Bloomberg has published an interesting in-depth article on hostess clubs in Japan during the coronavirus pandemic.
"Champagne, chandeliers and glitzy cocktail frocks are all part of the fantasy world conjured up by Japan's hostess clubs. The coronavirus has delivered an unwelcome dose of reality."
Since the outbreak, much of the media reporting and imagery promoted by politicians has unfairly blamed nightlife for spreading the virus, rather than the various other factors (also) responsible such as crowded commuter trains, offices, and regular izakaya and restaurants.
It is true, however, ...
These news stories are coming thick and fast.
Just Monday we reported on the emergence of a service using Zoom to offer a virtual hostess club experience.
Now there is SmaCaba, another remote hostess club service.
With a typically Japanese mashup of "smartphone" and "kyabakura" (cabaret club, a euphemism for hostess club) for its name, SmaCaba links hostesses and customers through their handheld devices. The session that a customer enjoys with an available hostess is conducted via LINE, Zoom, or Skype. Sessions are available from 7pm every day except Sundays.
The customer/user pays with ...
We recently wrote about the various ways that the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the adult industry in Japan.
While certain prostitution services are attempting to exploit the crisis for its marketing potential, the plight of hostesses is gaining attention. Kabukicho, where many hostess clubs are located, has been identified as one of the probable causes of the spread of the virus in Tokyo due to the closely confined nature of the clubs. One-fourth of people in Shinjuku infected in March were working in role connected to nightlife services.
With nightlife in the capital essentially dead ...
With the coronavirus pandemic still raging all over the world, many people are stuck at home. If they are stuck there with a partner, the chances are they are passing the time by getting intimate together. There's nothing quite like sex to take one's mind off a crisis. Failing that, there's always masturbation, so we are sure that traffic for porn sites is going through the roof right now.
Things in Japan just got more serious, with the declaration last night of a state of emergency, although the current number of infections are still much lower than other major industrialized nations.
How ...
It's a job that apparently one in four Japanese women have some experience of doing, but how well do we know the role of the hostess?
Meet Kurumi Hoshino (星野くるみ), who is described as the "number 1 hostess in Japan." The 28-year-old Hoshino is currently based at Club Lalah in Roppongi, where she is the biggest attraction and earner at the club where 50 women are working each night.
For 15 minutes, Hoshino talks about her life and work, going from the rural sticks in Kumamoto, toiling away at a local karaoke joint, to earning nearly $1,000 a day in Tokyo.
She helpfully starts by ...
After doing a "hair nude" full-frontal shoot last year, we wondered where the gravure idol and actress Bambi Watanabe would go next.
It seems she went to TV Tokyo and for a visually tame but nonetheless sensual sex scene in a late-night drama series.
In episode two of Kabukicho Bengonin Rinka (Kabukicho Attorney Rinka), which is about a female lawyer working among hostesses, Bambi is show stripping off in a love hotel room to reveal her largest chest, albeit hidden within a bra or under her arms. An old dude looks on with obvious interest. He then has sex with her, even though she is ...
It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a way of linking maid cafes and hostess bars with digital idols and adult virtual reality.
Behold the VR hostess cafe.
Yumenographia is not a physical space, but exists purely in a digital realm: it's waiting for your patronage whenever and wherever you put on a VR headset. It is staffed by hostesses/maids who are, of course, entirely "fake" -- in the sense that they are digital avatars. But, and this is a big "but," the hostesses are real in the sense that they are the avatars of genuine people, rather than characters. At some remote ...
The Education Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has apologized for using an official car to pay visits to a "sexy yoga" studio.
It follows a sexual harassment scandal involving a leading bureaucrat in the finance ministry, who was recently forced to resign after audio emerged of him asking to hug and touch the breasts of a female newspaper reporter.
The tabloids have gleefully parsed the details of this new transgression, such as the private oil massage Hayashi received from the yoga instructor. Was there also a bit of rub and tug?!
We, on the other hand, are more intrigued by the instructors. ...
Former actor Noboru Takachi has been arrested for possession of a stimulant drug and cannabis.
Best known overseas for appearing in films like Yamato, the 51-year-old was a big star in the 1990s. Takachi, whose real name is Joji Osaki, recently retired from acting ostensibly to look after his wife's father.
He was arrested at a love hotel in Yokohama, where he was staying with Atsuko Isokawa, a 33-year-old hostess.
Noboru Takachi had previously been married to AV actress Momo Aida (pictured below), though they divorced after six years together.
He then married the ...
Tsuneo Akaeda, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker, has provoked some controversy by suggesting at an April 12th meeting on child poverty that girls who take correspondence courses end up becoming hostesses.
The bizarre leap in logic -- as if LDP politicians have the right to look down on hostesses anyway, given how they are frequent patrons of hostess clubs, and some legislators even started off their careers as hostesses -- was made by the 72-year-old and quoted in the media.
"Even if girls take correspondence courses because their parents have made them do it, they just end up ...
