Here’s part two of our selection of hot Japanese lesbian action…

Want more? Here’s part one!

Panchira research sounds like a lot of fun.

Starring popular cosplayer Kazari, Mosou Kagaku Kenkyujo (Fantasy Science Research Lab) has released a new video analyzing their research into panchira.

Panchira is a fetish for the panty shot. It’s huge in Japan, especially with cosplayer idols or with schoolgirls.

The video is the first in the series in around nine months and shows the results of their “research” into ways for schoolgirls to do things so that their panties don’t show, not always successfully.

This time Kazari demonstrates how to pick a book off a shelf without her skirt being pulled up to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of her panties.

If all this sounds like a party pooper’s approach to panchira, don’t worry — it’s still very alluring.

There’s a whole series of these “Research into how to definitely not expose your panties while…” videos by Hanao Nohira (the man behind Mosou Kagaku Kenkyujo), sharing ways for girls in a variety of situations trying to complete an action so that their panties will not show to the passing pervert.

The ladies who helped in the demonstrations included AV stars Tsubomi and Hibiki Ohtsuki. Needless to say, we like to see the girls fail, though actually a lot of the appeal of panchira is the voyeuristic temptation that is ultimately held back at the last moment.

Swimsuit makers Realise decided to release a very sexy front zipper swimming costume.

They got Gravure model Miyako Ayane to show off how good it looks.

Now that’s certainly one way to get people’s attention on the beach.

This alone would be worthy of our attention.

But Realise’s sexy and alluring design unwittingly inspired a whole meme in its own right.

After Realise released some publicity images of the swimsuit design, the Twittersphere immediately got to work making their own NSFW erotic illustrated versions of how the same swimsuit might look on some very moe characters.

Image: @ORE_HA_AKUMA_DA

Image: @ABO_FB

Image: @ino_sakuya

Image: @agarwood_sleep

Image: @baketsuya

Image: @tajiriso

Image: @Ulrich_46

Image: @crescent_D

Image: @marukata

Image: @flewchicken

Image: @asita_2012

Image: @miyoshi0w0

Image: @cosplayninki

Image: @fujine17

Image: @hidoriMK2

Image: @mz_kojiro

Image: @trance300

Image: @dksha19

Image: @arpeggio_kaga

Image: @sumio617

Reminds of when Tenga inspired a “Tenga robot” meme on Twitter.

No, it’s not AV idols or even Gravure idols. Nor is it exotic or glamorous fashion models.

It’s very mainstream actresses with charming personalities.

Almost all the ladies have “cute” girl-next-door faces rather than sensual, “beautiful” looks.

The number one lady that Japanese men said they most wanted to date was… Haruka Ayase, who also came out top of last year’s survey. Local guys like ditzy girls, it seems.

Second was Satomi Ishihara, up from fourth place. It might be all those Aeon English school ads she has been doing. A girl who can speak English (albeit with a thick accent and rehearsed delivery) is charming.

In third place was Maki Horikita.

Fourth was Yui Aragaki.

Fifth was Kasumi Arimura.

Sixth was Rena Nounen.

Seventh was Tsubasa Honda.

Eighth was Aoi Miyazaki.

Ninth was new entry and popular lady of the moment Suzu Hirose.

Tenth was Aya Ueto.

So no Masami Nagasawa (last year’s number eight) or Yuriko Yoshitaka (might be her history of doing nude scenes puts men off even while turning them on?

No busty Gravure idols.

No AKB48 girls or similar music idols!

No sultry fashion models like Kiko Mizuhara.

Ultimately Japanese men are conservatives who want a sweetie rather than a sexy.

The Oricon survey was carried out between January 5th and January 9th with 500 men aged from their teens to their fifties across the whole of Japan.

Another week, another amazing sex scene from an amazing Korean actress.

While some of the Japanophiles may complain that this blog is fast losing the “Tokyo” from its name, we just can’t resist when the ladies are this hot.

Following our previous forays where we looked at Lee Tae-im in For the Emperor, Song Eun-chae in Lost Flower, Oh In-hye in The Plan, Esom (Lee So-young) i Scarlet Innocence, and Kim Jae-hwa in Hwanghae (The Yellow Sea), now comes Han Se-ah in the explicit Love Affair.

