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

A young girl plying the trade known as enjokosai, 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

Illegal casinos in Tokyo under scrutiny after sumo betting scandal

With the illegal gambling activities of sumo wrestlers having been duly exposed in recent weeks, Weekly Playboy (July 26) reports that underground casinos are now coming under fire.

“After the story concerning sumo wrestlers and baseball betting broke, three illegal gambling operations in Kabukicho were raided,” explains one illegal casino operator. “They included an a gaming room, an Internet operation and poker game shop. I am very worried about a raid on my place.”

Read more

Tokyo furikome fraudsters go from princes to paupers

In a love hotel district of Tokyo, a minivan picks up a young woman. “What the hell were you doing?” she barks to the driver. “You are behind schedule.”

Kotaro Nishijima, which is not his real name, smiles in acknowledging his female passenger, who is young enough to be his daughter.

He currently earns 300,000 yen each month transporting gals in the deri heru trade (out-call sex) to their clients — a far cry from his days as head of a group of 80 that carried out frauds via phone communication (furikome sagi), which typically involves deceiving victims into wiring large sums of money to the group’s bank account. Read more

Scouts’ dishonor: Dirty Tokyo dozen nabbed for pimping

Although the practice has been banned by local ordinances, aggressive “scouts” can still be found on the streets of Tokyo and other big cities, energetically recruiting young women to work in bars and sex shops.

To get around the laws, some have moved their activity indoors, only to find that illegal as well. Last week Yasuhiro Fuseishi, a 36-year-old former actor, was arrested for arranging parties at which young women were encouraged to take up the world’s oldest profession. Read more

Tokyo’s Kabukicho teeters on the brink

Once known as Asia’s top entertainment quarter, Shinjuku Ward’s red-light district of Kabukicho has seen a hallowing out at its core. Monthly magazine Takarajima (April) takes a look at the devastation wrought by police crackdowns and the ongoing recession.

At the end of 2008, the multi-use Koma Stadium, notably known as a home to enka theater performances for a half-century and situated at the heart of Kabukicho, shut its doors. Over a year later, a construction plan for the site has not been set in place. Meanwhile, near JR Shinjuku Station, a large 10-screen cinema complex has since opened at the edge of the Kabukicho boundary. This encroachment, which has forced the shuttering of other long-running theaters in the area, combined with the closing of the cinema screens inside the Koma Stadium complex, has left only four screens remaining in all of Kabukicho, which was once regarded as a cinema Mecca. Read more

Females forced to work off debts on hands and knees

In September 2008, a 23-year-old employee of a cabaret club (kyabakura) approached real estate operator Yu Shimojo, 41, for a loan, saying she needed money to care for her sick parents. Shimojo said he would lend her 850,000 yen on the condition that she work it off in a Yoshiwara soapland.

With interest added, reports Nikkan Gendai (Feb. 10), the woman agreed to pay back Shimojo 1,030,000 yen. The shop where she toiled was one of the more reasonable places in Yoshiwara, charging customers a comparatively cheap 20,000 yen for 70 minutes of sudsy recreation. Read more

Salons supplying sleaze shuttered across Japan

On a recent visit to Tokyo’s infamous Kabukicho entertainment district, Spa! (Dec. 22) discovered that the typically luminescent Ichiban-gai arch, which hangs above one entrance near Shinjuku Station, was unlit.

The tabloid wonders: Is this how far Kabukicho has sunk? Once Tokyo’s adult playground, the area has hit upon hard times — a trend buffeted by the ongoing recession and law enforcement activities that is sweeping through Japan’s legendary entertainment quarters. Read more

Odious maid cafes put the squeeze on unwary Osaka otaku

One of the least pleasant words in the Japanese language is bottakuri, which means a ripoff. When the word bottakuri precedes such words as bar, kyabakura, casino club, massage parlor, etc., it indicates places where unwary patrons get taken for a ride.

And now, reports Shukan Jitsuwa (Dec. 31), the maid café can be added to the list of such disreputable establishments in, of all places, Nipponbashi — Osaka’s equivalent of Tokyo’s famous Akihabara Electric Town.

Nipponbashi is no longer the friendly, innocent place it once was — if it ever was.

“Like Tokyo’s Akihabara, this place is a Mecca for otaku (geeks) from Kansai and beyond,” the operator of a maid café tells the weekly from within the electronics wholesale district.

Along a street nicknamed “Ota-dori” (geek street) interspersed with computer shops, girls in maid costumes stand out on the sidewalks soliciting customers. These places had best be avoided. Read more

Sakai and Oshio cases leading to Tokyo ‘white powder sweep’

The high-profile drug arrests of singer-actress Noriko Sakai (“Nori P”), 38, and her 41-year-old husband, Yuichi Takaso, have prompted police to institute a “white powder sweep” through the notorious Tokyo entertainment areas of Roppongi and Shibuya, reports Shukan Taishu (Dec. 21).

Both Sakai and Takaso subsequently received suspended sentences, which have led some to question how seriously the cases were handled. “Considering their impact on society, they were treated very leniently,” says a representative within the legal community. “It would have made more sense for them to have served time.”

The police, apparently, feel likewise and, according to the article, have been utilizing undercover officers since the beginning of this month to institute street searches of pedestrians and crack down on neon-lit clubs and bars in Shibuya and Roppongi where methamphetamine distribution is known to be prevalent. Read more

Police crackdown on ‘girl’s bars’ no deterrent to erotic offerings

In addition to crackdowns on soaplands and orgy parties that Weekly Playboy routinely features in its pages, the magazine is now finding that ‘girl’s bars,’ which are clubs staffed by ladies serving from behind a counter, are also becoming a target of the police. Yet a low profile is not an option as many are offering excessively provocative services — nearly a requirement in today’s tough economic climate.

Yui, a 19-year-old college student, tells the tabloid about a group of cops that showed up while she was working. “It happened so fast, and the bar was asked to stop operating. Apparently the problem was that the girls were sitting next to the customers. I was shocked because I thought this place was clean. But I quickly moved over to another girl’s bar,” she giggles.

A 10-year veteran writer for the “pink” trade offers: “The girl’s bar is registered as an after hours eating-and-drinking place, much like an izakaya. Because of this, they are not allowed to offer individual hospitality to customers. The only such place for that service is a kyabakura (hostess club), which is registered as an eating-and-drinking establishment that includes socializing.” Read more

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