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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1790 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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is it true?

I wouldn't want to generalize but I'd suggest it is not a complete myth. Assumptions can be made simply from the number of entertainment districts (in Kitashinchi alone there are probably a hundred or more hostess clubs and Kitashinchi is one small area of Osaka) and call girl services (harder to count but a simple search online for so-called 'delivery health' will find many, many shops, with as many girls employed), to say nothing of the more hidden places such as soaplands (I associate these with the truly depraved), image clubs, girl's bars, deai sites, and all the other categories I am too naive to even know exist.

The trick of course is that the true sin is to open the barn door. It's in a way like 和. Like Fight Club. The ultimate misstep is to talk about it. It's the water trade (水商売), fuzoku (風俗, which actually means public morals but is used for prostitution), what they used to call the floating world (浮世, but this is a very very old term.)

Note that all of these are so-called pay-for-play, with varying degrees of actual intimacy--hostess clubs, for example, might have regulars, and not involve sex (but might.) More traditional affairs where one is cheating with the secretary are I would imagine more rare, if simply because the legal repercussions would be extreme. A wife can sue the mistress into oblivion--notably, even if she does not divorce the husband. The catch is that if it's a business relationship, that (the chance to sue for compensation) all goes out the window because it is not considered an emotional betrayal. Or something .

An effortpost on all of this would be interesting to write, but I don't know if I want to be known as the guy who writes about Japanese prostitution.

Not to push you into becoming the Japanese sex industry guy, but I noticed you referred to hostess clubs and girl's bars as two separate categories. I was previously under the impression that these were the same thing; any chance you could quickly elaborate on the distinction?

No problem.

A hostess club, or スナック (snack bar) in small-scale, consists of you paying a set fee (typically 50-60 bucks USD) to gain entrance to a place where drinks will be served to you for a certain period of time. During this time various females in balldresses or whatever will approach you, you will find yourself suddenly sitting beside them, and you can buy them a drink or ignore them as you would. Typically you buy them a cocktail, which will be added to your bill. If you want a cigarette someone will be sent to fetch you a pack. If you want to sing a song on the karaoke machine this will be immediately arranged, and if you sing you will feel, for at least a few seconds, as if you are really finally hitting the notes. General vibe: Women sitting beside you in sexy dresses, pouring your cocktails and lighting your smokes, and you leave with a big bill.

Girl's bars, which seem now fewer than in the past, may or may not have a table charge but a girl's bar designation simply means only 19-25 or so yr old girls will be behind the bar, primed to chat with you. The drink system (you buying them one) is roughly the same.

Thanks for indulging my curiosity!

Not at all.

In all cases, as in the ultimate indulgence of going to a Gion teahouse to liaise with a geiko (or geisha to use the popular term, and yes they still exist) the ability to speak, or, more importantly understand Japanese is at least partially the key to appreciating the interaction. A girl at a girl's bar will be--well, a girl. She will be young and will probably know how to be a listener and ask questions, but any interviewer or, now, LLM, can do that. She probably won't speak much or indeed any English, and her charms will be the usual sublunary, earthy charms such as a plunging neckline or flittery eyelashes. A hostess will be, depending on the quality of the establishment, so skilled in chattily manipulating you that you'll feel you're actually an interesting person. If you understand her.

A geiko will be able to do all of the above easily but will also be skilled at playing shamisen or koto, will know and be able to recite poetry, will be savvy to current events should you wish to have a Mottelike sounding board, will even argue with you if you seem like the arguing type, and will leave you feeling both challenged, entertained, and more intelligent than when you went in. And again, you'll feel interesting. But if you can't speak or understand Japanese or do not have the cultural knowledge to appreciate said sweet nothings, these wiles of course are limited in their charm.

An effortpost on all of this would be interesting to write, but I don't know if I want to be known as the guy who writes about Japanese prostitution.

My understanding is that 90%+ of this world is not open to foreigners, and even less if you don't speak Japanese, so I would think you could do so without undue suspicion.

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