Han Se-ah (한세아) was born in 1985 and we thank whoever the gods are for that day she came into this world.

In Love Affair you can enjoy two nice long sex scenes with Han Se-ah, where she demonstrates some acrobatic physical talents.

One takes place on a bed and another on a sofa. Both are sweaty, prolonged scenes, and man… are we glad we’ve seen them.

Ever thought a crying girl looked cute?

Of course she does.

But have you ever wondered what else can be done with those tears?

How about lubing up with them? Well, not literally. Japan’s sex toys makers haven’t been scouring the land for upset girls… not yet anyway.

But the Young Japanese Girls Tears Lotion (in pink) and the Japanese Otoko no Ko Crossdresser Tears Lotion (in blue) are inspired by the wet eyes of idols.

It depends on your taste. Do you like them young and virginal, and female?

Or are you more into cross-dressing idols? (For those who don’t know, an otoko no ko is a currently trendy word for a cross-dresser, with the emphasis as much on cosplay as transgender.)

Personally we would go for the young girl spray but to each their own.

The sprays have been designed with easy application in mind — so they can be used with toys and dolls, or even just by themselves on hands or other bodily parts.

They are made with slightly different natural compounds but either of the two tears lotion by Magic Eye will get you wet in not time.

As we know, idol groups, most notoriously AKB48, will exploit fans who want to purchase ways to vote for members in “election” or for chances to shake their hand. They do this by selling these privileges as slips of paper included with CDs or other products.

The most recent campaign has been a tie-up with Kodansha’s Young Magazine, an iconic weekly manga magazine.

Kodansha chose a number of idol candidates from various groups (AKB48, NMB48, SKE48, HKT48) and said fans could choose the idol who will appear in a sexy swimsuit photo shoot. (The ladies on the cover are actually from Nogizaka46 but they are not part of the competition.)

Naturally, the fans want their top lady to win.

By purchasing the magazine, you got a slip of paper that you could use to vote for the lady you wanted to see in a swimsuit.

The problem is that there are ordinary Young Magazine customers who now can’t find their regular read on the shelf because some crazed AKB fan has gone and purchased the whole store’s stock. Last week social media was abuzz with annoyed readers unable to find their manga magazine.

As you can see in the pictures, Ryosuke@Boku bought a huge amount of magazines, priced around ¥500 ($4.20) each.

Ryosuke is a massive fan of Serika Nagano, the 13-year-old idol in AKB48. However, she is too young for the competition, it seems, so he has to make do with another girl.

This is not only cynicism on the part of the AKB agency but also the publishers, since they know they have fallen on harder times. Young Magazine shifted 1 million copies in 2004 but its sales have dropped considerably over the last ten years. It is now own to around 475,000. Stunts like this are sure ways to raise their sales, though they risk alienating their fans.

Even Rino Sashihara (whose own fans are legendary) has suggested to fans that they buy from multiple convenience stores rather than bulk buying from the same store, in order to avoid disappointing fans.

The annual Honen (or Hounen) Matsuri was held recently, confirming once again what a horny religion Shinto is.

The festival in Aichi is Japan’s second most famous fertility festival, after the now insanely popular Kanamara Festival in Kawasaki, which takes place next month.

Honen Matsuri takes place on March 15th, appropriately the day after White Day (when men give women chocolate).

As always, the Shinto rite featured parades of ceremonially dressed people and a giant phallus being taken to Tagata Jinja shrine.

Plus there were lots of phallic merchandise for sale, (if the web is to be believed) bought solely by giggling young girls.

The Twittersphere was abuzz with the usual sniggering at girls (and foreigners) gleefully nibbling phallic sweets or holding cock toys, and the main spectacle of the giant cock being treated like a god (as it should be!).

Even the prayer plaques had cocks on them.

Oh, by the way, the Japanese police think all these cocks are fine. But heaven help you if you try to show a replica of female genitalia!

It had to happen some day.

