's meant to be metaphorical, as in ... there are three phases to life, where life in its entirety can be likened to a hill.

"There's the time when you're going uphill, there's the time when you're going downhill, and then there's the time when you say "You've gotta be kidding me!""

hahahahahahahahaha

That has to be the most inappropriate message to give to a businessman who has come to a maid café to relax after work.

To be continued!

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Tomochi goes to play games with the customers, as is the duty of all of the maids. She provides one of the customers with an hourglass and presents to him a box. She says there's something inside and the challenge is to see if he can guess what it is before time runs out. He says there's a lot of them ... and that they're soft and squishy ... and then he figures it out:

"Are they ... Tomochi's fingers?"

And she tells him he got it right.

Now, as if that's not creepy enough, here's where it gets even funnier: Tomochika learns that this particular café has a ban on client-employee physical contact. The manager saw what Tomochi did and tells her off. She says, "They're not even allowed to touch one of your fingers!" Oops. Poor Tomochi. She made up a creepy ota game to play with "Goshuujin-sama" only to get yelled at. And now she's given him the wrong idea about this store. XD

Conclusion coming up!

 

[Sakunyuusha]

*silence* *silence* *silence* WAH!

lol, that's actually pretty moe because of how cute it is to see that she's trying scare him, and doing a bad job at it. XD

So anyway, after a few more signs of her being silly at work, they cut back to the studio. And we learn that Tomochika and the rest of the girls she worked with are all on stage! And are about to sing in front of the otaku!!!!!!!

Despite her silly solo, some of the otaku in the front row are REALLY getting into this song and dance routine, and as the act wraps up, one of them gets a little too carried away. hahahahahahaha (8m55s)

"MOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! MOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Now that's what I call one creepy otaku, ladies and gentlemen. XFD I just LOVE how frightened but amused the hostesses are. They don't know whether to laugh or to shiver.

 

[reingiolt]

i just don't get the joke she made with the omellete. it feels like its the female version of the oyaji-gag ( oba-gag?).
there sure are a lot of customers. i wonder if it was packed cause Tomochi was there.
btw Sakun hav u ever been to a maid cafe?

 

[redrooster]

M.I.A. Cafe in Akihabara is searching for two foreign waitresses, any volunteers?

http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~miacafe/miaeng/top2.html

labor conditions? Japanese only...

http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~miacafe/bosyu.html

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Nope. I don't think I'd enjoy it even if I had the opportunity to go, but I would probably go just so I could say I had been. Why wouldn't I like it?

[hide]1. You know that the girls are just acting. They're not really maids. They don't really give a shit about you. In fact, odds are pretty good that if you even pause outside the store window, they're going to think you're creepy as fuck. And because of this knowledge, it just kills the entire appeal for me. I love maids. But I love them when (in anime or hentai) they are real maids, who really do work full-time as caretakers for their lord and/or chambers in his manor. A teenage girl who gets paid to cosplay as a maid is not really a maid. And because I know that, I can't enjoy it.

2. You have to share the room with loads of weirdos. I don't mean that nerds are weirdos. I'm a nerd. I mean that the sort of people you find in maid cafés tend to be like Densha Otoko and his buddies. Those guys are so mega creepy I wouldn't trust my kids around them. >_>

3. You have to share the maids with the weirdos. And that for me would really kill the illusion.

4. You have to pay more for the food and drink at these cafés than you normally would because you're paying in part for the service. The thing is, I'm like Ebenezer Scrooge-caliber stingy. Starvation? Eating a 3-day old opened banana? Drinking 4-day-expired milk? These experiences are not unknown to me. Stingy to the point of madness in some people's opinions. So ... yeah, it'd probably drive me mad to set foot in the café and then be told that my teeny-tiny café au lait is going to cost me 2000¥.[/hide]

 

[reingiolt]

lol #4 is exactly the reason why i won't go into a maid cafe. i'm stingy as hell too but i don't eat expired foods. i've only encountered month old expired items though.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I don't eat rotten food. But I will eat food that is not rotten and yet is considered "expired" because of either an expiration date (e.g. milk) or mere habit (e.g. opened fruits should never be eaten more than a day after they've been opened if they're sitting out).

