Gaming the Gamers: Kyabas, Hostesses, Night Life Girls in Japan [Podcast]

“I’m flying through the milky way, on forest planets in never-ending night. Glowing deer and bears gather around me and stare at my vagina” Kaede said to me, looking up with her eyes closed.

“Really? That’s what you think about?” I asked.

“Yes, just now when you were doing me from behind, I left my body and ascended to the cosmos” she said.

It was a hot June night and we were sitting naked on my balcony eating snacks from the conbini. Like most nights Kaede stayed over we were both exhausted from fucking, drunk, but talking non-stop until 9am.

Kaede is a hostess.

Note: The following article is a guest post written by Theory, a good friend and gamer in Japan who specializes in this topic. Check out the podcast as well and thanks to him for this excellent epic post.

In Japan there’s a thing called 水商売. I don’t know if it’s unique to Japan but it’s never been easy to explain to anyone that isn’t Japanese.

It’s not the sex trade (風俗), but regular bars and restaurants aren’t a part of it either. It’s some place between the two where as a customer you pay high prices to have nicely dressed women laugh at your jokes and give you attention. These are apparently an evolution of geisha entertaining men in teahouses.

There are various types of mizu shoubai establishments, but I’m going to focus in on one type in particular: キャバクラ. kyabakura are a very well-known part of Japanese culture.

Whether or not you ever intend to go to one yourself, having knowledge about how they work will only help you better understand Japanese people, and in particular the girls that work in that world.

If you enjoy this article, be sure to check out the podcast as well!

Kyabakura Vocab

Both for understanding the rest of this post and for understanding the world that hostesses live in, it will help to go over some relevant Japanese vocab.

• 水商売 Mizu Shobai – Literally, “The Water Business”. This is the catch all term for the business of women providing non-sexual hospitality for men in Japan. Working at or owning a スナック、キャバクラ or other such establishment means you work in 水商売.
• キャバクラ Kyabakura – One of the most common types of 水商売 establishment. Girls sit with customers, pour them drinks, light their cigarettes, and overall try to provide good company for them. Shorterned form of katakanified “Cabaret Club” キャバレークラブ. Though they’re technically different things, in this post I use the term キャバクラ and “hostess clubs” to mean the same thing.
• キャバ嬢 Kyabajo – A girl that works as a hostess at a キャバクラ. The 嬢 suffix is used for girls that work at other 水商売 or 風俗 (sex trade) shops. For example, a デリ嬢 is a girl that works at a デリへる、a ソープ嬢 is a girl that works at a ソープランド etc. The term can be derogatory.
• キャスト Kyasto – From the English “cast”. Hostesses, 黒服, and everyone else “in the industry” typically use this term instead of キャバ嬢 to refer to hostesses.
• 黒服 Kurofuku – Literally “black clothes”. The non-hostess staff in a キャバクラ. They’re responsible for taking orders, serving drinks, bringing hand-towels, supporting the hostesses, bringing you the bill, processing payments.
• 担当 Tantou – Each 黒服 is responsible for one or more hostess as their 担当. The role of the 担当 is to prepare them for customers, give the hostesses advice/training, take care of them when they get too drunk, and generally do everything they can do their hostesses be successful.
• 風俗 Fuzoku – The sex trade in Japan, distinct from 水商売. There’s a lot of variety in the types of shops that comprise 風俗.
• セクキャバ　Sekukyaba -　An establishment similar to a キャバクラ, only depending on the place there is the time/opportunity for kissing/touching.　From the English “Sexual Cabaret Club”. セクキャバ　toe the line between 水商売 and 風俗. Also known as おっパブ.
• 同伴 Dohan – The term for a date with a hostess before her shift, with the expectation that you will go to her place after the date and nominate her. You typically need to pay a 同伴料 of 2000円-4000円 for the privelege (in addition to 2000円-4000円 for the nomination).
• 指名 Shimei – Nominating a girl to sit with you for an hour. This typically costs between 2000円-4000円, depending on the establishment.
• 本指名 Honshimei – Term for nominating a girl when you enter the club. This costs the same but typically carries more “weight” than a 場内指名.
• 場内指名 Jounai Shimei – Term for deciding to nominate a girl after you’ve been at your seat for a while.
• ヘルプ herupu– Sometimes when you nominate a girl, she’s not immediately available to sit with you. This is likely because she’s concurrently nominated by another customer. They place another girl with you while you wait for your nominated girl. This girl is termed ヘルプ. Other situations where ヘルプ　is sat with you is when your nominated girl is changing, hasn’t arrived yet, or is seeing customers off at the door. Sometimes キャバクラ in the same 系列 lend each other girls as ヘルプ when one of the clubs is busier.
• 指名が被ってる Shimei ga kabutteru– Term used to describe the situation when a girl you’ve nominated is nominated by another customer at the same time. She’ll typically be shuttled back and forth between you and the other customer in 10-15 minute stretches. In the meantime another girl will be placed with you as ヘルプ.
• フリー Furii – Term for being in a キャバクラ as a customer without nominating any particular girl. Depending on the establishment and how many girls are working that night, this typically means two or three girls will rotate over the course of each hour. For example if it’s three girls, each girl will speak with you for twenty minutes of your hour.
• ワンセット Wan Setto – The term for a fixed period of time that you spend as a customer at a キャバクラ, typically one hour. This usually includes a 飲み放題 with spirits like brandy, whisky, and shochu.
• 別料金 Betsu Ryokin – Things that cost extra. This includes drinks that are not included in the 飲み放題 and all drinks for the girls.
• ランキング Rankingu – Hostesses at each club are have a (typically monthly) leaderboard in terms of the total revenue that they bring in, the number of 本指名 they have and the number of 同伴. ランキング refers to those leaderboards.
• ノルマ Noruma – Some clubs have a minimum amount of revenue that each girl is supposed to bring in monthly. When a girl receives a 本指名 then the revenue from the customers bill counts as revenue from that girl.
• 看板娘 Kanban Musume – Literally “poster daughter”. The most consistently high earning girl in the club. Usually treated like royalty by the 黒服 and is at the top of the food chain in terms of respect from other girls at her club.
• プライベート Puraibeeto – Term that hostesses use to refer to their private life, outside of their job as hostesses.
• ヘアメイク Heameiku – Hair and makeup
• スカウト Sukauto – Scouts that recruit hostesses. They approach women on the street and (often successfully) bring them into 水商売 or 風俗 work. It’s common for スカウト to sleep with hostesses.
• キャッチ Kyacchi – “Catch”, people who approach you in the street and attempt to get you to come to 風俗 or 水商売 shops as customers.
• ホスト Hosuto – “Host”, the male equivalent of a hostess.
• 源氏名 Genjina – Stage name that girls use in their hostess club. Can sometimes include a stage name but is often just a given name. Some girls are strict about not telling customers their real names.
• 本名 Honmyo – The girls real name.
• スタフドリンク Sutafu Dorinku– A drink you buy for the キャスト, typically at a higher price than drinks for you.
• 送迎 Sougei – Transport home for hostesses. Since their shifts typically finish after the last train, most kyabakura provide ride-shared transport home for their girls. Girls cancelling this last-minute is usually frowned upon unless it’s to go on an アフター with a customer. Unless you explicitly tell a girl you’ll pay her taxi fee and to cancel 送迎, you can expect that 送迎 will wait an hour, limiting your アフター to that one hour.

