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 ...
There are some 11,000 registered hostess clubs in Tokyo.
We've seen plenty of overseas interest in the life of a Japanese hostess before, such as this short video chronicling a regular 24 hours for one Tokyo lady.
But what about the foreign hostesses? As we all known, there are legions of Russian and other nationalities staffing the hostess clubs of Ginza and elsewhere, often on dubious visa statuses.
It's a bit old but we came across this 60-minute documentary about foreign hostesses working in Tokyo.
Called Tokyo Girls, it is about four Canadians whose story may or may not ...
It seems whenever the western media wants something saucy, they make an article or video about Japanese hostesses.
Vice did a 24-hours-in-the-life-of video of a "high-class hostess" last year.
Now the BBC has jumped in with this interview with a Kabukicho hostess.
As a hostess at a club in Shinjuku Kabuki-cho, Emiri Aizawa, 27, pours drinks, lights cigarettes and listens to men.
"My main job is let them have fun," she says.
"Of course, there have been customers who asked for more, because we are men and women, but I politely say, 'No.' "I don't think you can do this job ...
The Asahi Shimbun has an interesting translated story following up on the "controversial court ruling that equates a bar hostess having sex with a customer to prostitution".
We reported on this in May, when a judge said a hostess mama-san was simply doing makura eigyo ("pillow business") by sleeping with a client.
Lawyers specializing in divorce and adultery cases, private detectives who investigate cases of adultery and hostesses in the Ginza, where the defendant operates her establishment, all voiced concern. They said the ruling, by Judge Masamitsu Shiseki of the Tokyo District ...
A judge has made a ruling which should mean hostesses and hostess club mama-san's (the older ladies who own and/or manage the club) can rest easy.
The wife of a CEO who spent around seven years having an affair with the mama of a Ginza hostess club sued her husband's sexual partner for "mental suffering" she had caused. She wanted compensation of ¥4 million ($32,000).
The judge said that the Ginza mama-san was just doing makura eigyo ("pillow business"), the euphemism for when people have sex to further their career or do business. In other words, the Ginza hostess mama-san only ...
