Tokyo host club opens its doors to female cosplayers for special photo shoot event

20:18 cherishe 0 Comments

Afternoon, alcohol-free open house provides luxurious backdrops, chance to chat and snap photos with hosts.

Japan’s host clubs offer a more-or-less standardized set of services to their female customers. You take a seat in a luxurious lounge, relax, sip drinks, and check out/chat with the abundant eye candy of handsome, well-groomed men who’re on hand to conversationally pamper you.

Those are all part of an upcoming event at host club Topdandy in Tokyo’s Kabukicho nightlife district. However, there’ll be one other activity on the schedule: cosplay.

Organizers are billing the event as the industry’s first “hosplay” event, combining a photo session opportunity for participating female cosplayers with a taste of the host club experience. The doors will open at 11 a.m., providing cosplayers with one hour to change into their outfits before they’re eventually joined by Topdandy’s hosts, with the event wrapping up at 5 p.m.

The club has served as a filming location for TV dramas and movies, and for even more dramatic photos the entrance fee includes the a “champagne tower” experience for guests, an ordinarily premium-priced optional highlight of a host club visit.

In addition to talking and taking photos with the hosts, aural entertainment will be provided by four female DJs supplying background music for the proceedings. Also, while the standard business practice for host clubs is to draw customers in with a low cover charge and then upsell them expensive alcoholic drinks, the hosplay event’s 5,000-yen (US$45) entrance fee includes all-you-can-drink soft drinks, and no alcohol will be served during the afternoon event, which is open to all ages (the beverage for the “champagne tower” is a non-alcoholic substitute, and participants are allowed to bring their own food, if they want something to munch on).

Only female cosplayers will be admitted, although any accompanying personal photographers can be of ether sex. While cosplayers aren’t required to crossplay as male hosts, that seems to be the route that Acho and Tono, the event’s two cosplay ambassadors, will be going.

▼ Acho