Somehow we’ve gotten everything on my list done in time to take the subway home. I’m torn between feeling satisfied by the efficiency and feeling lame because we’ll be in bed before one am. I’m also drunk. Breakfast was a long time ago, women have a lower alcohol tolerance than men (they’ve done scientific studies), and I’ve been keeping up with Matt drink-for-drink. He suggests we get coffee on the way to the train station. I state my preference for and receive chai. As soon as all that caffeine and sugar hits my system I go from docile and toasted to highly energetic and rambunctious.

I’m blaming the lack of photos in this post on the fact that I got drunk and forgot to keep posing for them.

There is a very long escalator leading from street level down to the subway platform. Standing in front of me is a woman with a furry pink scarf. She’s absorbed in a conversation with the woman on the step below her. I’m staring at the scarf trying to figure out if I can pet it without her noticing. It looks really soft and I wanted to pet
kittens earlier in the day and didn’t have the chance. The scarf is on top of her hair, which is on top of her winter coat. She’s probably wearing at least a shirt, if not an undershirt as well. There are so many layers between the scarf and her skin that she’d have to be like the girl from The Princess and the Pea to feel anything. I must have some facial expression that conveys the mischief going on in my brain, because Matt leans over and asks what I’m up to.

“Nothing.”

My hand reaches out to touch the pink fur, letting him know that I am in fact totally up to something. Up to something really weird that he’s going to have a hard time talking our way out of if I get caught. He gently slaps my hand down and reminds me that we’re in a foreign country. He’s distracted by trying to formulate a convincing argument against touching this stranger. We’re getting close to the end of the escalator and I’m running out of time. My right arm is trapped, constrained by Matt’s hand and what I’m currently perceiving as his spoilsport streak, but my left arm is gloriously free. Very gently I reach over and stroke this woman’s fuzzy cold-weather accessory with my index finger.

“Yes! What? I think it’s healthy to indulge my bizarre compulsions. It was harmless. She’ll never know.”

… and she never would have known, were it not for her friend who was standing behind us watching the whole scene unfold.

Oops.

In my defense, groping people on public transportation is practically tradition. It happens so often in Japan that they have special pink cars reserved for women during the crowded morning rush, when most gropers supposedly strike. There’s enough of a market for train groping fantasies that Tokyo has multiple brothels with fake train cars where the prostitutes act like innocent commuters. They have a Groping Prevention Week. Before you suggest that I should have brought a furry scarf to a prostitute, let me remind you that the really exciting parts of the red light districts are off limits to me because of my race and gender.

I now feel like I’ve experienced illicit groping from both sides, as the gropee and the groper. As the groper, I kind of feel like a jerk. Feel free to tell me how much of a jerk you think I am at the Fleshbot Awards tonight. All Twitter verifications of jerk status will be ignored.

[This post is a part of Fleshbot's Stoya Week. Photo of Stoya courtesy of Digital Playground.]

So far my big Japan Sex Adventure has been a highly entertaining failure. There have been antics, hijinks, and misadventures, but no successful encounters with anything really sex-y. Perhaps I should have done research before hand, but the blind exploration is usually half the fun. We make our way to the main street and look for a bar, figuring a drink or two might help somehow. I spot the couple from the Zero hotel and begin to think the universe just wants them to be uncomfortable. Matt and I duck into a building with six floors of tiny drinking establishments and choose the one called 1987.

1987 is a small navy blue room with a bar on one wall and a giant television on the other. It’s darkly lit, and the bartender understands English. I can tell she understands English by the way she blushes every time I say something mildly vulgar. From what I’ve experienced Japanese people are quiet and reserved compared to Americans. Also, they seem to embarrass easily. I have almost no conscious volume control and spend much of my life in environments where loud discussions of sex and a general lack of clothing are encouraged. Celebrated, even. When you put these two facts together, you end up with me wandering Tokyo making a two week long inappropriate scene and trying not to tell people I’m from the USA so I don’t make the rest of you look bad.

