Mimi-kaki: Japanese ear-cleaning, foreplay and sex salons

Mimi-kaki is the Japanese custom of ear-cleaning, but not just swirling a cotton bud around your lobes like any old perfunctory hygiene task — but the act of having your ears lovingly tendered to by a maternal young lass, your head traditionally resting in her lap while she soothes your worries away.

It is very common for husbands to be “serviced” in this way and it can often become a form of bonding, or even foreplay, for couples. Psychologists of course will read all sorts of mother fantasies into this relationship.

Even the tool used is different, a kind of bamboo hook with a bit of cotton on the end. Apparently it is more effective for cleaning and also safer. (Cotton buds famously end up ramming more bad stuff deeper into your canals.)

There are also professional mimi-kaki clinics, places where a man can go and get his ears cleaned while resting his head in a girl’s lap, and telling her all about his stresses and problems. If all this sounds like a kind of hairdressers-meets-hostess club, then they would be right! There is even at least one major chain with multiple branches.

It is also obviously just a hop, skip and ear swipe away from a sex club, and many fuzoku use “mimi-kaki” as a cover word for blatant sexual services.

I personally quite like giving Taro or Tadashi’s ears a clean (it makes a change from giving head!) and listening to their work woes. It is a kind of counseling and the power of course is all in the hands of the female!