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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PaperclipPerfector
11d ago
(text post)
1593 thread views
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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Notes -
This is neither fun nor necessarily limited to Friday, but I wanted to add something to this conversation, lest I be perceived as the resident apologist for libertinism and infidelity.
I met my wife when I was 32 years old. She was young then—we both were—we had an odd courtship which had pauses, hiccups, and what threatened to be an end, but she finally moved in with me, we cohabitated for about three years, moved to the US where we stayed with my family for about 6 months, and eventually wed there officially. We had a Hawaii wedding a year later (She is Japanese, after all.)
My wife and children are to me the most precious part of my life. Without them, I cannot imagine myself. Sometimes when I am alone in the house (as I am right now) I reflect on how fortunate I have been, and how fragile it all is.
I have a folder on my computer titled simply “remember” in which I’ve added 20 or 30 old potato photos taken with ancient phones, of my wife in her younger days—taking naps, at a pub eating a fish eye, in a hammock on one jaunt we took to a large park, at Santa Monica beach, and on and on. I keep this folder so that I can focus my attention laser-like on the her of yesteryear, the girl who loved me (and you always know, gentlemen, when a girl loves you, or likes you, or fancies you. It isn’t hard to know when it happens, though the signals may seem strange and unfamiliar to those who’ve never noticed them.) She does not always love me the same way now. We’ve been married now 21 years. That’s not as long as some, but it’s long enough that we’ve had our share of issues.
Why do I write this? Because I might not have the perfect marriage of my own parents (my father told my mother he loved her at least once pretty much every day I can remember) but I do have a marriage, a good one, one that I would not trade for all the single-man-getting-laid years you could throw at me. In the words of Jordan Peterson: I will never leave her, ever. And, also, I’ve been through the wringer with enough young beautiful women who would sidetrack me to realize that Mike Pence was not as far off as some would have it: Any man in the wrong circumstances is capable of cheating. The trick is to stay the hell away from those circumstances. Many, many close calls. In a way I feel fortunate to have been a rake earlier in life. Out of my system, as it were. More or less.
So why the apologist for cheating? Because I live here, in a culture where the norms are different, where one can be completely faithful to societal and even religious expectations and still bang a callgirl on a Tuesday afternoon after seminar. It’s a different world. I will never be used to it, and only understand through a glass darkly. The Harlot's cry from Street to Street may weave old England’s winding sheet, but I am not convinced it will do the same to Japan. At least not yet.
Would I pass @2rafa’s sniff test? Well at one point I would have, but in those days I was a beardless boy, didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, and was completely blinded by a singular obsession with my beloved. (Which is as it should be, which is what I would have all men be in that stage.) Time has hardened me (that is not a pun. Well it is. And isn’t.)
My wife’s birthday is in December. The day she received her gift, I went to the gym and when I returned our sons were upstairs and she beckoned me over saying we needed to talk. I sat down, and she told me that if I had a girlfriend I needed to end it. Baffled, I asked her what she was talking about. Apparently she had seen a receipt for a fairly expensive gift for a woman and that had not been her birthday present. She assumed I was buying for my mistress. Because? She’s Japanese. This is what happens. What are we in Love, Actually?
The receipt was for her Christmas gift, still hidden in our tatami room closet, and I made the decision that confessing this was probably more helpful than keeping the surprise. I suggested she could go look if she liked. She wept, hugged me, then pulled away and regained her Japanese composure. I was amused, but I loved her more at that moment than I could remember in years, simply because I had a glimpse of the girl who didn’t daily complain that I did xyz incorrectly. Have I told you that my wife is beautiful? She is. Unimaginably. She could have been a model, but thank God she never was.
Who was it, @oats_son, who complained about revealing personal shit online? He’s probably right. I don't cheat. But the world is big, more things in this world than dreamt of your philosophy, if I may mangle Shakespeare.
I keep hearing online about Japan's cheating culture; is it true?
You had the opportunity to do the funniest thing (rent-a-girlfriend and try to keep the charade going until the 25th).
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.
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