26 years old Singaporean anime enthusiast Feng Shi Wen (冯诗雯) is the taichou of Akihabra’s band of multilingual meido tour guides.
Saw this article in a local Chinese papers last week. Those who are proficient in Chinese may read the original article here. Else below is a brief translated summary. Pardon for the crappy scanned pic.
Currently based in Japan, Shi Wen is a frequent visitor of Akiba when she was in Tokyo as a university exchange student. She decided to stay and started her own business 2 years ago. Seeing the business potential, Shi Wen realises the need to cater to the increasing amount of foreign visitors in Akiba. Other than giving tours, Shi Fen also runs a website introducing Akiba.
But it was not all-smooth sailing for her. During the course of entrepreneurship, she is faced with issues like gender, seniority and nationality. To counter these shortcomings, she hired older men with experiences hoping it will solve the problem. Unfortunately it turns out to be the opposite. Customers refused to acknowledge her presence and male employees decline to listen to their younger female boss. Having learnt from this lesson she decided to hire females instead.
Shi Wen does have her advantage though. Having grown up in multiracial Singapore, she pointed out her biggest selling point is she gets along well with foreigners. She also understands the needs of the retailers and through her understanding of numerous languages, knows what the foreigners are after as well.
Recently she even encourages stores in Akiba to speak English. Store clerks who are able to speak Britannia were given a badge designed by her.
The young businesswoman added that although she can’t wear her meido uniform on the streets of Singapore, she is able to do so in Akiba. She learnt a lot in her 2 years of entrepreneurship and understands that doing business is like playing a game, there are up and downs and the outcome depends on the strategies used.
Way to go girl, we (or at least me) are proud of you. Additionally I think you look cute than some local meido as well.
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If I’m not wrong, she’s the one who owns an English otaku portal website that we (Lian actually) talked to a while back.
I thought she was still in her teenage years until I read on to find out that she was 26. Judging from the photo, she sure doesn’t look her age
I did hear that a lot of Chinese who worked in Japan had a tough start. It’s interesting to see how she fits in the Akiba society very well right now.
nice…
true i feel that her greatest
advantage is being able to speak other languge,
other than Japanese so she get a bigger pie of the
tourist i guess…
@ tj han,
mind sharing the link with us? i googled “akiba” and the result isn’t very SFW.
@ Marianto,
must be the uniform. makes one look cute and young.
@ Q,
when u are in rome, do what the roman do i say.
@ speedknight,
additionally, no one can resist a cute meido.
so kawaii! I want to know/meet her! lol
wow, she is pretty cute
good job there girl! proud of her as well ^^ great inspiration for myself.. lol
wow, sure it’s nice to know a singaporean doing well in akiba. there’s no reason why she can’t wear her maido gear here in sg, right? xD
Wow, good luck to her. Hope she’ll have a prosperous business there.
Anime subculture seems to be everywhere nowadays.
Makes me proud to be a Singaporean. Singaporeans are the best gaijins around.
@ chun,
so do i. really.
@ YuKi-To,
you want to be a meido in akiba as well? (‘~’)
@ Neutrinos,
yes indeed. she can certainly wear it in my house. (‘~’)
@godon,
She runs “akibanana.com”. I only knew about this early this week while watching a CNA feature, “Beyond The Dot” about Singaporeans in Japan. Dunno if there will be a repeat telecast.
that’s really cool, hope she continues to gain fame and success and more stores decide to speak English because of her ^^
she looks cute! and wow, shes a young boss too. BRAVO! ^^;
Young boss…wow…living her dream in Tokyo huh…
She’s cute in that cosplay!!!!!
Dream job would be working under her… or maybe WITH her ^^;
And that photo scan does no justice >__>
@ MrMayat,
thanks for the info! i think the episode you watched is a repeat cos when i checked the timetable on CNA web the programme for this week is about another person.
@ konadora,
not to worry, i’ll take a picture of her when i see her (eventually).
such a nice success story.
indeed, she’s the owner of akibanana.com. she has another fren, ling ling or some other else.. saw the episode on CNA and was impressed by her. and if i remember, her name is jean.
@ marvin,
inspirational it is.
@ Tiny Red Man,
jean the meideo droid. noted. i’ll program that into my system.
you can buy really good maid costumes at Candy fruit
http://japansugoi.com/wordpress/original-japanese-maid-costumes-can-be-ordered-from-candy-fruit/
Dear Feng Shi Wen,
I am interested to visit your shop. Could you provide the address of you shop and contact number please. Thank you.