What to expect when you go to a Kyabakura as a customer

Getting into the club

At the entrance to the club, expect for the staff at reception to be surprised to see a gaijin. They’ll have two main concerns about allowing you into their club:

• Can you speak Japanese? The girls need to be able to interact with you and make the experience plausibly enjoyable for you.
• Do you undestand what a kyabakura is? Are you going to be confused twenty minutes in about why you can’t have sex with the girls in the VIP room? Are you going to be argumentative about the bill?

You’ll need to demonstrate at the door that you can address those concerns. If it seems like you can’t fluently speak Japanese or you’re not sure what to expect at a kyabakura, it’s reasonable to expect you’ll be refused entry.

It helps to have an introduction to smooth things over, preferably from a girl working at the place. Failing this, going via a 無料案内場 also has the benefit of being significantly cheaper than going by yourself.

If you’re worried about the bill for the first time visiting a new place, you can ask to pre-pay (前金) at the door as you go in. This means you won’t be able to nominate girls, buy drinks etc as and when you decide to.

The entrance

At the entrance you’ll be asked two things:

• Is there girl you want to nominate? ご指名は？ Unless there’s a particular girl you want to see, just say no, or フリーで.
• Would you like to be seated in the メインフロアー or a VIPルーム. VIP costs significantly more and there’s no good reason for it unless you really want to sing today.

After this they’ll usually ask you to wait briefly at the entrance before taking you to your seat.

Sometimes when the club is crowded and they’re short on girls, they’ll refuse entry unless you nominate a girl. If it’s particularly busy they may refuse entry outright.

Your seat

A 黒服 will usually walk you to your seat and give you a hand-towel. After you sit down they may have a few more questions for you.

• Are there any discounts you want to use? If you google the place and find the shop on pokepara, you can typically find a discount. There also discounts for e.g. members of club mailing lists. You can ask them to explain any discounts they may have before answering.
• What would you like to drink. As part of the 飲み放題 they typically provide spirits, but you have to choose one for the table (you can’t for example have a scotch, then a shochu, then a brandy, it’s one drink all night). What’s in the 飲み放題 varies from club to club so confirm what’s included while you’re there.

The kurofuku places a girl with you

If you’ve come in フリー then they will place the first of the hostesses with you. Without a nomination, there will be between 2-4 girls placed with you over the course of an hour.

When the girl sits down with you the 黒服 that escorts her will announce her name. When it’s time for her to be rotated out, the 黒服 will come back to your seat, call her once to indicate she should wrap things up, and then once more a few minutes later.

If you’ve come in with a nomination, then one of two things can happen instead:

• The 黒服 brings the girl you’ve nominated, and your hour with her begins.
• The girl you’ve nominated is otherwise busy (getting changed, adjusting her hair/makeup, seeing a customer off, or busy with another nomination). While you’re waiting for her, the 黒服 will bring a different girl, termed ヘルプ.

If the girl you’ve nominated has another concurrent nomination, then she’ll be shuttled back and forth between you and the other customer in 10-20 minute chunks. In the meantime another ヘルプ girl will likely be placed with you.

Going to the restroom

When you go to the restroom, you’ll usually be accompanied by a 黒服 and the girl placed with you. The girl waits outside with a hand towel and hands it to you when you come out, then walks with you back to your seat.

Getting the bill

Ten minutes before your time runs out, a 黒服 will bring you your bill.

The bill will include:

• シングルチャージ – a fee for coming to the club alone. You don’t pay this if you come as a group of two or more.
• Tax
• Service charge
• Potentially extra fees for e.g. handling credit cards.

In addition to this, the bill will list prices for continuing for 30m and 60m respectively. This is a sales technique designed to get you to consider staying for longer.

At this point you can choose to pay the bill for your time so far, or extend (延長）for 30m or 60m.

Paying the bill and leaving

After you’ve paid the bill they’ll give you any change in an envelope and ask you if you need an official receipt (領収書).

After you get your change, you usually have a few minutes left before you have to leave. You don’t need to leave of your own accord, a 黒服 will come to get you out of the club as your time runs out.

