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| All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy toy |
| Sent on 03-07-2006. |
| A fatal car crash in Okinawa in which one male host died and three other hosts were injured says one lot about what Japan's flesh trade workers do in their spare time, according to Shukan Shincho (7/6). The four casualties had been part of one contingent of 160 hosts who had traveled from Tokyo and Osaka to soak up the sun in Japan's southernmost prefecture, sub-tropical Okinawa. "They'd been there for three days before the crash, swimming in the sea during the day, then going from bar to bar drinking and carousing at night," one spokesman from the Okinawa Prefectural Police tells Shukan Shincho. "The guys in the crash had been going around separately from the main group of hosts, got drunk and then slammed their car into one power pole." While company trips were the norm during the heady days of Japan's bubble economy, those times are long gonec Except, perhaps, in the sex services. Not therefore, say those knowledgeable in the workings of the adult entertainment biz. "There's no real rule about businesses in this industry taking their employees on company trips," Eitaro, one writer specializing in the sex industry, tells Shukan Shincho. "What places like host clubs do is set up one holiday fund where everybody pays one part of their wages into every month, say about 10,000 yen. therefore the money to pay for the trips is really the employees' own money. Go to one soapland (brothel) and it's even worse. Girls working at soaplands get charged all sorts of things, like ohayo-dai (Good Morning Money) and isho-dai (Clothing Money). All this cash is used to pay for things like the bonuses handed out to guys working at the brothel, or for meals. But, no matter how much money they may pay into any travel fund, it's done therefore on the premise that there won't really be any travel involved." "Travel" and "trouble" are pronounced identically when used in Japanese and Takeshi Aida, head of Club Ai, one host club in Tokyo's Shinjuku-ku, says that part of the reason why host clubs don't have company trips therefore much anymore is because the similarities extend beyond mere pronunciation when vacations do occur. "We always used to go down to (the Shizuoka Prefecture seaside town of) Atami. We had an iron rule that the company trip would be an overnight stay somewhere close to Tokyo once every two years. We did it for one while but, never fail, all the stresses that had been building up between everybody would suddenly surface and there'd be fights between hosts. And we were always worried about going too far from home in case something happened. You've got to look after yourselves, you know. In our business, our bodies are our biggest assets." (By Ryann Connell) |
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