As poorly as the economy might be faring in Tokyo, things are even worse in Japan’s hinterlands, where failing businesses are laying off female employees left and right, and where university graduates are finding few job opportunities.
Many of these females, reports Nikkan Gendai (Jul. 31), are left with no alternative but to hop the inexpensive all-night highway buses that run on the expressways and come to the big city for temporary jobs in the sex industry.
Women from the Tohoku region appear the most likely to be so engaged.
“I fib to my parents that I’m going to stay with friend in Tokyo for a week or so,” says Reiko, a 26-year woman from Morioka City in Iwate Prefecture. Actually she’s registered with a deri heru (out-call sex) service that puts her up in a one-room manshon.
“All I have to pay for are the utilities,” she tells the tabloid. “I usually come in on a Saturday and stay until Tuesday — four days. While in town I try to hold down expenses, just eat a boxed meal from a convenience store and wash it down with a can of beer.”
Reiko, described as a beauty with a lovely white complexion, services an average of five male customers a day. Her cut of the 13,000 yen her customers pay for a 60-minute romp is 60 percent, or 7,800 yen, which means she can typically earn about 39,000 yen per day.
“The girls from the countryside are wholesome and popular,” says a reporter who covers the “pink” trade. “Shops attract more customers by fixing them up with girls from Tohoku, so there’s a steady demand.”
Eriko, a 37-year-old housewife from Nagano Prefecture, took up similar work after her husband’s two annual bonuses dropped to zero.
“At first I made up a story that I was going into Tokyo to receive orientation for life insurance sales, but my husband caught onto my lie right off,” admits Eriko. “But he knows I was doing it to make up for the shortfall in his income, and makes a pretense of not knowing what’s really going on. It’s hard on both of us. And our little boy, who’s still in kindergarten, cries ‘Mama, don’t go!’ to me when I leave to catch the bus.
“There were times when I cried on the bus, all the way into Tokyo.” (K.S.)
Source: “Shinya kosoku basu de jyokyo suru ‘fuuzoku dekasegi-onna’ tachi,” Nikkan Gendai (July 31, page 20)