Tales from the Strip Club

[Mike Oxlong]

I Was No Tourist: My Travels Through Tokyo's Sex Underworld

After Tokyo's bubble economy burst, the Roppongi district—once an upmarket quarter with exclusive nightlife—became known for its massage parlors and sex clubs, largely staffed by foreigners. It was here that I found myself, one steamy August night, sitting in a darkened strip joint while the police knocked on the door.

Roppongi's unseemliness was tolerated for a while but by the early years of the 21 st century, with an Olympic bid on the horizon, Governor Ishihara had initiated a "Clean Up Tokyo" campaign aimed to make Roppongi respectable again by replacing the clubs with department stores, five-star hotels, luxury residences, and shiny new luxury store/hotel/residence. But as Roppongi was rising skyward, I was descending deeper into the area's underworld.

I went traveling just about as soon as I was able to leave home. It began with a flight to Tokyo, where, aged 19, I spent three months working in a hostess club, then made a loop around the southern hemisphere before returning back to the U.K. for college. A few years later, armed with a degree but few prospects for making anything of myself, I returned to a place where I could at least make someone else of myself and earn a pretty good amount of money doing so: Roppongi.

I returned to Tokyo early 2005. As I had done seven years earlier during my first stint living there, I found work at a hostess club. Hostess clubs are on the outer fringes of the mizu shobai or "water trade," a euphemism for Japan's sex trades. All hostesses were required to do was to look pretty, top up drinks, light cigarettes and make conversation with customers. It was a basic service job dressed up in evening gowns and low lighting. I had enjoyed hostessing the first time around; it was good money and I had liked the artifice of it all, pretending to be a party girl. And it felt just far enough removed from the sex industry to feel safe. Two years after my first trip, however, there had been a murder. An Englishwoman named Lucie Blackman had disappeared while out with a customer beyond the confines of the club—a platonic date known as a dohan. The club charges a fee to the customer for taking the hostess outside and the hostess is required to form an artificial relationship with the customers. The relationship must be convincing enough so that these patrons are willing to pay extra for her company. Many of the clubs have a strict requirement that their employees go on at least one dohan per week; they fire those women who cannot meet the quota, so the pressure to accept a dohan, even from someone who might seem a bit creepy, is strong.

As the investigation into Lucie's disappearance proceeded, it became clear the man accused of her death, Joji Obara, had been drugging and raping women on dohans for years. Police hadn't taken complaints about him seriously, allegedly because they came from women working in the mizu shobai. "The mizu shobai woman," writes Anne Allison in her book on hostess clubs, "is constructed as a female who transgresses her nature." In an interview given to TIME magazine in 2001, one hostess club owner talked about the time he went to the police to report an assault on a staff member: "I am a club owner, and she was a hostess," he said. "They looked down on that. They refused to open a case."

Obara was eventually found guilty of the earlier manslaughter of an Australian hostess, in addition to dismembering and disposing of Lucie's body (which was found seven months later). He was not, however, convicted of her actual murder. Stung by criticism that the police didn't care about women working in the mizu shobai, Tokyo police showed their compassion with a new focus on busting on them. This nicely coincided with the Clean Up Tokyo campaign, with a particular focus on criminal foreigners.

Determined to stay in place, my fellow mizu shobai workers and I took precautions. We walked to and from work via backstreets, wearing nondescript clothes and our hair bundled under baseball caps. We stored our customers' phone numbers under coded names because we had heard that the police were stopping women and going through their phones hoping to find evidence of illegal work. Although none of us actually knew anyone this had happened to, we became inured to the atmosphere of paranoia.

The story of Lucie's murder hung heavy around Roppongi for years afterwards, always within easy reach of a customer—particularly the self-described "playboys" who'd been frequenting the clubs for years—who wanted to scare, or maybe impress, us with their familiarity with Lucie or the suspect. My Tokyo life seemed to orbit around the case. I worked in the same club as Lucie. I was there two years before her disappearance; later the club changed its name and I returned after four years. Barely two months later I was fired for not getting enough dohans, so I moved on to another club.

One beautiful spring afternoon when the cherry trees were in full bloom, I was in my room phoning customers and asking them to take me on a dohan, when another girl in my guesthouse told me she worked at a club where no-one cared if you went on dohans or not. It took a while for her to tell me this was actually a strip club, but by that point, I didn't care. Tired of the dohan expectations and general bullshit, I finally quit hostessing altogether; I wanted to make more money without having to maintain pseudo-relationships with customers, so I started stripping. Coincidentally I found myself again in the same building as where I started, working in a strip club one floor above the club where Lucie had met the man who would eventually dismember her. But the new club was just my kind of place: totally relaxed, no delusions of sophistication like in the hostess clubs or in the "classy" strip clubs where you were expected to wear evening gowns and do your hair and nails. In other words, it was a dive...

Continued

[legion]

I hate Roppongi

[Yokohammer]

Misspent much of my youth in Roppongi. But that's ... um ... a very long time ago, when it was a happening, friendly, and even classy place. It is now a monumental shithole.


~ Tapatalking ~

[Takechanpoo]

among native men here, those ones, who are interested in and approach non-japanese women, especially western ones, are minority who were repelled from social mainstream for some reasons. Sagawa was born to be a midget. Obara is zainichi korean(as long as i know, actually its relatively high % that z-korean are married with westerners). Ichibashi..no idea..for his lizard-like face? so its often the case they have twisted libidos for their terrible memory in their childhood.
the other japanese guys are hardly interested in western women and just observe them like rare animals. i often hear that western white women, especially american ones looks like guys disguising themself as women for average j-guys. and it seems like some guys stalk them to confirm how and where those rare female westerners, especially kinpatsu ones, live a life in this small and umcomfortable country. i have to confess actually i too once was driven by impulse to stalk a white woman in my neighborhood. i didnt do that though.