The Apple of the Japanese sex toys market has finally made a sex machine. Well, sort of. It’s not a sex machine in the same world as the A10 Cyclone Robotic Masturbator by Rends.

But Tenga has created its first electric adult toy. And as you’d expect from Tenga, it’s very smart and minimalist — but super effective.

The Tenga Vacuum Controller works with some of its onacup toys (specifically, the Deep Throat Cup Standard, Deep Throat Cup Hard, Deep Throat Cup Soft, Deep Throat Cup Cool, and U.S. Tenga Deep Throat Cup models)

There are two adapters depending on the size of the onacup.

Slot it into the Vacuum Controller, turn it on, and then press the release button to adjust the vacuum sensation inside the onacup.

It essentially works by hooking onto the air release hole which every onacup toy has. This can be turned to the advantage of the vacuum through the battery-powered motor mechanism.

You’ll never want to go back to a regular onacup experience again.

The career of Haruna Kojima (known as Kojiharu to her fans) may be on the wane, having lost the lucrative Peach John lingerie modelling gig to Saeko and her sizzling charm.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the power still to shift magazines.

To launch her new photo book, Kojiharu has been featured on the cover of Playboy magazine. Inside is a sweet photo shoot showing off her pale body.

There is some serious Photoshop going on here, though. Kojiharu famously has very sensitive skin and close-ups on TV usually reveal this.

Her new photo book is called “Dou suru?” (What shall we do?) and went on release on March 24th.

Much fuss is being made about the “t-back” (thong) and stockings shot.

However, she’s done plenty of revealing shoots before.

And if you really want to see Kojiharu at her most revealing, apparently you should simply turn on the television.

Good luck with the book, Haruna. It’s probably your last chance at the big time before you graduate from AKB into the celebrity underclass.

When you need something done, crowdsource it. And we know that Japanese netizens are a creative and resourceful bunch.

For Valentine’s Day (when girls give guys chocolates in Japan, Tenga became the Tenga Robo… a mecha creation for pleasuring the men.

For White Day (March 14th, when the guys give chocolates to the girls in Japan), Japan’s netizens reciprocated and turned Tenga into a Iroha-integrated robot. As shared on Twitter in an ever more outlandish series of images, the Tenga Iroha Robo was artistically very impressive.

Image via @c_b_industry

Image via @vuttiya

Image via @ikuyoan

Iroha is the line of Tenga vibrators.

But it didn’t stop at the Iroha series. Some cheated and went back to the regular Tenga onacup, or even the special anniversary Tenga Premium.

Image via @yryuta99

Image bia @kamizono144

Image via @kouichi_129

Images via @susagane03

Image via @weis2626

Image via @Sidehiwinder

The Tenga Egg and Vi-Bo couple-play vibrator series also became the inspiration for new mecha characters.

Image via @shingo5

Image via @nakanohaito

Image via @yoyo1_3

Image via @Gamiani0

So, it all begs the question: What is next?!

Former office48 (part of the AKS group) executive Takashi Nodera has been arrested and imprisoned for filming illicit naked videos of the young idols under his charge.

There has been total silence on this so far in the mainstream media, as well as, needless to say, from the powers that be at AKS, the company that runs the juggernaut that is AKB48.

But the tabloids have fortunately broken the story.

Takashi Nodera hid secret cameras in bathrooms, dressing rooms and hotel rooms between 2009 and 2010 to film the girls, possibly under age, while they relaxed without clothes on.

Tokyo Reporter has translated some of the Shukan Bunshun article:

In one 58-minute clip shot in 2010, an AKB48 member is seen lounging fully naked on a bed in a hotel room. Footage taken on New Year’s Eve in 2009 shows members inside a dressing room for NHK’s “Kohaku Uta Gassen” prior to and during the celebratory countdown.

The married Nodera (38) was a board member of office48 from 2007 to 2010. His connections with AKB48 go back as far as 2005. We can only presume that he lost his job because his activities were discovered by AKS and they tried to cover it up. Of course, we don’t know for sure.

He was arrested and sentenced in 2013 to a 16-month prison sentence.

Police found 75 films totalling 15 hours in length of tousatsu footage (peeping videos) on the hard disk of his personal computer. Police also discovered more than 200 still images.

