Professional cosplayer Yunmao Ayakawa had a story at Daigacon that sounded like something out of 1950's baseball, except that it didn't happen at a baseball game. Back in the 50's, major league clubs stocked their farm systems by scouting minor leaguers and amateurs anywhere in the U.S. Ayakawa said her path to a professional cosplayers' career began when she was spotted by a person who acted as a talent scout of sorts for a game company. That company wanted to use Ayakawa as the face of a game that would appear on cell phones, which are a more important communications and gaming platform in Japan than in the United States. Ayakawa, who was in Kentucky through Tenbu Productions, recalled that she got her big break because she was a bit too true to her character. She was playing Princess San from Princess Mononoke, who has a sour disposition, and Ayakawa wasn't in the best of moods at that convention because she had gotten separated from her friends. Regardless of how it started, the encounter finished with a new and growing career for Ayakawa. "I started cosplaying and modeling and other stuff, and everything started rolling," she recalled. Ayakawa designs and makes her own costumes, writes stories about cosplay for Japanese magaznes. "In Japan, there are a lot of companies  who will dress you in costume, but only a few (of those costumers) have the talent," she said.

Much of the talent includes the ability to design costumes and characters, something that Ayakawa demonstrated in several ways. She designed the maid outfit she wore to her panel discussion, one of a set of six-color-coded outfit for a special video. She's also designed outfits for "race queens," the young women who decorate pre-race starting grids at racing events. "In Japan, a race queen is almost like an idol," she said. If there was a common thread to Ayakawa's comments, it was in the number of uniforms she wore or designed. Fans of Japanese and American culture know that each culture has a waitress outfit that's considered exceptionally sexy. In Japan it's the Anna Miller's waitress, considered risque in Japan because of the way it emphasizes the bust, and in America it's the Hooter's waitress and her tight-fitting clothes. Ayakawa owns several examples of each waitress outfit, along with several copies of the less-celebrated outfit from the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain. And no professional cosplayer's closet would be complete without a number of maid outfits, especially with the nationwide popularity of maid cafes in Japan. When Ayakawa asked "Do you think the Japanese maid is cute," the audience agreed. Even more interesting, considering this was an audience in Kentucky, not Akihabara, when she asked "Have you been to a maid cafe," several fans in the audience raised their hands.