Matt is trying to convince me that we should go to a bar in Roppongi that he frequents. I want to stay at the bar we’re in long enough to figure out why it’s called 1987. As I begin noticing that the television only plays music videos from the 80s, I remember that there are strip clubs in Roppongi. How could a strip club possibly go wrong? The remainder of my nihonshu goes down the hatch, and we’re off to see some exotic dancers.

When we exit the train station, the streets are filled with large Nigerian men trying to hustle people into various clubs. After a quick stop at Matt’s usual watering hole for another drink, I drag him back outside. In the interests of efficiency, I walk up to the largest man in sight and ask him where the best strip club is. As he’s leading us to whichever one he works for, I ask if there are Japanese women working there. He says yes. When we enter the club I ask where the Japanese women are because I don’t see any. He tells me they’re inside.

Liar.

There is also no pole, but the Ukrainian woman who comes over to sit with us explains that there is some legal vagary that requires the removal of the pole when not in use. Upon further inspection of the ceiling there is a bracket above the stage so I start badgering the manager to put the pole up. I’m already aware that the good clubs in Tokyo are not for gaijin (meaning foreigners, usually referring to caucasians) and the fact that I’m a women further narrows our options. I also really want to see someone twirl around that pole before I’m willing to call it a night. I run through the range of facial expressions from big-eyes-and-a-smile to medium-grumpy until I find one that works, and the floor manager disappears in the back to find the pole. Once the pole has been installed, a pretty blonde girl with an intricate back tattoo twirls around it and flips her hair. She then proceeds to taking her top off (stoked!), and continues dancing until the end of the song. Now I get to tip her, which is my favorite part. I’m hoping that putting paper money folded lengthwise between my teeth will cause her to grab it with her breasts, thus earning me a face full of cleavage. It does! Extra stoked!

As her nipples brush my cheeks, an economic epiphany occurs to me: In the US, we have this stereotype of strippers and dollar bills. We’ve had that pattern since the seventies. A dollar now buys what $0.17 did in 1970. Things like food, rent, and shoes have gotten more expensive, while the standard tip for a stripper has stayed the same for over thirty years. The next time you visit a strip club and think the girls are lackadaisical, remember that you get what you pay for and they’re no longer being paid enough. In Japan, however, the smallest denomination of paper money is the 1000 yen bill, which equals slightly less than thirteen USD… and I’m pretty sure it’s still considered a dick move to give a stripper coins. Geniuses. Beautiful, nude geniuses, all of them.

A slow sad song comes on and Matt looks bored. I did get to put my face in a pair of strange breasts, it’s late, and I’m ready to head home.

Tomorrow: The Trip Home

[This post is a part of Fleshbot's Stoya Week.]

I can’t remember when or how I first heard about Tokyo Love Hotels. It could have been the title of a film I never sat still long enough to watch. I could be remembering an imaginary sexy doppelganger of Mr. Ramone’s Chelsea Horror Hotel. Likely though, this knowledge came from the internet. Before the term social networking entered the public lexicon, the internet seemed to be made entirely of cats, Japan, and stuff my parents didn’t want me looking at. I was fully aware that a love hotel was a rent-by-the-hour place for illicit activities, much like the crusty hourly motel a few miles down the highway with unpainted fiberboard doors, but the exotic glamour attached meant that love hotels must somehow be a different concept. Plus, they’re called hotels. With an H. As a kid whose total experience with big cities was four trips to NYC and a few dance lessons in Philadelphia, Europe seemed like a fairytale. Japan was as mythological as Atlantis, and I didn’t fully believe in Los Angeles until I put my shoes in the Pacific Ocean at 19 and my nose informed me that it definitely smelled different than the Atlantic. Many things have since turned out to have a lot less magic in real life than they had in my head, but I still entered the search for a Love Hotel thinking the reality might outdo my imagination.