Can we please have it officially recognised at long last? AKB is sleazy. We have nothing against idol culture, but this is a machine designed to milk money from fans and groom girls for much older man to exploit.

It’s an open secret that Mariko Shinoda and Tomomi Kasai are/were probably having affairs with a top executive at AKS (namely Yasushi Kubota).

Meanwhile Tomonobu Togasaki has been caught using prostitutes and drugs.

And let’s not even get started on the allegations of Yakuza connections.

We’re not getting on any moral high horse here. We just don’t want these guys in charge of underage idols and certainly don’t want their coffers to benefit from the government’s obsessions with AKB48 being “Cool Japan”.

Porn star Saki Otsuka turned herself into a photographer a little while ago now when she released her photography book “Mitsubai nude” in 2012. Since then she’s produced quite an impressive body of work.

Once again working with ERECT magazine, the occasional publication with the best name in the world, Saki Otsuka has created “MEME”, a touring exhibition of her work taking in Fukuoka, Osaka and Tokyo.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Saki isn’t shooting pictures of flowers or pretty landscapes. Her photography is dark and focuses a lot on naked flesh, including her own, it seems. The images from the “MEME” series are blurry and erotic.

The first two cities are done and dusted, but the Tokyo leg is happening at AMP Cafe in Koenji from April 8th to April 12th. The special zines produced for the exhibition have already partly sold out.

Known for her immaculate bust, Otsuka clearly has an artistic bent, like her fellow porn colleague and photographer Elly Akira (Yuuka Osawa).

What to do when you get tired of doing porn? Become a singer like Yuma Asami? Become a manga-ka like Nayuka Mine?

Born in 1984 and making her debut in JAV in 2004, Otsuka seems to have found an impressive answer to this eternal question.

The Japan Times published a recent article about the fascinating — and inspiring — tale of Rie Saito.

Saito, who lost her hearing at age 1, plans to run in the April 26 election in Tokyo’s Kita Ward Assembly as a Nippon wo Genki ni Suru Kai (Party to Revitalize Japan) candidate. A best-selling author who was once the No. 1 hostess at a club in Tokyo’s Ginza district, Saito was known as the hitsudan hostess who used writing to communicate with her customers.

So this hottie would use paper to keep her patrons happy in Ginza and encourage them to buy her drinks.

Being a hostess is all about looking pretty and communicating, so Saito’s disability would surely preclude her from this exclusive world — but that’s not the case.

In her autobiography “Hitsudan Hosutesu” (“Writing Hostess”), published in 2009 by Kobunsha Co., Saito revealed her past — from being teased for sounding like “an alien” as a child, to her rebellious days of getting in trouble at school and at home, to how she wound up coming to Tokyo and eventually becoming a top hostess at a club in the glitzy Ginza district.

She reads lips to listen to people (but doesn’t use sign language) and must have been charming to converse with, though obviously things would have flowed at a more leisurely pace.

Her bestselling autobiography was then made into a TV drama with Keiko Kitagawa.

This is the two of them together. Quite a fetching pair.

Now 31 and with a daughter of 4 years old (and no father around), Saito’s next challenge is to become possibly only Japan’s second ever deaf politician.

We’ve seen lots of paizuri (titty fucking) toys in our time.

This fantasy is certainly a hard one (no pun intended) to realize in Japan — land of the flat chest — unless you are lucky enough to have bakunyuu “explosive bust” Hitomi Tanaka or Rara Anzai for your bedroom partner.

So in lieu of trying it with a real partner, Japanese guys make do with these kinds of toys.

Many are just as you’d expect — busts that you can squeeze around your member while you slide in and out. Often they have nice nubbing and so on between the breasts to heighten the experience.

The Love Titty Onahole is more unusual: you literally penetrate the breast.

And that’s a bit similar to the Oppai Other, Other Side of Tits Paizuri Onahole.

Okay, it has a long name but it’s worth it.

Here you actually push yourself through the breasts, sliding through the generously lined tunnel.

