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

Tokyo college seniors expelled over project ‘to protect ugly women’

Tokyo Metropolitan University, or TMU, was formed in 2005 by the merger of four public institutions of higher learning in the Tokyo area. The institution was in the headlines recently when two of its seniors majoring in system design were summarily expelled.

The two had come up with a project they named “Dobusu wo Mamoru Kai” (group to protect ugly women).

“They went around on the street accosting women, saying they were ‘researching an article,’” a source at TMU tells Shukan Shincho (July 8). “Later it was determined that the video, showing the faces of certain women, had been posted on YouTube without the subjects’ permission.” Read more

Sex-trade tabloid Tokyo Manzoku News to cease publication

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, April 22, 2010)

TOKYO (TR) – Sex-service tip sheet Tokyo Manzoku News will offer guidance through Tokyo’s adult entertainment areas for the final time next month, announced the owner of the title.

The 16-year-old publication, under the umbrella of publishing house Creators Company Connection, offers pricing and location assistance for clientele interested in fuzoku (sex-related) clubs and bars within Tokyo’s larger nightlife quarters, including Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Shibuya.

The final issue of the 32-page sheet will hit the stands on May 13. The company cited developments in the media business as the reason for the termination. Read more

Crackdown on Tokyo fraud ring closes ‘encounter’ Internet sites

Law enforcement authorities from Tokyo and Miyagi Prefecture have shut down a major fraud ring involving online-dating sites designed to generate massive profits out of membership fees, reports Shukan Asahi Geino (Mar. 11).

On January 16, Noriyuki Hoshi, the leader of the operation, and ten others were taken into custody by police for defrauding members of deai-kei (encounter) matchmaking sites by hiring male actors to take on online personas of ladies seeking dates.

A reporter responsible for covering social media explains to the weekly that the victims were registered with such social networking sites as Mixi and Mobagetown. Between July 2005 and the day of the crackdown, the nationwide scam had swindled 1.4 million individuals out of a total of 2 billion yen. Read more

Curtain falls in Kabukicho

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, January 17, 2010)

Carnivorous consumer of young hunks does her shopping in Shinjuku

A popular neologism in 2009 was nikushoku-kei joshi (carnivorous women). Some such females, of the arafoo (around age 40) persuasion, can sometimes be found trolling for male company in Shinjuku 2-chome, Tokyo’s largest gay enclave.

Divorcee Mie Takeuchi, age 41, is in the habit of heading for 2-chome on evenings before a holiday.

“I like to hang out in gay bars and enjoy the music. And best of all, men don’t come on to me,” the slender, attractive Mie tells Shukan Asahi Geino (Dec. 31-Jan. 7).

It seems that Mie, in the fashion of a true carnivore, is the type who likes to make the first move on a guy. 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

Navigating Japan’s nyotaimori netherworld

TOKYO (TR) – For at least as long as nyotaimori — the practice of serving sushi on the body of a naked female’s torso — has been making inroads overseas, the media has been raising the same question: Where does the practice fit within the context of Japanese culture?

For an answer, one can turn to the 168-cm-long body of Miho Wakabayashi. Until last year, the 30-year-old’s bare stomach and limbs were adorned with fish and fresh fruit slices once a month at the Sleeping Beauty “happening bar” in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. (Such a drinking establishment is one in which customers engage in uninhibited intimate activities with one another.)

“It was a show promoted as a special event,” says Wakabayashi, who is also a part-time stripper, sometimes performing at the legendary Rokku-za theater in Asakusa, and an actress in adult films. “It was used as a kind of ice-breaker intended to draw laughs.” Read more

Suspected ‘black widow’ Kanae Kijima with possible ties to nightclub host

Documents related to the investigation of marriage fraud suspect Kanae Kijima reveal that she had an association with a nightclub host, reports Shukan Asahi (Dec. 11).

Saitama Prefectural Police have learned that the 34-year-old was probably supporting a male acquaintance, aged in his 30s and employed at a host club in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward. “He is the most important person in the investigation,” says a source close the investigation. “He is not showing up to work now. And he might be the reason for Kijima’s crimes. The money she got from these guys was used to feed and take care of him.”

The same documents indicate that police are presently building cases for murder around the suspicious deaths of six men, many of whom gave Kijima sizable sums of money. Thus far, Kijima has been arrested four times for defrauding multiple other men, in their 40s and 50s and residing in various prefectures across the Kanto region, out of a total of 7.7 million yen after posing as a prospective marriage partner. (That figure is an update by Shukan Asahi over previous reports.) The most recent arrest occurred on November 18. Read more

Shinjuku gay district’s ‘war trophy’ fails to lead cops to murder suspect Tatsuya Ichihashi

Reporting on the arrest of accused murderer Tatsuya Ichihashi on Nov. 10 in Osaka port, Shukan Shincho (Nov. 19) was really quick on the draw, with five short items in its latest issue, just two days after the arrest.

From one article, readers learn that the police dragnet last year had extended to the notorious gay enclave in Tokyo’s Shinjuku 2-chome, where a 36-year-old denizen of the area named Nobuharu Terasaki (a pseudonym) came forward to notify police he had engaged in physical relations with a man resembling Ichihashi on two occasions, in late February and early March of 2008. Read more

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