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 ...

     Read More     

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 ...

     Read More     

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 ...

     Read More