[Coligny]

among native men here, those ones, who are interested in and approach non-japanese women, especially western ones, are minority who were repelled from social mainstream for some reasons. Sagawa was born to be a midget. Obara is zainichi korean(as long as i know, actually its relatively high % that z-korean are married with westerners). Ichibashi..no idea..for his lizard-like face? so its often the case they have twisted libidos for their terrible memory in their childhood.
the other japanese guys are hardly interested in western women and just observe them like rare animals. i often hear that western white women, especially american ones looks like guys disguising themself as women for average j-guys. and it seems like some guys stalk them to confirm how and where those rare female westerners, especially kinpatsu ones, live a life in this small and umcomfortable country. i have to confess actually i too once was driven by impulse to stalk a white woman in my neighborhood. i didnt do that though.

You should write books...

We need a proper alternative to toilet paper when it runs out after the zombie apocalypse...

[Samurai_Jerk]

So Karen Gardiner's story can be summed up as she was a hostess and stripper in Tokyo and not much happened to her.

[Takechanpoo]

some j-guys stalk them and "hey look!! see, i will be next lucy blackman!"
its a typical giant leap thinking which often seen among women.
in womens thinking circuit, it often happens that kind of logical leaping especially when the self-consevation switch on their thinking circuit is on.
my guess is that most of them, who stalk white gaijin females, just wanna know the ecology of those rare "animals".



you cannot be too careful, though.

[Takechanpoo]

found another interesting one
http://www.vagabondish.com/female-forei ... nospa=true

[legion]

So Karen Gardiner's story can be summed up as she was a hostess and stripper in Tokyo and not much happened to her.

yup, but she manages to stretch it out for a few paragraphs, without photos

[Samurai_Jerk]

found another interesting one
http://www.vagabondish.com/female-forei ... nospa=true

Oh, God. Another one of those.

[matsuki]

our club was run by a Nigerian-Cameroonian couple, staffed by Ghanian flyers, a Mongolian waiter, and strippers from Russia, Sweden, Kenya, the Philippines, Cameroon, Israel, and the U.K, drawn from all over the world to try our luck in Tokyo.

Oh the glamour !

[Coligny]

Party pooper, it would be an upgrade in the big T.
Here the clubs are run by locals, the strippers are cows and goats. And they are only open from sunrise to sunset.
And weirdly all called "Farm... Sumthing"

[matsuki]

All I know is there looks like some fun can be had on one side of Gifu station. Was there with a lemur so no fun for me but I heard it was quite the happening place

[Mike Oxlong]

All I know is there looks like some fun can be had on one side of Gifu station. Was there with a lemur so no fun for me but I heard it was quite the happening place

Soapland?! You might be 20 years too late, but...

[matsuki]

All I know is there looks like some fun can be had on one side of Gifu station. Was there with a lemur so no fun for me but I heard it was quite the happening place

Soapland?! You might be 20 years too late, but...

Didn't get good look but there seemed to be a bit of everything. I had been there several times before but one wrong turn and I saw that side of the eki for the first time

[kurogane]

The Other Side of Gifu Station (circa 1999) used to make Shin-Okubo look like a Temperance & Celibacy Union theme park. Probably one of the most revolting things I have ever seen. Those ridiculous Cambodian whores actually made me feel bad for being born human.

Why the fuck were you in Gifu anyways? I would rather go to the Fukushima exclusion zone than Gifu. That place is the unwashed perineum of the universe.

[Coligny]

Checking mah map... Gifu: "There shall be dragons"
Yup, never went there, never will...

Fukushima meanwhile...

[Mike Oxlong]

Nishi-Yanagase on the "proper" side is just a run-down collection of cabarets, snacks, and Filipina clubs.

[matsuki]

The Other Side of Gifu Station (circa 1999) used to make Shin-Okubo look like a Temperance & Celibacy Union theme park. Probably one of the most revolting things I have ever seen. Those ridiculous Cambodian whores actually made me feel bad for being born human.

It was more like 2007 when I was there...

Why the fuck were you in Gifu anyways? I would rather go to the Fukushima exclusion zone than Gifu. That place is the unwashed perineum of the universe.

[kurogane]

Is that pubic knowledge? I lived 4 minutes down the road from there. I was the last Gassho on the right. The one on the left was my landlord, but the one on the right is for rent if you're interested

I meant the Shitty, not the province. Unavoidale Banjo music aside, many parts of Gifu The Province are quite liveable and usually stunning.



On the peak, 5 th from the right.

[Russell]

Is that pubic knowledge? I lived 4 minutes down the road from there. I was the last Gassho on the right. The one on the left was my landlord, but the one on the right is for rent if you're interested

I meant the Shitty, not the province. Unavoidale Banjo music aside, many parts of Gifu The Province are quite liveable and usually stunning.

Unfortunately, the people are morons...

[kurogane]

I always used to worry I was alone in thinking that. Now I know better

Still, good 3 string banjo players.......... :banjo:

BTW, if you haven't been there yet it makes for a lovely day trip. I think you can still camp by the river, or just keep going and stay in Kanazawa, where they have lots of that magical hot water the natives are always quimming about.

[legion]

found another interesting one
http://www.vagabondish.com/female-forei ... nospa=true

Oh, God. Another one of those.

Wonder if she is aware the majority of international marriages in Japan are between Japanese men and foreign women.

[J.A.F.O]

My wife's uncle did that trick, nabbed a hot little thai chick that was only 19.... And she had the hots for me. Talk about awkward family dinners.