The Oppai Other, Other Side of Tits is made by Prime and it’s a full air hole release type toy. That means the penetration hole goes right the way through, making cleaning much easier…

And there’s a bonus side which even regular masturbators with full air holes don’t have. The hole doesn’t just pass right the way through — it actually has a double entrance, so you can penetrate it from either side.

In other words, you can fuck the breasts from the front or the back (due to the design of the inner hole, the sensation varies).

You can also enjoy the more conventional paizuri sensations of squeezing yourself between the buoyant breasts. The nipples are also super flexible and realistic.

So no matter how hot your lady friend is, we don’t think she can offer you this experience.

Make Room (Make-Up Room) is a new drama film about a fascinating topic: the people who do the make-up for porn stars.

It’s written and directed by Kei Morikawa, and stars Aki Morita as the titular make-up artist, as well as three actual porn stars: Riri Kuribayashi, Beni Ito, Nanami Kawakami.

Originally a play by Morikawa, it promises to show the behind-the-scenes of the adult video industry. It gets a limited release in Japan in May.

It reminds us of an interview we once read with a man claiming to have worked for a while as a hair and make-up artist for porn stars in Japan, such as Azusa Nagasawa.

He said they actually focus mostly on the photos shot to promote a film, rather than the main shoot of the film itself. So the make-up artists prepare the stars for stills and rarely get to see the film being shot. He said he wasn’t close to the directors.

He was paid a daily wage of ¥15,000, plus an extra fee if he was specifically requested by someone.

However, he would leave for work at 8 a.m. and finish at 10 p.m., when he would go drinking with the other staff.

So though he got to work with hot girls all day, it’s not quite the paradise we might imagine!

However, thinking about this job reminds us of that make-up room sex scene from the Erika Sawajiri movie Helter Skelter.

Our immaculate specimen this week is Yuno Akuzawa.

Born in May 1990 in Fukuoka Prefecture, Yuno likes cooking and yoga.

She is a nice 174cm tall, which makes for a fine, long figure… and wonderful legs. Of course, all that height also means a nice bust too.

Here she is in a recent shoot for Playboy March 2015 and elsewhere. A future star of the Gravure scene, we hope!

Another week, another sex-themed article about Japan gets written and hawked around.

AFP has written an article about Japan’s “silver porn” industry and the wire service has sold it to countless other publications around the world.

We’ve seen these pieces before, such as in The Guardian.

And of course, it’s hardly news.

There has been a vibrant silver porn for a long time, featuring a host of stars like Yumi Kazama and Shigeo Tokuda. And it’s not just performers: the over-sixty crowd is very active in watching porn, frequenting love hotels, and also visiting soaplands and prostitutes (young and old).

The AFP article focuses on a new star, Yasue Tomita.

Dressed in a kimono and kneeling silently on a tatami mat floor, 61-year-old Yasue Tomita looks as if she might be about to perform a Japanese tea ceremony — instead she’s debuting as a porn actress.

Fluttering her eyelashes demurely as the cameras prepare to roll, Tomita is proof that in Japan’s greying society you’re never too old to chase your dreams, however racy or unorthodox.

She has also become part of a flourishing niche market in Japan: “silver porn” — stretching the limits of eroticism among the elderly and overturning social norms in a country where people are expected to grow old gracefully.

A friend of mine with quite a lot of experience with scarlet ladies once told me the young ones were best for screwing while the older ones knew how to give the best head.

Tomita is also a little worried about her physical abilities.

Tomita confessed to being “a bit rusty” but made no apologies for her rambunctious lust for life, or her decision to put aside her knitting and crochet and launch into a career making X-rated movies.

“I like my handicrafts but I wanted to try my hand at this, while my body still works,” she told AFP before filming began.

“I do like sex, and this is my last chance before I get too old. I’m very nervous. I wonder if I should really do it, especially in front of so many people, but everyone should follow their dream.

“I just hope I can keep up,” added Tomita, who used to work in a factory manufacturing car parts and registered for an agency in Japan’s booming “adult video” (AV) industry with her daughter.

“We applied through the Internet together. I got offered a job first, which surprised her a bit.”

Of course, the writers bring in Shigeo Tokuda as the “pioneer” of the genre.

