Geek ghetto Akihabara has become the site of Cosplish, Japan's first English conversation school featuring cosplaying foreigner teachers dressed in wacky costumes, according to Cyzo (April).

Cosplaying teachers are told to teach students how to use simple, "broken" English, while the school also plans to give instructions on "Otaku English," using mostly abbreviations, and "Anime English," which will focus on English instructions of famous lines from cartoons like Gundam.

Founder Akihiro Suzuki figured opposites would attract and started Cosplish.

"Otaku are known for their incredible customer loyalty, while schools are known for their trouble in getting customers to keep on coming back, so I figured a school for cosplayers would achieve the perfect blend," Suzuki tells Cyzo.

Suzuki has a background running maid cafes, another otaku staple. Initially, he considered dressing up foreign women as maids and getting them to give English lessons in a place he dreamed of calling Maid in English. But he decided his vision was too narrow.

"Even though the maid trade within the otaku business seems to be broad-reaching, it's actually quite narrow. It only caters to otaku who have a thing for the image of maids," he says. "I thought I'd go for something broader, which would appeal to a wider audience, which is why I decided on the cosplay idea."

Enrolling in Cosplish is simple, requiring only that students e-mail in a reservation to attend a class, with times listed on the company's official website. The monthly magazine warns that classes are often suddenly cancelled if not enough people book to take them, 20 being the required number of students needed for a class to go ahead.

Cosplish currently employs eight cosplaying teachers, most of them students recruited from universities or Japanese language schools.

"I want to start classes for kids some time in the future," Suzuki tells Cyzo. "And I'll make the teachers get dressed up in Pikachu suits." (By Ryann Connell)