If you have arranged with the girl to go for an アフター　and she is about to finish her shift, you can usually ask to wait in the club for her to change into her civillian clothes and then leave together.

Sleeping with hostesses

No sex is supposed to happen between customers and hostesses. If I were taking you as a friend to a キャバクラ for the first time, I’d heavily emphasize that you can’t expect to have sex with hostesses, because it’s not prostitution.

And, well, it’s not. But I would be lying to you if I said that customers don’t have sex with hostesses. Sometimes it is in fact prostitution, and other times there’s mutual attraction.

You shouldn’t expect to be able to sleep with hostesses, but just like in any other interaction, if you make a connection, are attracted to each other and the logistics work, there’s no reason not to treat them just like any other girl.

Here’s a small sample of キャバ嬢 I’ve ended up sleeping with. For every one of these, there are ten or eleven which refused my advances, got naked but were too drunk to have sex, or the logistics didn’t work out.

Rika

This was the first hostess I ever pulled from her club. I had slept with hostesses and former-hostesses before, but I’d always met them through friends, in regular bars, etc.

I was completely shitfaced once at a club I was going to regularly. No nomination. I was into my second hour and this 22-year-old half-Russian girl named Emiri was placed with me. We’d spoken a couple of times before and got on really well, but I didn’t feel much in terms of sexual attraction for her.

We were both quite drunk, she was leaning her head on my shoulder as we talked.

“Be honest, do you want to bang any of the girls in this club? Which girls do you want to bang, I’ll tell you if you have a shot” she said.

“Uhm. Hmm. It’s me. All of them. I want to hike all these girls dresses up and bang them in the VIP room two at a time” I said.

“Ha! Well I bet if you just asked half of these girls here would go to a hotel with you. We’re all a bunch of sluts, it’s so great” she said.

“OK then, when does your shift finish?” I asked.

“I’d do you for 5万円” she said.

“For 5万円 your pussy better be Hennesy flavoured” I said.

“Special edition XO” she hit back, laughing. “But seriously, just ask these girls to go back to the hotel, you can bang whoever you want”.

The literal next girl to sit with me was Rika. Rika was relatively quiet. I’d spoken to her a couple of times and she seemed nervous around me. I tried to get her laughing with me a little bit but otherwise kept the conversation relaxed and low-key.

I asked her if she’d like to go for an アフター after her shift finished. She said sure, but it would make it easier to cancel 送迎 for her if I extended for an hour and nominated her.

I wanted to see where this would lead so I did as she asked. After her shift finished I picked her up and we went to a conbini for a couple of drinks, then straight to a love hotel. She was apprehensive at first, but after drinking and talking for a little while she relaxed.

I leaned in to kiss her, she was very responsive, and it felt like we could go straight to having sex without much more back and forth. We both got showered and then straight into bed.

I saw her a few more times but she asked that I not nominate her or go out of my way to see her as she didn’t want it to be known that we were sleeping together.

Haruka

Haruka was a 22 year old girl I knew from a girls bar. She used to work as a デリ嬢 before the girls bar and was about to try her first shift as a hostess. This was a secret between us because she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave just yet.

On the night of her first shift as a hostess I invited her out for a quick drink to celebrate. This would be the first time I met her outside of the girls bar.

I met her at around 2am a couple of minutes from her キャバクラ. We went to a convenience store, bought a couple of drinks, and then straight to a love hotel. We talked for about half an hour, one thing lead to another, and we ended up sleeping together. After that we stuck around talking until morning. I sometimes go to drink with her at her club but I’m not really interested in a further relationship with her.

Kaede

I started visiting Kaede’s club for the first time going in フリー. About the fourth time I visited she was the third girl to sit with me, our eyes met and we both knew this was happening tonight. I did a 場内指名 so was there for another hour.

We kept talking for that hour, she started touching my hand, and towards the end started telling me she was getting wet and was fantasizing about sleeping with me. I asked her what time her shift was finishing. It was about 11pm and she said she gets off work at 01:30.

I told her I’d go home first and come pick her up when she finished. I went back to my place and started tidying. I thought she would likely change her mind and just go home, so I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

At around 11:45 my phone rang. It was her. She said she was finishing early.

“Oh really? Is everything OK?” I asked.

“Yes, I want to see you. Can you come and get me now?” she asked.

“OK, I’ll walk back over to buncho”. I said.

This was in the middle of a soft lockdown so there were no bars open at that hour (thinking back, there were places that were open that she knew about).

She looked far better in her private clothes than she did in her club dress.

“There aren’t any bars open, so if it’s OK with you…” I started.

“Ah, I guess that means we’ll have to go to your place” she said, cutting me off. I told her she’s going a little fast for me, and that I want to know her 本名 before we go any further.

She tells me her name, then she says she’s on her period. I tell her I don’t mind, and we can just go back to mine and talk.

We go to a Family Mart on the way home and get more drinks for us and make up remover. In the elevator up to my apartment I grab her and we kiss. I kiss her neck and she moans softly.

We go inside, sit on my sofa and start fooling around. She takes all of her clothes off and says she wants to take a shower. I take my clothes off too. I and kiss her again as she steps out of the shower. I grab waist and she bends over my sink, then I enter her from behind.

We had sex two more times that night and talked non-stop until 9am. I liked the sound of her voice, how creative she was verbally, the way she dressed, the smell of her perfume.

We were out of touch for a couple of weeks after that but I managed to go and see her at her club about a month later. I was worried that we wouldn’t emotionally be able to get back to where we were that night, that it was an ONS, and the magic would be gone.