Specifically, I ate two-thirds of what remained of the banana because the middle one-third of the remains was mushy to the point of inducing my gag reflex. And the milk? That example popped up because it happened today: I opened the fridge, saw my almost-gone gallon of skim milk, read the "AUG 19 2009" expiration date, undid the cap, smelled the milk two times very strongly, poured it out into a bowl, smelled it again, gave it a teeny tiny taste test, and -- after being thoroughly convinced it smelled 89% or more like normal skim milk -- I went ahead and added cereal to it.

This was around 4 o'clock. It's 8:15pm now. If I was going to get food poisoning from rotten milk, it would have happened by now.

I may be stingy, but I'm not psycho or stupid. XD I don't eat from the trashcan, for Christ's sake. XD But I do eat things on the table which most people would say belong in the trash can. XD

 

[redrooster]

her comes the ultimate Bakunyuu Maid for Sakun...

 

[Gir633]

I know people that will not drink milk the day of the expiration date. Even though it is a guide only really, sometimes it goes bad days before that, sometimes it lasts a few days after. You just always got to check it.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Absolutely. I've had milk go bad before the expiration date, most frequently when there's 1/2 to 1/4 the original volume left over. I find that when there's very very little milk or when the bottle's unopened, typically it lasts 1-2 days longer than when there's 1/4 to 1/2. I'm guessing it probably has to do with threshholds for sustaining bacterial colonization, or something.

Anyway, sort of off-topic. ^_^; But I guess the maid make-over discussion hasn't really gotten off the ground yet, either, so I'll pose a question to folks ...

If you could pick any one female celebrity to get a maid make-over, who would it be?
- can be Asian or non-Asian
- can be an actress or can be an anime/manga character, but cannot be a live-action character
- and you can pick more than one, lol, I'm just saying, don't list 200 names. XD

 

[Rollyco]

can be an actress [...] but cannot be a live-action character

What's the difference?

 

[redrooster]

To be honest - I HATE MILK !!! When I was a child I was forced to drink one glass of milk after lunch before I was allowed to go out to play. And milk really wasn´t my taste at that time already. That caused such a big aversion that I can neither see nor smell nor drink it anymore, neither pure nor in my coffee...

 

[Sakunyuusha]

What's the difference?

I meant like ... Carrie Fisher, but not Princess Leia. If you want to pick a fictional live-action character, okay. There's no good reason why I should be a dick and deny that option. lol

 

[Sakunyuusha]

To be honest - I HATE MILK !!! When I was a child I was forced to drink one glass of milk after lunch before I was allowed to go out to play. And milk really wasn´t my taste at that time already. That caused such a big aversion that I can neither see nor smell nor drink it anymore, neither pure nor in my coffee...

Commericial milk and farm milk taste like two different drinks. Like ... I don't mean Pepsi-Cola vs. Coca-Cola, but rather Pepsi-Cola vs. orange juice. Very different. So while I don't know which one it is that your parents forced on you, you should see if maybe you could try out the other one.

As far as eroticism goes, hopefully it was the commercial milk that they forced on you -- 'cause that means that farm milk isn't ruined for you psychologically, and that's about as close as you could get to breastmilk, I imagine ...

... though I've been told that human breastmilk tastes nothing like either form of bovine milk (pasteurized or freshly teat-squeezed), so what the hell do I know? lol

And for the record, hell no XD, I don't get aroused drinking animal milk. XFD Seriously. (Non-human breast)milk just isn't sexy to me. Nothing erotic about it. It's not disgusting -- it's not like it's shit or urine or something blaaaaaaaah -- but it's like tomato sauce or vinegar. It's... just sorta there, to be eaten/drunk and enjoyed ... in an asexual manner. I've never had human breastmilk before, but so long as I didn't find the taste unpalatable, yeah, that I would probably find erotic. If I asked for a glass of milk (with sex totally not on my mind) and I got it, took a sip, and recognized the taste as being breastmilk ... yeah, I'd probably get aroused majorly.

Or maybe I'd get paranoid and disgusted because of milk-disseminated chemicals and diseases. XD Don't drink strangers' milk! lol