Spotting a bigamist no easy task
October 31, 2008
Capt. Spaulding (Groucho Marx): [to Mrs. Rittenhouse and Mrs. Whitehead] “Let’s get married.”
Mrs. Whitehead: “All of us?”
Capt. Spaulding: “All of us.”
Mrs. Whitehead: “Why, that’s bigamy.”
Capt. Spaulding: “Yes, and it’s big of me too.”
From “Animal Crackers” (1930)
Stories about bigamy in Japan are few and far between, so when we caught the headline “Juukon otoko, kou minuke” (Here’s how to spot a bigamist”) in Nikkan Gendai (Oct. 31), we paused for a look-see. Read more
Kabukicho ‘girl’s bar’ busted in sofa snafu
October 28, 2008
TOKYO – A female employee at a specialty hostess club was arrested over the weekend for sitting next to a customer.
The infraction occurred when a 24-year-old lady staffed at “girl’s bar” Double, located in Tokyo’s red-light district of Kabukicho, was found to be sitting next to a male patron on a sofa just before 2 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The girl’s bar is a nightlife trend whereby casually dressed young women serve drinks and make conversation from behind a counter – and not while seated next to a customer, as is standard practice in a conventional hostess club. This orientation is an attempt to circumvent the Law Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses, which prohibits entertainment of customers after 1 a.m. Bars only for drinking, however, are not classified as entertainment. Read more
Swindlers extend ‘send money’ flimflams to the sex business
October 26, 2008
“On the street in Ikebukuro I was accosted by a Chinese woman who said she’d spend 90 minutes with me in a hotel for 20,000 yen,” the man relates. “In the room while we were talking she slipped a knockout drop into my beer, and when I woke up I realized she’d made off with the 650,000-yen Rolex watch I’d bought with my bonus, plus 80,000 yen in my wallet and five credit cards.”
It’s not only foreigners who are engaging in outrageous ripoffs. Men who let down their guards are also being taken to the cleaners by native-born swindlers using a variation on the notorious “it’s me, send money” scheme.
A 32-year-old salaryman who availed himself of a “delivery health” (outcall sex service) in Kanagawa Prefecture found out the hard way that he had been targeted by professional swindlers using a woman as bait. Read more
Once lost Okamoto masterpiece to be displayed at Shibuya station
October 20, 2008
TOKYO – A once lost mural by one of Japan’s foremost contemporary artists is being prepped for display inside Shibuya station next month.
Early last Friday morning a construction team hoisted the 14 panels of avant-garde painter and sculptor Taro Okamoto’s legendary “Asu no Shinwa” (Myth of Tomorrow), which depicts the aftermath of an atomic bomb detonation, into place along a walkway near the station’s Inokashira Line entrance. The large mural, measuring 5.5 meters by 30 meters, will be viewable by the public from November 17.
Historians have considered it to be one of Okamoto’s greatest works.
“In Roppongi three and a half years ago I displayed this painting,” said Akiomi Hirano, who is the general producer of the project for the Taro Okamoto Memorial Foundation for the Promotion of Contemporary Art, in an interview earlier this month. “I said then that I would not sell it nor give it to a business. I wanted it to be in a public space. If it was placed in a private area, that would have been easy, but it is not what I wanted to do.” Read more
Cops bust Osaka gay theater owner, male strippers
October 16, 2008
“Been there, done that” is a handy way of expressing that one has already experienced the topic under discussion.
Not too many individuals are wont to openly admit they have ever been to the now-defunct Umeda Rose theater in Osaka’s Kita Ward. And it’s easy to see why. Read more
Lassies in Lhasa dispense sudsy romps just like those back home
October 13, 2008
Tibet! Land of the Gods! Where you can take in the majestic Himalayas while getting high on the oxygen-depleted air. Have your picture taken astride a yak in front of the Dalai Lama’s palace. Haggle for curios in the marketplace. Eat tsampa and yak butter. Tour a lamasery, and spin prayer wheels while chanting mantras. Or, go unwind in a Japanese-style soapland.
Yep, reports Jitsuwa Knuckles magazine, the “roof of the world” is fully equipped to service men with an urge, for a correspondingly high price of 800 renminbi (about 12,000 Japanese yen). Read more
Tokyo festival pursues comedy revival
October 13, 2008
TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo’s Asakusa district was once vaudeville and Moulin Rouge rolled into one.
In the years leading up to and following World War II, Asakusa offered a vibrant blend of dance troupes and comedy teams. Its garish halls were the start for such legendary actors as Kiyoshi Atsumi, known for his starring role in the 48-episode Tora-san film series that began with “It’s Tough Being a Man.” The Denkikan, which opened in Asakusa in 1903, was Japan’s first film theater. Takeshi Kitano (“Violent Cop,” “Getting Any?”) famously launched his career as an emcee at the France-za burlesque theater in the early 1970s.
After theaters in Tokyo’s fashionable quarters of Roppongi and Shibuya host the 21st Tokyo Intl. Film Festival this month, a lower-profile area that includes Asakusa will emphasize its cultural and comedic roots with an upcoming TIFF-affiliated gathering of its own. Read more
Tokyo casinos take a gamble
October 13, 2008
TOKYO – On a typical weekday night, the streets on the west side of Tokyo’s Shimbashi Station are alive with activity: salesmen hocking necklaces and bracelets compete for sidewalk space with lottery ticket booths; taxis line up for fares; and salarymen slowly filter into the hostess and snack clubs off the main streets.
Mixed in are middle-aged men slowing pacing the sidewalks while wearing advertising sandwich boards decorated with playing cards or roulette wheels. Some offer gambling action for as little as 10 yen. Small maps give directions to each “game kingdom.”
Today, legal gambling in Japan is limited to horse, motorboat, bicycle, and motorbike racing. A number of other activities, such as the lottery, pachinko, and mahjong, are classified as “amusements” and are legal. A casino’s existence then can only be the result of one thing, says Reikichi Sumiya, an organized crime expert and journalist. “Wherever there’s gambling in Japan, there’s the yakuza,” he says. Read more
New breed of taxi drivers
October 9, 2008
TOKYO – She seemed like a regular customer when she got in the backseat of taxi driver Kiyoaki Yoshida’s cab; a woman in heavy makeup and a long evening dress is standard for Tokyo’s Shinjuku entertainment district late at night. But that soon changed.
A few moments after giving him the location of where she’d like to go, she purred, “My, you look good.”
Compliments are not unusual for Yoshida. After all, before he started driving a taxi, he’d used his carefully coiffed hair, sharp facial features, and continual charm to entertain ladies in a number of Tokyo host clubs. He’s even had foreign female customers take his business card and – under the guise of requesting another ride – ask him for a dinner date. Read more
Pachinko U: Majoring in tumbling steel balls
October 9, 2008
TOKYO – A stroll around Shinjuku Station will reveal plenty of pachinko parlors emitting a rapid-fire clinging of steel balls and pounding dance tunes.
Such clamor is music to the ears of Ei Yoshida, president of G&E Business School, which teaches all there is to know about what is basically an upright pinball game.
“Our students either want to change their career,” says Yoshida from his third-floor office on Shinjuku-dori, “or they are already working in pachinko and need to learn more.”
Established in 2006, G&E Business School annually instructs 200 students, aged between 19 and 25, to work in this massive industry, one that recently has been facing a downturn yet remains highly dynamic. Read more
