Fortunetellers at your spiritual service

TOKYO - Yuki’s dream went like this. While in an elevator with her boyfriend, she noticed two yakuza on either side of her. Two men with loud suits, missing pinky tips, and gruff personalities are not completely unusual in a big city like Tokyo, she thought, but what came next was: one of them came up behind her with a pair of scissors and began…well…cutting her hair.

A haircut from a yakuza? She wondered: What did it all mean?

“You might be trying to make a departure from your dark past,” explains Sasa, one of a handful of young fortunetellers who work alternating sessions within two tiny shops directly beneath the Inokashira Line tracks in Kichijoji, west of Tokyo. “It seems as if strong energy is coming out from inside you, pushing you more and more into the future.” Read more

Police putting a new twist on the word ‘crackdown’

Establishments called panchira kissa (panty-viewing cafés) are being targeted by the authorities. These are coffee shops where male customers are invited, even encouraged, to peer up waitresses’ already short skirts. In some places, their efforts can be facilitated by use of fishing rods or fans to lift skirt hems, with the objective of viewing the goodies underneath.

The tabloid newspaper Nikkan Gendai (Oct. 4) reports that since a shop in Osaka was hit with a violation on morals charges last April, the police crackdown has been ongoing.

“For example, if you paid an extra fee, the waitress would perch on the bar counter and raise her knees to form a letter ‘M,’” says a regular customer of one establishment. “It was popular, but they had to stop it. Read more

Samurai screams

TOKYO - “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

A loud scream is vital just before you are about to have your belly sliced open.

With your sword raised above your head, you then attack. Your opponent, legs slightly bent at the knees, brings his sword horizontally across your gut as you lunge at him. He is careful to slide the sword along your midsection and not swing it. After all, this is not baseball.

“You are being killed. You need to scream!” booms instructor Ryuji Kikuchi of the Tate-Do school of sword-fight choreography. Read more

Shanghai’s Bund traders

SHANGHAI - Not one tourist is spared.

“Rolex?” questions a young, slender man in his thirties, tobacco-stained front teeth and hands moving through his outer jacket pockets.

It is an evening on the riverbank promenade of the Bund - Shanghai’s strip of historic art deco buildings aligned along the curve of the murky brown Huangpu River. Drink and film kiosks battle for customers busily snapping photos of the recently constructed towers and high-rises on the opposite bank. In between peddlers cruise the area in search of targets.

“Cheap, cheap,” he declares from underneath three layers of jackets, ostensibly necessary for the storing of his faux merchandise - his Rolexes, Breitlings, and Omegas, all shiny and attached to black plastic bands. The recommended Rolex rests in his palm. “Eighty yuan.” Read more

Museum Tour: The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

PHNOM PENH - It is estimated that during the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) 1.7 million people lost their lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. During that time, radical left wing politics mixed with a complete lack of regard for human life to create one of the most vicious and despicable reigns of terror in the history of man.

Teachers, professors, farmers, engineers, students and skilled artisans were murdered. Entire populations of cities were either starved or forced out from their homes into collective farms.

Those who were deemed to be in opposition, or considered as posing a potential threat, to the Khmer Rouge Government (or Angkar) were brought to Tuol Sleng (also known as S-21, or “Security Office 21″), a former high school converted to a prison, in Phnom Penh. Here, amid what can only be described as pure madness, 14,000 prisoners were interrogated, tortured, beaten, and “exterminated.” Read more

Lafcadio Hearn: The original Japanophile

TOKYO - As a light evening rain begins to gently fall, Bon Koizumi approaches a grave in Tokyo’s Zoshigaya Cemetery. With a bunch of colorful flowers and a wooden pail filled with water in place nearby, he picks up a ladle from the bucket and starts to pour water over two headstones. Stepping back, Koizumi places his hands together, bows his head and prays.

The grave is that of his great-grandfather, Lafcadio Hearn, and his wife, Setsu Koizumi. Since it is the season of Obon, the annual festival in August when Japanese believe the spirits of ancestors return to their relatives’ homes, Koizumi has come to pay his respects at the resting place of his famous forebear. Read more

How far do those room-service masseuses go?

You’re away from home on a business trip. It’s too early to sleep, so out of a mixture of boredom, curiosity, and horniness, you phone the front desk and summon a masseuse to your room. The prices are cheap enough, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 yen or so for a 45-minute session.

Jitsuwa Taiho (October) attempts to provide some answers to the oft-asked question of how far those frowsy, middle-aged women who dispense massages at business hotels are willing to go with male customers.

At a hotel in Osaka, the reporter is getting a session from one named Masami. She’s 51, although she looks considerably younger. He’s not especially keen on older women, but under the pressure of her gentle fingers, he becomes aroused, to the degree that when he rolls over and faces the ceiling, his erection is unmistakable. Read more

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