Tokyo troubles: What do love hotels do with their lost & found items?

“Oh damn, where’s my ____?! Sh*t, I must have left it at that…oh god, how can I possibly go back there and ask for it?! This is a f*cking disaster!!”

It seems that people who enter and leave love hotels have a lot of things on their minds. Like what will soon be transpiring after they get inside the room. Or not being spotted together.

And as a result of these and other distractions, they often leave personal belongings behind.

Jitsuwa Taiho takes up this topic in its December issue.

One of the first things the article points out is that it’s possible to enter, use, pay, and leave a love hotel without ever encountering hotel staff face to face. Which is also one of the reasons why people who leave things behind are understandably reluctant to attempt recovery.

The monthly magazine is told by 54-year-old Ms. T, employed by a hotel in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, that she has been holding onto a number of valuable articles, such as wristwatches and items of jewelry, awaiting the arrival of their owners. Read more

New law to clamp down on Osaka’s ‘legal herb’ market

The Minami entertainment district of Osaka has seen a serious growth in the sales of drugs designed to fall within a legal gray zone, but law enforcement might get the upper hand with a new law, reports Shukan Asahi Geino (Nov. 3).

“Legal herbs” have documented adverse effects, but there are no laws regulating their possession and utilization, which has putting law enforcement in a difficult position.

“America-mura is known to be an area for drugs,” says a news reporter covering the society beat. “There are 20 clubs situated there, an area smaller than Shibuya, and many often receive illicit drugs, like weed, from foreigners. Pedestrians are approached out of nowhere for possible transactions.”

Dating back approximately one year, shops with signs reading “specializing in legal herbs” began to emerge. Now about 10 can be spotted in one area. With prices in the range of 1,000 to 3,000 yen per gram, most users are teenagers and those in their 20s. Read more

Ikebukuro ‘boy’s bar’ busted for improper licensing

TOKYO (TR) – The Tokyo Metropolitan Police (TMD) last week shut down an improperly licensed host club in Ikebukuro, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Oct. 18). Read more

Tokyo trends: Plucky pensioners picking up prostitutes with pay packets

Tokyo’s Yoshiwara district is known as the country’s largest soapland brothel area, offering a plethora of pleasures to please any punter, but exactly once every two months, reports weekly tabloid Shukan Post (Oct. 21), it’s filled with many grinning grandpas game to get it on.

Around the 15th day of even-numbered months, when pension checks are issued, the numerous bathhouses and bordellos that line the rectangular area’s streets become a playground for the Yoshiwara Nenkin-zoku, or the Yoshiwara Pension Tribe.

The magazine believes that this is one example of how the below-the-belt fuzoku industry is targeting the older generation and giving up on younger, more “passive” men, or soshokukei danshi.

“Soaplands that open early remind one of a hospital lobby since they are filled with many older men,” says Akira Ikoma, the editor of a guide to men’s entertainment called Ore no Tabi (My Trip). “That is the case with a place in Ikebukuro, where you can feel-up a gal’s chest. You’ll see many seniors smiling as they enjoy fumbling with their hands.” Read more

50,000 uncensored porn DVDs seized in Tokyo raid

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police earlier this week arrested the principals involved in the sale and copying of large quantities of uncensored adult video DVDs in Toshima Ward’s Ikebukuro district, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Sept. 30). Read more

Dateline Tokyo: Lesbian love services in demand by guyless gals game to get it on

“These days it’s not rare at all to see two women going into a room together,” a maid at a Tokyo love hotel tells Shukan Jitsuwa (Aug. 18). “I’ve been at this job for 15 years. About five years ago, I noticed that more women started coming here together. The numbers picked up after our management instituted a ‘ladies’ day,’ offering a 30 percent discount, which we do twice a month. On those days, from noon onwards the place is filled to capacity with paired off housewives or university students.”

But, the reporter wonders, how can you know if the women are using the rooms for sex?