I wanted scenes from the Kama Sutra depicted in glitter paint on black velvet decorating the walls. Satin-y heart shaped beds, plastic boobs with red light bulbs for nipples providing illumination for the room. That clear plexiglass bowl bathtub. Drawers which open to reveal a buffet of prophylactics and cabinets stocked with toys of suspect origin. Basically, I was looking for a kinky bordello designed by the world’s leading architect of tacky and decorated with the help of an expert on questionable taste.

So here we are in Shibuya, a few blocks from the Tobacco and Salt museum. We’re in a section called Love Hotel Hill. It is a hill, which bodes well for the rest of its moniker’s accuracy. Six inch stilettos may have been a poor choice of footwear. Most of the buildings are bars and restaurants. There are a few mildly tacky looking hotels, with glowing pictures of the rooms displayed by the entrances. Nothing really looks debaucherous enough. The rooms have a tame chain motel aesthetic and the nondescript exteriors aren’t helping anything to seem more exciting. Not a single four foot neon vulva in sight. We’re making mental notes of places that seem like they might be interesting and promptly losing our ability to find them again on the winding streets. As a last resort we ask a cigarette and chewing gum salesmen on the street for a good love hotel. You know…for sex. The language barrier and his apathy combine, giving us an arm waved towards the corner on our right and the statement “Nice hotel.” I’m so cold that my brain is going torpid and I think the recommendation of a tobacco salesman who obviously doesn’t give a flying fuck is going to be a good one. As we size up the edifice I stop and give Matt’s iPhone my best up-to-something face for a picture. Matt likes pictures and the internet likes pictures.

The lobby of the Zero is staffed by a person. I was under the impression that it would be automated for privacy, not that I’m really concerned about being stealth. There is a glossy black stripe of plexiglass above the counter blocking the check-in woman’s face which presumably blocks ours as well. Matt pushes the equivalent of 50 USD through the window. A key is pushed out in return. We are informed we have one hundred and eighty minutes in room 403. Last year I read an article saying that eleven minutes is the average ideal length of intercourse. I wonder what would happen if you made the same penis ejaculate sixteen times in under three hours. Friction burns. There is a tiny little elevator which barely fits the two of us and my purse. The door to the room opens to reveal a giant bathroom. The sink area has two doors on the right side which open into the toilet room and the shower/bath room. So far, aside from the lack of hallway, it looks like every moderately priced hotel I’ve seen in Japan. Behind door number three—on the left this time—is a creepy little rectangular room with a bed, couch, and TV. But it’s the wrong kind of creepy. I take my clothes off because I am on a mission to have sex in one of these hotels, we might not find a better one, and I’m still holding out hope that those cabinets hold something entertaining.

They don’t.

Squeak-thud noises come through the wall, for a moment I think it’s the sounds of other people having sex, but it turns out to just be bad techno. Matt seems grossed out by the room. I’m getting the wrong kind of vibe. It feels sterile but unclean. I start to giggle, partly out of unease and partly out of defeat. Matt’s penis is in its usual congenially turgid state, unaffected by everything. The resoluteness of his cock strikes me as funny, and I start laughing hysterically into Matt’s shoulder. We prove that is possible for two people to have biologically successful intercourse while having a conversation about how thoroughly turned off they are. He glares at the comforter as he graffitis it with semen, engaged in a testicular demonstration of contempt.

When we get into the elevator it goes up instead of down. We stop on the fifth floor and come face to face with another couple. The woman is wearing giant, nearly opaque sunglasses (indoors, at 9pm) and has arranged her hair to cover most of her face. The man is looking everywhere he can that isn’t us or his companion. Matt sing-songs, “That’s not your wife.” The elevator doors close. I’m already in an odd mood and this is just hilarious. It feels like we’re descending, and then the doors open on the couple standing on the fifth floor again. I’m seconds away from falling on the floor, laughing so hard I can’t get a fresh supply of oxygen into my lungs. They look mortified. I try to smile in a way that communicates sympathy or commiseration or something that isn’t “We’ve caught you twice and now I’m laughing at you.” I’m obviously failing, because they gasp and make a run for the stairwell. The rest of the trip to the lobby is uneventful.

