A special old female housekeepers’ cafe was open in Tokyo
A cafe all of whose servers were “old female housekeeprs” was open in front of Tokyo Art Theater(/東京芸術劇場) in Ikebukuro Tokyo on the weekends and public holidays this Oct.30th- Nov.28th. This was “Cafe Rottenmeier ” http://festival-tokyo.jp/program/cafe_rottenmeier/, named after the character of the well-known quite astringent chief housekeeper in “Heidi“, a worldwide popular juvenile describing a Swiss girl. 
Every server of the cafe was intentionally austere and frowned upon the customers, calling them “Welcome home, master ! You should behave yourself..” as if a strict tutor to a mischievous child like the descriptions in the book.
However, what is surprising is many of the servers were actually young beautiful women in their 20s~40s, wearing a special make-ups so that they looked really old ones. And some of them were really old females in their 70s. This cafe’s project was produced by Miwa Yanagi, a contemporary art designer.http://www.yanagimiwa.net/ she said, “I wanted to express the concept of old grandmother’s image, as Japan enjoys the longest female longevity in the world wihich is a good attractive point.” .
The servers had the customers help make meringue and sometimes performed a short play of “cafe Rottenmeier” and cooking meringue, singing and performing a musicial.
Though the project was a short temporary event, a lot of customers visited the cafe and enjoyed a mysterious and unrealistic atmosphere of the special space and the services there.
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