What followed was an alcohol-fueled three-month romance that was probably the most unbridled fun I’ve ever had with a girl in my life. We drank to excess three or four nights a week, she lived at my place for most of that. We’d start our 同伴 at noon, go to four or five bars/restaurants, eat great food, drink a lot, have sex, then go to her キャバクラ. Sometimes we went to other キャバクラ in our 同伴.

I’d pick her up after her shift, we’d drink even more, have more sex, go back to mine, fight, make up, laugh together, tell each other secrets about our childhoods, look up at the night sky, talk until dawn and fall asleep together.

We fucked around so much that she had to quit her day job. She was cancelling 送迎 so often that her club changed the rules around last-minute cancellation.

There were times I’d see her with her regular customers and feel jealous. They’d spend 200,000円 on champagne for her and she seemed to be having a good time with them. That jealousy of course evaporated when I remember that just thirty minutes before I was fucking her doggie-style in my kitchen.

We had sex in restaurant bathrooms, in parking lot toilets, on benches in parks, on my balcony, and in clothes store changing rooms. Sometimes it was fast and violent, other times slow and intimate. Sometimes she pinned me down and fucked me in a way that I couldn’t really stop if I tried. Other times I had her blindfolded in handcuffs. She had a phase where she was really into nipple clamps.

Sometimes we didn’t have sex and would just drink together and talk about our lives. She was 26, and used to be a 姫ギャル that modeled for エッグ. Her mother was a 黒ギャル who more or less abandoned her so she was raised by her dad and her grandparents. She had to sign her own report card because her parents had no interest in her education.

I got a call from her once at 3am. She was crying because she was drunk and apparently a customer was talking down to her and mistreating her. I waited outside the bar she was in. When she came out her clothes were stained red, her skin had flared up (happened a lot when she had too much to drink) and she looked miserable and exhausted.

Apparently the customer had spent most of the アフター insulting her and then poured tabasco sauce over her clothes. I took her home. She borrowed one of my shirts, then I held her why she cried it out. She wanted to quit. She took a few days off work and drinking and stayed with me.

I was, and still am in love with her. She could disappear tomorrow or we might be each others orbit for the rest of our lives, but right now it feels like I’m never going to stop thinking about her. She just looks incredible all the fucking time. I’m completely addicted to her.

Yuka

After things calmed down with Kaede I was out one night and asked one of the キャッチ I know to take me to a キャバクラ I hadn’t been to before.

I ended up in a very cheap place, but the first girl placed with me was relaxed and easy to talk to. Very short (147cm) 25yo former ギャル from Yamagata prefecture. We only talked for an hour but I got the vibe that this was going well.

On the way out I wondered if maybe she was just very good at being a キャバ嬢. I didn’t really mind. I enjoyed her company so was happy to leave things there.

I invited her out for a 同伴 the following week. The plan was to go to small izakaya, a bar, and then head to her キャバクラ. This is fairly standard course for a 同伴, nothing out of the ordinary.

I picked her up and walked her to the izakaya. It was getting colder so I put my overcoat on her shoulders on the walk over. She inched closer to me as we sat and ate. I didn’t want to seem to be clawing at her so I moved away. She kept inching close so I inched back. By the end of the meal we were so close that we’d be kissing if she turned her head towards me. We were holding hands, her legs were resting on mine.

On the way out I asked her if she wanted to skip the bar and head to my place instead. She said OK, so long as get to her club on time.

Once we arrived at my place she was nervous, so I opened her drink for her and let her be until she calmed down a little. She started talking about her cat, her hostess club, basically anything to fill up the silence. I kissed her for a little while, then backed off a bit to make sure she was OK. We went back and forth like that until we were both naked.

She straddled me and we had sex. We had to be careful about her hair and make up, and we didn’t have much time until we were expected at her club. We left my place about twenty minutes later, went to her club and did the expected 本指名. She’s a busy girl so I only see her once or month or so.

Profile of a hostess

Life background

After talking to hundreds of girls that work in 水商売 and becoming close with a good handful of them, I don’t see any stand-out patterns in terms of hostess life experience.

Some hostesses have completely normal childhoods, with loving parents and a good education. Out of the options available for a young girl who is in least bit confident in her appearance, hostessing is just a good way to make money at a young age.

Other girls are stereotypically what you might expect. Households where one parent left or was absent, bad relationships with their family, a string of abusive boyfriends, and so on.

It’s possible that these types of life stories are over-represented in 水商売, but nowhere near to the extent that you’d be able to make assumptions based just on the fact that a girl is a hostess. Hostesses at all experience levels display a lot of variety in the story of their lives up to the point where they started working in the industry.

Paths into hostessing

Girls can start hostessing from 18 onwards, but can’t legally drink in the club until they turn 20. In some clubs hostesses under 20 wear white wristbands to mark them out.

Some girls get into hostessing after being approached on the street by a scout who introduces them to the work. Scouts can have contracts with various clubs, but sometimes the actual 黒服 go out into the street in daytime to recruit.

Other girls start hostessing through an introduction from a friend.

A reasonably common path for girls is to start in a 水商売 job with less pressure, like a girls bar or a スナック. Once they get used to the business they try hostessing, which typically has a higher salary and better conditions.

Yet another path that I see sometimes is that a girl starts work in a sex trade or sex trade-adjacent shop like a セクキャバ and then transitions over to 水商売.

Work commitment

Some work during the day while hostessing at night. A common pattern is a day job during the week and then working as a hostess for 2-3 nights per week (e.g. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday).

Others are studying full-time at university while hostessing.

Others are focusing fully on hostessing, usually doing shifts 5-6 nights per week.

Roles and status as a hostess

Hostesses have different roles and status in their club. This depends on their level of commitment to their appearance, serving customers, and how often they work every week.

