Forsaken old yakuza checks out, possibly for good

“Excuse me, but I’d like to spend the night,” said the man, who appeared in his mid-60s, to the receptionist at the love hotel.

That, writes Shoko Harano — who has been chronicling her three-year tenure at a Tokyo love hotel for Nikkan Gendai (Feb. 18) — was not the expression habitually used by customers when checking into such establishments, who would normally use the phrase asa made (until morning) when requesting overnight accommodations.

The man appeared to be completely out of it. Moreover he was alone, and carried his belongings in two bulging shopping bags. Read more

Ex-dog’s AV bark worse than her overbite

As any television viewer knows well, there’s pulchritude a-plenty on the Japanese airwaves. The possible exception would be a show broadcast on Fuji TV and affiliates called “Beauty Colosseum,” hosted by beanpole entertainer Akiko Wada.

The show features a stream of weepy women who pour out their woes, while hostess Wada — certainly no great beauty herself — nods sympathetically and occasionally brushes away a tear.

The show’s homely subjects have been dealt a losing hand by nature, so to speak, causing them to suffer torment at the hands of their peers. In addition to their being verbally slanged, they suffer other forms of discrimination in education and employment, and needless to say romantic relations with the opposite sex typically run from little to none.

Did we say sex? Well, kindly remain calm until we can provide a few more details from Shukan Jitsuwa (Feb. 11). Read more

Ouch! Fetishists at love hotels leave behind bloody, malodorous messes

“I was really surprised. When I went in to clean up, the room was a bloody mess,” relates the meeku-san — as chambermaids at love hotels are referred to in the trade.

The reason for the speaker’s astonishment is evident in her ensuing remarks.

“I could tell it wasn’t just some woman having her period,” she says. “The bed sheets were covered with bloodstains that had soaked through all the way to the mattress cover. There were bloody tracks in the bath too.” Read more

Konbini condom customers come in all sizes and shapes

Condoms, which were formerly sold from vending machines, have become a popular standby at convenience stores.

Likewise for their packaging, reports Nikkan Gendai (Dec. 8). In former times, condoms used to be wrapped as inconspicuously as possible. But things have changed. As the executive at one chain relates, “Couples come shop together and it is the female who unhesitatingly makes the selection.”

Kazumi, a college junior who works part-time at a konbini in Tokyo, tells the tabloid that French letters now tend to so garishly packaged she initially had difficulty locating the bar code strip. Read more

Tallying the bottom line for Tokyo women in the sex trade

The “elite” of Japan’s sex industry used to be the gals who slither in suds at deluxe soaplands.

During better times, says 27-year-old Azusa, a “foam princess” could earn as much as 500,000 yen a day. But the big-spend bubble has been pricked, and these days pickings are slim.

“We work on a commission basis, so no customers means no money,” she tells Shukan Jitsuwa (Dec. 17). “The shop guarantees 30,000 yen per diem for us to show up. But when business is slow the number of girls on duty are cut. So even if we want to work we can’t. Anyway, there’s no demand.”

To win back clients, some soaps have begun offering an increasingly rough-and-tumble range of services heretofore unavailable. These would include soku-shaku and soku-beddo (on-the-spot oral sex and intercourse as soon as the patron enters the room); the usual matto play atop an air mattress; and bareback rides. Read more

Funds investing in love hotels rise to the occasion

Though the economy in the doldrums, funds investing in love hotels are continuing to perform very well, writes Friday (Dec. 11).

Initia Star is one such company that invests in lodges intended for short amorous encounters by couples and distributes dividends to investors semi-annually. Offering shares at an initial investment of 500,000 yen (locked in for three years), the firm’s s Neo Hope fund series targets a return of between five and eight percent per year.

In light of the current economic challenges, recently exemplified by the “Lehman shock,” stock market journalist Genichi Amami explains that love hotel investments offer an attractive alternative since the establishments are already in place and the business is steady. “There is no concern about how the stock market performs,” he says. “Plus the occupancy rates are very high.”

A typical city hotel will typically sell a single room to one customer on one particular day, explains the article. But a love hotel, usually gaudy, theme-oriented establishments offering stays of a few hours for between 5,000 and 8,000 yen, allows for multiple uses of a room within a 24-hour period, a fact that results in the high rate of occupancy. Read more

Answering phone forgotten in love hotel a sure-fire formula for trouble

People leave all kinds of things behind in love hotel rooms. Some, writes Shoko Harano in Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 26) are the sorts of items one might not ordinarily expect. Like a woman’s full set of false teeth.

Harano, described as a 36-year-old divorcee and a “coquettish [sic] beauty” spent three years working at the reception of a love hotel.

It’s not uncommon, she says, for guests to leave cell phones behind in their rooms. Some phones are pink and festooned with glitter and all kinds of cheap trinkets — the sort of thing one might expect to be used by girls in their mid teens. Read more

Creative new commerce keeps Kabukicho hopping

“First it was Koma Stadium, which shut its doors last New Year’s Eve,” a local mutters. “Now it’s the Kabukicho McDonald’s outlet, which closed on Aug. 31. I think the place went under because it became a hangout for bar hostesses waiting for the trains to start running and homeless people, who just sat there nursing a cup of coffee.”

But, reports Shukan Shincho (Oct. 8), that doesn’t necessarily mean Tokyo’s largest adult entertainment zone has fallen victim to the recession. New businesses are springing up, appealing to consumers with super-low prices.

One such example is the Shateki Oh (King of the Marksmen) in Kabukicho 1-chome, which has been thriving since it opened last April. As the name implies, the shop is a quirky type of shooting gallery, similar to the tacky types often found in rural hot springs resorts. This one seems to be attracting sightseers on group tours to Tokyo. Read more

Feisty females find cherry boys’ defloration a one-time affair

For a few feisty adult females who feel the urge, there’s probably nothing better to set their G-spot a-spasm than a pink-cheeked cherry boy.

Shukan Taishu (Aug. 17) reports on some of the seduction techniques used by mature gals to initiate innocent young fellows into the rites of manhood.

Megumi, who is 28, works at the cosmetics sales counter in a Tokyo department store. Last May she was introduced to the 18-year-old brother of Keiko, her co-worker, who had just arrived in the capital as a university freshman.

“Senpai,” said Keiko to Megumi, “my brother really admires you. How about showing him around?”

She agreed, and wound up taking him for a drive through scenic rural Chiba on her day off from work. Read more

Golden Week looks good for getting it on

“Let’s not mince words. More than ever, this is the era for visiting soaplands (erotic bathhouses),” advises Shukan Asahi Geino (Apr. 30) in its lead-in. Why? Well first of all, because the female staff at such shops have been disciplined to observe the “customer comes first” rules drilled into salaried workers. And especially for middle-aged men, with all their aggravations great and small, this kind of treatment is really “indispensable.”

The good news is that during the upcoming Golden Week holiday period, which begins on April 25 for some and April 29 for others, a high-class Yoshiwara soapland has arranged for a budget “package” consisting of overnight hotel accommodations plus a 70-minute romp in the suds with a lovely soapstress, for a very affordable 30,000 yen, all-inclusive. Read more

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