While Matt is using his superpowers of patience to get a receipt out of the desk clerk, I notice the couple from upstairs taking turns peering around the corner. A pair of adulterous adults are playing peek-a-boo with me.

Tomorrow: How Could A Strip Club Possibly Go Wrong?

[This post is a part of Fleshbot's Stoya Week.]

Kowai means scary. Kawaii means cute. The phonetic similarity evokes the way a lion cub can be adorable even though it is capable of ripping your face off… or how visual indicators of cuteness can be heightened out of all proportion and end up slightly terrifying.

There are Japanese girls dressed as maids in the streets of Akihabara. While I’m sure some of them are dressed as maids for the fun of it, the majority are wearing their uniforms and trying to attract business for whichever maid cafe they work at. Yep, a cafe, staffed by girls in cartoon maid costumes. Sounds pretty nifty, huh?

One girl, in a blue dress with a white pinafore and a bunch of semi-coordinating hair accessories, waves us into a hallway. Down the hall and one right turn later, we are looking at a sign with pictures of girls in blue dresses and white pinafores with lots of stuff on their heads, and 6F in the corner. Elevator to the sixth floor to MaiDreamin it is, then. I do wonder if the name is an intentional pun. The elevator door opens and girls start freaking out. They’re either force fed large amounts of caffeine and sugar before their shift or they really love their jobs. Possibly both.

There is a bit of chanting and ritualized hand waving, and then our waitress takes us to our table in the excessively lit dining area. She picks up a battery operated candle and blows on it. It does not light up. Presumably it is supposed to light up, because she looks flustered. She shakes it and continues to blow on it until it eventually does spring to life. She then sets it on the table, picks it back up, and disappears. We survey the landscape from our plastic chairs in the *Forest Area* and it looks grim in a very saccharine way. The place looks like a deranged Care Bear was hired to supervise the interior design of a kindergarten. Matt’s response is that it looks like his worst nightmare. Did I mention that he has to walk through Tokyo Disney to get to work? There is, however, a small stage in the middle of the room and I’m holding on to the hope that
something entertaining or ridiculous will happen on it. After all, there are frilly bloomers hanging out of the bottom of these maid costumes so there’s still the chance that we’ve wandered into an extremely bizarre strip club.

Our waitress returns with a laminated menu. I order a Kahlua-milk, which turns out fairly well, and Matt ends up with a rum & coke that, in his opinion, tastes like date rape. There is another chanting-waving ritual before we’re allowed to touch our drinks, followed by a request that we order food. A Kitty Vanilla Sundae sounds like a safe option, and Matt points to a sign with a chunk of meat on a stick.

A young man in an oversized white dress shirt is ushered in and seated on the opposite side of the room. His eyelids droop, his head droops with them, and he supports his chin on a set of scabby knuckles. I begin to regret my toast of “To exploring weird shit!” The food arrives. It turns out that Kitty Vanilla Sundaes are very cute but not a safe option at all as they come covered in chalky tasting sauce that looks deceptively like chocolate. Also, the maraschino cherries are booby trapped. Matt’s stick meat appears to be mystery meatloaf shaped into an approximation of a turkey leg, held together by intestine, and speared on each end with a bone. I think we’ve stumbled upon the Pokemon version of Soylent Green.

One of the other girls on the staff climbs onto the stage and starts
talking into a microphone. I get really excited. Hand gestures and chanting start up again. The lights dim, something must be about to happen. The chanting stops and she steps off of the stage. Silence.

I guess that was the light dimming ritual. I quietly say “Take it off?” and get no response.