The lowest rung on the ladder are newer girls and girls that treat hostessing as a part-time job. Their role in the club is to fill time with customers that come in without nomination and to serve as ヘルプ. They’re not expected to source a lot of revenue, have many 同伴, be nominated very often or have bottles of champagne opened for them. These girls usually aren’t great conversationalists, don’t sit with very good posture, and haven’t put as much effort into their appearance as girls that are more serious about the work. Some girls stay in this mode for years while others improve.

The next level up are girls that have a bit of experience and are slightly more serious about hostessing. They are building a roster of long-term customers, are pulling in increasing monthly revenue, invest more time/money in their appearance, sit with better posture, are better conversationalists and remember more about their customers. Your experience as a customer will 100% be better with these girls. However, it’s still possible you’ll see them working as ヘルプ or have them placed with you when you haven’t nominated anyone.

At every club there are typically 1-3 high-earning girls. They are treated well by the 黒服 and can order around other hostesses in so as to better serve their customers. They’re busy enough with their customers that it’s unlikely you’ll see them working as ヘルプ or sit with you without a nomination. Note that these are not always the most genetically good-looking girls in the club. These girls are usually committed full-time to hostessing.

Compensation

Hostess compensation varies a lot between different clubs, individual girls, and phases in the girls careers.

Some clubs don’t pay the girls anything but commission on revenues from a girls customers.

Other clubs pay a base hourly rate with a bonus/incentive calculated from the revenue the girl brings in. For example, the girl gets to keep half of everything she brings in so long as her total monthly revenue is above 100万円.

Some clubs negotiate contracts differently with each individual girl. Girls that aren’t intending to become high-earners may opt for a fixed hourly rate with no incentives, for example.

By far the highest ticket item on the menu at a kyabakura is a bottle of champagne. Girls that are serious about increasing their revenue measure their success in the number of bottles of champagne opened in a given shift, week, or month.

How experienced hostesses analyze customers

Hostesses incentive pay is linked to how much revenue they are deemed to have generated. Revenue is added to their tally typically if the customer nominated them that day.

Hostesses that are serious about increasing their revenue want to quickly determine two things:

1. Whether or not you’re a customer who will open bottles of champagne for them.
2. If they determine you will, how to make you want to buy bottles of champagne for them.

A secondary goal is to develop a relationship with you so that you’ll nominate them and potentially order bottles of champagne with them at some later date.

This means that if you’re not ordering champagne, most hostesses won’t even register you as a serious customer. While the occasional nomination may help her ranking a little, you’re really just the filler between the more important customers.

This is a good thing. A big reason that hostesses don’t sleep with customers is because it’s common for customers to disappear without a trace after. You don’t want them to be afraid to lose you as a customer.

They try to figure out:

• How much they should talk vs. let you talk.
• What topics of conversation will be fun for you.
• What sort of work you do. They have lots of reference experiences of different men in different jobs, and remember what types of conversation did well with who.

They also try to leave the conversation on a high note so that you have some incentive to come back and see them again.

However, it’s relatively rare for them to have gaijin as customers. You can short circuit this process and break them out of work mode by coming in relatively high energy and using a bit of your novelty gaijin factor, before transitioning into lower energy conversation.

Prostitution and 枕営業

For girls that are less serious about (or perhaps have given up on) becoming high-earning hostesses, sleeping with customers for direct financial compensation is not entirely uncommon.

Hostesses get propositioned for sex for money often. Some customers will immediately make an offer to take the girl home that day. Some girls accept these offers on a case-by-case basis, others refuse outright.

In other cases, girls will proposition you. I’ve had girls ask for anywhere between 3万円 and 10万円 to take them to a hotel. The polite way to talk about this is タクシー代 but it’s understood that their actual taxi fee doesn’t cost anywhere near that much.

This is distinct from 枕営業. The idea behind 枕営業 is a tacit agreement that the girl will sleep with the customer in return for them spending a lot of money in the club, typically upwards of 15万円.

Private lives

Girls that are working 5-6 shifts a week just don’t have much free time.

Drinking six nights a week is exhausting. Wealthy customers often ply them with alcohol so that they are easier to take home, so will pressure them to drink large quantities of alcohol. This might happen three or four times a week.

This tires them out. This is why it can be futile to try and invite these girls out on their day off. They’re usually spending that day off in bed for 10-15 hours catching up on sleep.

During the week when they’re not recovering from hangovers, they spend a lot of their waking moments thinking about beauty. This means maintaining their body shape, skincare, hair, makeup, fashion, nails, eyelashes, and so on. They also spend a good portion of their day maintaining contact with customers over line.

This doesn’t leave much time for romantic relationships. And even if there were time, not many men would be supportive of their work as hostesses.

Especially in their first couple of years of hostessing, these girls can end up sleeping around a lot. This is usually with other people in the 水商売 world, but sleeping with or dating customers is not uncommon.

They might also end up having sex with 黒服 (potentially from other clubs), with スカウト, キャッチ, bartenders from wherever they go for アフター, etc. Them playing around this much is also just a side effect of being a young, attractive girl.

Some have situations where they can’t have as much fun while hostessing. I’ve met a small number of hostesses that were willing to admit that they were single mothers living with their parents, so there are likely a good number of those. Some younger girls (18/19) also still live at home.

After a few years of this, some get tired of hooking up as much and become a bit more guarded. This is not to say that they can’t be pulled. They’re just less forgiving, can see your approach coming, and are decisive about accepting or rejecting your advances.

Being a customer

If you go into their hostess club you are just another customer. You were the moment you walked into their club. If you want to avoid being seen as a customer then don’t go into their club. Approach them in the street instead.

This is the playing field you’re on. You’re competing with all of the other customers they’re seeing for her attention and for the chance to attempt to sleep with her.