“When I clean out the waste receptacles there are always some telltale signs,” the maid replies. “Things like discarded tissue paper with some clear fluid having a sweet and sour scent. Some have pubic hairs clinging to it. And from time to time I’m surprised when they leave behind a vibrator.

“These days, with men falling out of favor, I guess it’s expected that more women will want to pleasure one another. And unlike sex with men, which is over once they have ejaculated, women can keep going to enjoy themselves endlessly,” the maid says. Read more

Tohoku tremors send sex-service gals scampering southward

While the general mood of consumer self restraint that has followed the Great East Japan Earthquake has extended to Kansai, that area’s fuzoku industry — the commercial sex trade, to be clear — is showing signs of stimulation, reports Shukan Jitsuwa (May 5).

The tabloid says that fuzoku girls from Tohoku are moving to Tokyo, which in turn is seeing its gals go to Kansai, a development that has guys licking their chops, or rather, getting their chops licked.

“A week after the earthquake we started to see this shift,” says a writer covering the fuzoku trade. “In terms of types of services, most of them are working in health clubs” — which have nothing to do with fitness but everything do with blow-jobs — “and soaplands in Kobe’s Fukuhara red-light district. One can even hear Tokyo accents in quickie joints located in Osaka brothel areas like Tobita Shinchi and Kujo.”

One 24-year-old female health employee, who used to work in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro area, tells the tabloid why she moved: “Tokyo still has aftershocks and supplies in general are insufficient. I cannot focus well. While some may say they don’t like Osaka, I am fine with it.” Read more

Japan’s deflation driving down prices of short-time sex

Caught up in the deflationary spiral, beef bowl restaurant chains are tripping over each other’s feet to see which one can serve up the cheapest salaryman’s lunch. Additional savings can be realized by purchasing a strip of “Guruupon” meal coupons in advance.

Inspired by this entrepreneurial creativity, Nikkan Gendai (Dec. 11) reports that now the sex industry has got into the act, with discount coupons for sex shops.

Going by such names as “Nukipon” (getting it off tickets) and “Fuupon” (sex shop tickets), they are being sold on a first-cum first-served basis on the Internet. Read more

Summertime, and the hookin’ is easy, Johns are jumpin’ and the gals are high

A young girl plying the trade known as enjo kosai, or compensated dating, is hardly new. Yet, observes Shukan Jitsuwa (Aug. 19), the glut of school gals on summer break and the harsh economy are combining to make present conditions in Tokyo anything but a seller’s market.

The tabloid cites the entertainment areas of Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Shibuya as common hot spots. Many young females migrate from the countryside and must offer sharp discounts, or gekiyasu enko, as slashed bonuses for salaried workers have become the norm.

Seated on a street corner is a 19-year-old from Niigata Prefecture. “I came to Tokyo to earn money for one week,” says the brown-haired girl. “I have only have a few hundred yen. Tonight I can’t find anyone. If someone will pay 5,000 yen and the hotel fee that’s acceptable…”

In Shibuya, the writer finds a deeply tanned female in a miniskirt. She does not offer sex, only hand-jobs, and handles five customers a day. Referred to as tekoki enko, the service costs 3,000 yen a pull. Read more

The celestial journey of Shoko Tendo

TOKYO (TR) – Upon introduction, author Shoko Tendo does not offer the image of a woman who has spent much of her life mixed up with drugs and yakuza gangsters.

With straight brown hair and sharp facial features shaped by reconstructive plastic surgery, this 42-year-old daughter of a mobster reveals no visual hints as to her past, aside from the occasional glimpse of one of her elaborate tattoos peering from under the cuff of her long shirtsleeve.

She is not shy about revealing that striking artwork covering her pencil-thin frame. A courtesan with a dagger gripped in her teeth fills her back as serpents crawl along her arms and legs. Kanji characters and carp fill in the spaces between and around.

“In public, people don’t see tattoos,” explains the soft-spoken Tendo, seated in a coffee shop in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro Ward on a rainy day in February. “They disapprove. But when I grew up I saw my father and people around him with tattoos. It was close at hand, and I thought, that’s me.” Read more

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