The only thing left to do here, aside from listen to Matt’s Pokemon dinner protest loudly at finding itself in a human stomach, is to get a polaroid with the waitress and get the hell out of there. I do believe that one should always take the opportunity to pay a woman for the privilege of taking an innocent polaroid with them. This may have something to do with the fact that Fleshlights and Polaroids pay my
rent.

Upon arriving home, research on the internet revealed that we ended up at the TGI Fridays of maid cafes and MaiDreamin was not an average specimen. However, they are still not strip clubs.

Tomorrow: The Big Fat 0

[This post is a part of Fleshbot's Stoya Week.]

Akihabara is full of electronics and anime. It’s the Tokyo that American fans of manga imagine, home to the world’s first dedicated robot store and covered in signs depicting cartoon girls with giant eyes and inhuman waist to hip ratios. Epileptic fit-inducing displays of flashing lights lure customers into shops full of electronics and raw materials for customization or building from scratch. Other store fronts display an incredible range of anime and collectible statues, half of which looks like it could be porn. This would be cause for investigation were it not for the actual porn store, eight stories high. It’s across from the four story porn store, and down the street from the five story adult shop, but “bigger” and “porn” seem to be concepts which go together well, so we head into the super-sized one.

Aside from the scat DVDs displayed next to the entrance, the pixelated genitals, and a more varied selection of anime/cosplay themed blow up dolls and skimpy costumes, it looks just like an American or European adult store. I’m disappointed. See, my first encounter with Japanese porn was downright bizarre:

On my first trip to Japan, I was introduced to an artist named Daikichi Amano. He brought me a small wooden box containing prints of his work. Surreal photographs of partially nude women wearing butterflies , tree bark, swans, or various ocean-dwelling creatures. The girls were all alive, the animals ranged from live through dead, sometimes expiring as the photos were being taken. In one, a girl wears an octopus as a hat. In another, a vagina holds bright green moss and tiny lizards. It sounds weird… because it
is. He told me that he considers himself a pornographer. I started to say that nudity and sexual themes are common in art, that the differences between tanned leather and freshly plucked goose are mostly semantic, although I could see the olfactory repercussions as well. His work lays bare the base nature of humanity in an aesthetically pleasing way, exposes the raw instincts to kill and fuck, and presents them in a format so intricate and beautiful that the viewer is drawn in before they have a chance to close their minds to what is being shown. He silently trumped my defense of his art by handing me a compilation of his Genki Genki work. I would tell you to google it, but I’m not sure what the legality of accessing a (mostly) maritime bestiality website is in most countries. Yes sir, that is definitely porn and you directed and filmed it, meaning you would be classified as a pornographer. I was and still am classified as a pornographer, but I make a very different sort of porn.

Obviously I took it back to the hotel and watched it. I watched an entire film of women having sex with a variety of not human creatures. A couple of hours later, Daikichi arrived at the room, having planned a karaoke excursion. Among other negative qualities, karaoke bars are loud places and I was much more interested in asking questions in an environment where I would have a higher chance of effective communication. The first thing I wanted to know was where he had acquired a lesbian canine. Live fish, frogs, and octopi seem fairly easy to come by, but I didn’t think someone would purchase a dog just to film one sex scene. It turns out the dog belonged to Daikichi, she was his pet, and he’d filmed that one scene when he first started making pornographic films but wouldn’t do it again. He felt bad for the dog because she’d been sick afterwards, she’d ingested too much condensed milk during the filming (that’s how they got the dog to perform oral sex on her human partner) and he doesn’t like to see creatures actually suffer. He indicated that the woman in the scene had been more than willing to participate, and did not feel bad for her.

Fascinating.

Meanwhile, back on the fourth floor of the eight story porn shop, I am standing under a blow-up Cheshire Penis.

Tomorrow: Super Kowai Kawaii Maid Cafe…. of Doom

[This post is a part of Fleshbot's Stoya Week.]