However, being a customer isn’t as bad as you’re thinking it might be. You want to be a customer that she sleeps with, and the requirements for this are not what you think.

The needy customer frame

The idea is that you go to the club, spend lots of money on a particular girl, take her out for lots of 同伴, open bottles of champagne for her, and then hopefully, one day, maybe, she might out of the goodness of her heart open her legs for you.

This is the frame that the professional side of the girl wants you to buy into. This is what the club, her 担当, her superiors, and everyone at the club wants most customers to be in. Entering it is a choice that you make, not the girl.

If she’s not interested in you when you invite her out to meet so you can pull, her words and actions will gently nudge you into the needy customer frame. This means she’s rejecting you, but while you’re here she’d like you on the list of customers that pay for her attention.

In these situations, don’t be weird about her treating you this way. It’s a natural outcome of the situation you’ve entered into. Just say no and walk away gracefully.

Be a customer hostesses sleep with

Instead, the mindset you want to go into kyabakura with is:

• You generally don’t open bottles of champagne
• You don’t have one particular girl that you always nominate, or even one particular club that you always go to
• Sometimes you go in フリー and sometimes you nominate, depending on how you feel that day
• Meeting hostesses on アフター and sleeping with them is a totally normal thing for you. It’s not a big deal at all.
• Asking girls out for an アフター and being rejected is also totally normal. There’s no need to make a big deal about this at all.
• However, if girls invite you to drink at their club, you prioritize your very small kyabakura budget to girls who have the good sense to sleep with you.

This is who you are at hostess clubs. But to actualize this you’ll need to be different from the customers she’s used to.

Don’t be what they’re used to

It’s easy to stand out from other customers by just not doing some of the crappy, predictable things they do. Here’s a quick list.

• Don’t complain about being “just a customer” to her. Don’t criticize her for only wanting your money or about how immoral and fake you think the whole hostessing world is. No one forced you into a hostess club. No sense in whining about the rules of a game no one invited you to play.
• Don’t tell her she should quit hostessing and do something “more worthwhile” with her life. You’re not the saviour you think you are. If she says she wants to quit then talking about her options is fine, but if she’s enjoying being a hostess you should revel in that with her.
• Don’t touch them. Lots of customers use every opportunity they can to fondle the girls, don’t do that. If anything, when they initiate physical contact you want to turn it down, even playfully call them out for it.
• Don’t brag. You’re not being subtle. They sit listen to men bragging about how rich they are, how popular they are with women, how good they are at sex, what celebrities they know etc all day, every day. If there’s something brag-worthy about you that they unearth, admit it briefly, then move onto the next topic.
• Don’t talk down to them. Many customers assume that the girls are dumb, promiscuous (like that’s a bad thing), and low-status. Instead show a bit of appreciation for the work and the level of effort some of these girls put in to the job.
• Don’t make assumptions about their education level. Along with the trade school trifecta of nursing, beauty, and apparel, I’ve met hostesses studying law, economics, sociology, and pure mathematics.
• Don’t make the conversation overtly sexual. Almost all customers do this and the girls are sick of it. If you want to convey sexuality, do it non-verbally.
• Don’t get weirdly obsessed with the girls and make meeting them awkward. This goes for all girls but hostesses in particular have customers that are borderline stalkers that they nonetheless have to interact with, sometimes every day.
• Don’t pry too much about their private lives. A lot of girls want a clear separation between them at home and at work. We’ll have to cross this boundary at some point, but to start with let the girl dictate the pace.

If you want to see more examples of bad customer interactions, have a look at this account on twitter:

Kusokyaku Line

Pros and cons of being a customer

The main benefit of being a customer is that you get predictable access to these girls. So long as they’re on shift and you have money to burn, you can spend time with them. Compare this with trying to schedule time with them プライベート, competing with the hundreds of other guys in their phone for their attention.

You also have predictable logistical challenges. If she’s free for アフター, you offer to pay her taxi fee, get her to cancel 送迎 and have one venue and one potential sex location nearby, you’re set to attempt a pull.

It helps that the girls are going to be drunk when they meet you after a shift. Alcohol won’t create interest when there is none, but it can get girls to make their interest in you more explicit.

You also have the pretext of being a customer. Girls with boyfriends, husbands, etc who might not otherwise be able to meet you can use the excuse that you’re a customer to convince themselves that it’s alright to spend time with you on 同伴 or アフター.

There are two key disadvantages to being a customer.

The first is cost. It costs a lot to play the game at hostess clubs. To just meet two or three random girls can end up costing you 6000-7000円. Compare this to approaching two girls on the street which is free. There’s no getting around this one, you have to pay to play.

The second is how difficult it is to gauge interest. When attempting to meet girls on the street, girls who aren’t interested will outright ignore you. Even if they exchange contact information with you, if they’re not interested they’ll block or ignore you.

Hostesses start from the angle of wanting to put you in the needy customer frame. From their behaviour, this can look identical to a girl who has genuine romantic interest in you. Their entire job is convincing you that they might be into you.

Talking to them in the club

At the average キャバクラ, you’ll be placed with each girl for twenty minutes if you go in without a 指名. You probably shouldn’t need to do a great deal of planning for only twenty minutes of conversation, however it can be useful to have a few topics of conversation in store in case you run out of things to talk about.

These conversation topics can help to keep the interaction going and establish an emotional connection with the girl. However, keep fundamentals front and centre in your mind. Sit with good posture, speak slowly, and maintain eye contact. What you actually talk about is secondary to those fundamentals, always.

It can be difficult to ramp up the energy level later on so I like to go in relatively playful and then tone things down as the conversation goes on.

Here are some options for things to say as the girl sits down:

• Good evening, do you speak any English? – Starting the conversation off in English and pretending you don’t speak Japanese puts them on the back foot and can be a lot of fun. They don’t need to understand anything you’re saying, just hearing your English voice will be enough.
• Tap the seat before she sits down and say 座って。ずっと会いたかったよ、どこに居た？You can pretend you know them from school, in a past life, that she’s your ex-girlfriend, that you’re on your honeymoon, etc etc. This requires relatively good delivery in Japanese but basically no Japanese customers are going to show this level of fun/creativity on the open.
• Playful complementary energy. 急に美人さんが現れてすごい緊張する。やっぱりチェンジしてもらえない？

As the conversation goes on, you’re going to want to switch to cutting deeper.

Alongside the regular things you might say or stories you might share when deep cutting, here are some lines of conversation that will help when talking specifically to hostesses.

• プライベートと出勤してる時の性格はどう違う？ You’re asking her how she’s different when serving customers and when she’s at home. Even considering the answer to this question will make her show you some part of her that isn’t the hostess facade.
• 気を使いばっかりでプライベートですごく甘えん坊になちゃいそう, Because you put the customers feelings first so often at work perhaps you become a bit selfish in your private time? This is especially true of more experienced hostesses or girls that are more serious about the job.
• 恋愛の相手を選ぶ時なにが大事？You’re asking what’s important to her in a romantic partner. This is a great jumping off point into talking about relationships, emotional intelligence, sexual chemistry etc. You can also tell a lot about her relationship history by her answers. For example if she says she wants someone who’s 優しい, there’s a good chance that one of her past long term partners wasn’t very nice to her.
• Make a guess as to how long she’s been working as a hostess. You can tell this by looking at her posture, how much make up she’s wearing, how confident she is when interacting with you/黒服, and her age.
• 休みの日は一日中寝てるでしょう. If she works five/six days per week as a hostess, it’s highly likely that she spends 10-15 hours of her days off catching up on sleep.
• キャバ嬢としてで頑張ってると彼氏を作りにくそう. It must be difficult to maintain a relationship with a boyfriend while working as a hostess. This is because between hair, make-up, 同伴, shifts, アフター, and catching up on sleep she has so little free time. That and the boyfriend would need to be OK with her working as a hostess (which can lead into a conversation about 束縛)
• Ask about work. Don’t turn this into an interview but one or two questions in this direction can further demonstrate you understand her world.
  • 最近同伴とかは多い？
  • 担当さんとは仲良い？
  • 何でキャバ嬢になろうと思った？
  • ずっと水商売で働きたい？
  • 今変なお客さん居る？
• If she’s a career hostess, ask her if she’s read books by famous キャバ嬢. It helps if you’ve flicked through a few of them yourself. Examples include 一条響, エンリケ, and 愛沢えみり.
• Hostesses appreciate basically any awareness of the amount of work that goes into maintaining their appearance. That includes but isn’t limited to:
  • Picking out dresses at the hostess dress shop. Sometimes particular キャバクラ have dress codes, for example all girls have to wear short dresses that hug their figure (as opposed to e.g. A-line).
  • Hair and make up before work.
  • Hair colouring and styling updates.
  • Skincare, both their routine and high-end products. Skincare products alone can easily cost as much as most Japanese women make in a month doing office work.

Gauging interest

The central problem of gaming hostesses is how difficult it is to determine genuine interest.

There are two ways to fail at this.

Failure 1: Assuming interest where there is none

Good hostesses make you feel welcome, lift your mood, laugh at your jokes, agree with almost everything you say. They sit upright and engage with you physically. They will let you get away with profoundly unattractive behaviour and still act like girls who are attracted to you.

This failure mode is seductive for your ego. Your ego wants to believe that girls, especially ones as pretty as some hostesses, are genuinely attracted to you.

Failure 2: Missing interest when it’s there

This failure represents you trying too hard to protect your ego. You don’t want to believe that a hostess might be genuinely interested in you because you’re afraid you might be getting fooled by her, that she’s just after your money.

The way to avoid both of these failures is to de-centre your ego. Find the girls that are actually into you and don’t think too hard about the ones who aren’t.

Focus on finding enthusiastic interest

Some girls are into you and some girls aren’t. You can take steps to make yourself more generally attractive to women, but in the moment you have to work with what you’ve got.

Girls you try to seduce can usually be split into three groups: no girls, yes girls, and maybe girls.

No girls aren’t going to sleep with you no matter what.

Yes girls already like you, will give you lots of opportunities to have sex, and can be very forgiving of unattractive behaviour.

Maybe girls haven’t quite made up their minds about you, they need to experience more of your personality before they go either way.

It’s expensive to work on maybe girls you meet in a キャバクラ. This is why I suggest that you should only ever focus on yes girls in hostess clubs. In the hostess club context it’s almost impossible difficult to distinguish maybe girls and no girls.

However, yes girls often make their interest obvious, no matter the context.

In some cases, girls will verbally indicate that they want to have sex with you. This could be by telling you that they want you to take them home. It could be by saying they’re getting wet or they’re fantasizing about you. They might accompany this with touching you.

Other girls can be more subtle. You’ll need to develop a sense for it, but if the girl maintains sustained eye contact with you and you have a few moments where there’s this unsaid, mutual understanding that you’re having sex, that can be all the indication you need. As you gain experience this sense will get more accurate and self-fulfilling.

Failing the above, the only real way to gauge interest is to attempt a pull.

Attempting the pull

The only real way to gauge interest from a hostess is to attempt a pull. Here’s the simplest way to do that.

1. Go to a キャバクラ at about 23:30, don’t nominate anyone, just go in フリー.
2. You’ll meet two or three girls over the course of an hour. For each girl, give them your contact information (they’ll typically ask you) and find out if they’re free for アフター today.
3. If there’s a girl you like in those three that is free for アフター today, stay an extra hour and nominate her for a 場内指名. Offer to pay her タクシー代 and tell her to cancel 送迎. If you don’t do this, your アフター will be limited to about an hour and you won’t have enough time to pull.
4. If none of the girls are free for アフター tonight, then don’t bother sticking around. Get in touch with the ones you like and say you’ll do a 本指名 + アフター whenever they’re free for it, set a date for that, then start again at the previous step.
5. On the アフター　take her to one venue and then attempt a pull to a sex location like you would any other girl.

While it’s worth persisting during any particular date with these girls, I would recommend against spending any additional money on girls that have given you a strong rejection.

Remember that outside of a kyabakura, a lot of these girls would cut off all contact with you after a failed pull or escalation. You don’t have that feedback when you attempt to pull a hostess. They’ll never be unhappy to see you at their club if you spend money on them.

Do you want to spend platonic friend time at them in their club? If not, you need to decisively cut your losses and move on to other girls without a second thought.

Last night I was at Kaede’s club again. As I walked in the reception did a temperature check and sprayed me with disinfectant, then they took my coat. Everyone at her club knows that we’re seeing each other, so they don’t need to ask me who the 本指名 is for.

They lead me to a seat and I sit down and order a tomato juice. A girl, not Kaede is seated across from me. This means that someone else has nominated her and I’m going to have to share her.

A few minutes later Kaede makes her entrance. She’s wearing a tight red dress and has her hair cut short, heels and a Chanel bag. She looks sexy, cute, and glamarous. She smells incredible, today it’s YSL. She smiles and hugs me as she sits down. The 黒服 dismiss the girl that was sat with me as ヘルプ.

She’s heard rumours about me taking home girls she knows at another club. I tell her not to worry, they’re all true.

“I’m always happy to see you” she says. She tells me she’s drunk, that she’s had shochu, whisky, and champagne today. She seems calm and steady, if a little more girly than usual.

She tells me about a douhan she had with another customer today. About what they ate, what they talked about. I asked her if she enjoyed it. She said yes. It was with a company CEO visiting from Tokyo. An older guy, and I know at 36 I’m the youngest “boyfriend” she’s ever had. She normally gets involved with men in their late 40s or early 50s.

She knows talking about her with other customers makes me jealous. She’s doing it on purpose to see my reaction. I put it out of my mind.

We talk and laugh for a few minutes. I say I need to use the restroom. When I come out she’s waiting for me with a hand towel. We’re just out of sight of the 黒服.

I grab her waist, kiss her neck and tell her I want her today. She makes a pretend angry face and puts the hand towel between us. I walk back to my seat with her following, passing the towel to one of the 黒服 on the way.

She leans in close and whispers. I can feel her breath on on my ear. I get this sweet, sexual, intoxicating mix of perfume, alcohol and her natural musky smell. It’s so good it almost makes my eyes roll back in my head.

“You can do whatever you want with me whenever you want. I belong to you.”

She knows exactly what to say. Part of me knows she must say this to all men she likes but another part of me just doesn’t care.

I stay for the hour and we plan to meet after she finishes her shift. She says she has to stick around until the other customer she’s with today leaves, they’re dropping a lot of money on champagne apparently.

It’s 12:30, she says she should be able to meet me somewhere at around 01:45. I park myself in a girls bar and wait for her. Time passes and I hear nothing from her. By 02:30 I decide I’m tired of waiting and I’m going to head home.

My guess at this point is that the other customer invited her and the other girl they had out to an アフター, and given the amount of money they had dropped and the potential for that girl being Kaede’s 先輩 or 後輩, that probably took priority over her アフター with me.

I want to drop off her taxi money at the bar they usually take customers to アフター, and then head home. She’s not there. On the way out I see her at the entrance. She’s slurring her speech, very apologetic. She said she wants to go back to mine.

I didn’t think she would be coming home with me today. When we reached the genkan I ran inside to my bedroom. Everything was still as I’d left it from the two hour sex session that I’d had with my girlfriend that afternoon. I wrapped the pink vibrator on the floor with kitchen paper and threw it into a drawer out of sight. The same went for a handful of beauty products she’d left in my sink.

Everything was squared away before Kaede realized what I was doing. I didn’t have time to take care of any stray hairs she might have left, but with a bit of luck Kaede wouldn’t notice.

We got naked but were too tired to have sex, so just held each other and fell asleep. We woke up about three hours later.

I lay on top of her, nose-kissed her and blew raspberries into her belly, she laughed and pushed me away. Then I kissed her neck slowly, moved down to her shoulders, under her arms, and across her chest. I moved my left hand from her waist down to underneath her ass. I put my other hand behind her neck and held her. She wrapped her legs around me. I looked into her eyes, then pushed into her and she moaned softly.

After we finished we got in the shower, then snuggled on my sofa and talked for a few more hours. I showed her parts of this article. She made a few suggestions and corrections. She talked about how bored she was at work. She showed me some of the silly and annoying things her current customers were sending her over line.

I took her outside and we got a couple of sausage egg McMuffins together before I saw her off at the station. We made plans to see each other again the same time next week. I head back to my room and start typing some more.

I don’t actually recommend that anyone get into this world in the way I have. It cost an eye-watering amount of money, the drinking was terrible for my health, and I wasted a lot of energy on girls that had no intention of spending time alone with me.

However, I did have an unreasonable amount of fun. If you have the money to play and can set aside your ego, you too can probably have a lot of fun in this little niche of Japanese culture too.

You can live an entire lifetime in Japan without ever wandering into a kyabakura. But if, like me, a part of you wants to do fun things in the dark with flashy girls wearing designer dresses, then the world of 水商売 awaits.