In ageing Japan, around 32 million people — a quarter of the population — are 65 or over. Thanks to a low birthrate and growing longevity, that proportion is expected to rise to 40 percent by 2060.

With statistics like that, it’s no surprise that geronto-porn is big business.

Adult movies rake in about $20 billion a year, and those featuring unashamedly wrinkly men and women account for between 20 and 30 percent of that market, industry insiders say. Sales have rocketed over the past decade as more of Japan’s perky seniors celebrate their mojo.

Though not for the faint-hearted, the genre took off thanks largely to now-80-year-old Shigeo Tokuda, the twinkle-toed king of granddad porn, who has peeled off for hundreds of hardcore flicks with titles such as “Forbidden Elderly Care” and “Manic Training of Lolitas.”

Thank you, Tokuda-san!

Japan’s top cosplayer, Iiniku Ushijima, is set to make her JAV porn debut at long last.

Sadly not.

This was an April Fools’ Day joke by a Japanese porn label.

A million cocks sprung up when Prestige made the “announcement”… on April 1st.

No, Japan’s slinkiest cosplay idol is not switching over to the porn industry (yet).

It wasn’t the only adult-themed April Fools’ Day prank, though.

Feast, the lingerie line for A-cup Japanese girls designed by the cute Gomi Hayakawa, suddenly had a male spinoff. Hayakawa announced Beast, apparently her new brand of male lingerie, which look suspiciously like female underwear.

Of course, this too was a joke… although female lingerie for men does exist. We’ve blogged about it before (years ago, in fact). There are even manicure and make-up sets for guys.

It is said that half of all sex in Japan happens in a love hotel. 1% of the population uses a love hotel on any single day; something like 1,370,000 couples. A large proportion of the nation’s new babies are conceived in a love hotel. There are 500 million visits a year. Room occupancy is 600-700% in some busy establishments — 78.8 stays per room per month!

The love hotel industry has an annual turnover of ¥4 trillion yen, which is around four times the operating profits of Toyota and double the anime industry. And yet it’s cars and anime that the government wants to push as the face of Japan.

That being said, the love hotel is not unique to Japan. Similar kinds of short-stay accommodations designed for trysts can be found in South Korea, Brazil, Greece, Singapore, and elsewhere.

Where did the love hotel phenomenon start? Why has it developed the way it has?

The modern love hotel as we think of it today in Japan began in the late 1950′s. By the 1980′s there were 30,000 of them. It was during that decade that the legal definition changed, so it is now harder to calculate precisely how many love hotels exist in Japan.

While originally associated with adultery and prostitution, today the love hotel is not necessarily sleazy. It is a facility enjoyed by young couples still living with their parents or even older couples who just want some privacy away from their family, since Japanese homes and apartments are infamously small.

You are also likely to find groups using a love hotel for non-sexual means too, because there are now advanced entertainment systems like karaoke and satellite TV, as well as diverse catering services available.

Let’s go back to the pre-war period. We could go back even further and find precedents for the love hotel but this is a “short history”.

Before the modern love hotel there was the machiai (“waiting together”), a type of room for lovers. This was the kind of establishment where Sada Abe killed her lover and cut off his penis. The predecessors to the machiai were the kariza-shiki “rooms for rent” and the hikitejaya “handle tea rooms”. There were also the enshuku one-yen dwellings during the 1930′s.

The next main type of love hotel (or name for such a place) was the tsurekomi-yado, the “bring-along inn”. These mushroomed in the post-war years. By 1961 there were 2,700 in Tokyo alone. In response to the new anti-prostitution laws, there were brothels nearby and the love hotels catered to clients. This is much the same as today in certain areas of Tokyo like Uguisudani and Ikebukuro, where the hotels are essentially the rooms you take a call girl to after you make your booking at the “shop” (a type of service usually euphemistically called “hotel health”).

Magazines in the 1970′s began using various terms: shikake hoteru (gadget hotel), douhan hoteru (go-together hotel), and abekku hoteru (avec hotel).

The “love hotel” (rabu hoteru) nomenclature arrived during this decade and eventually stuck. All the other labels have fallen by the wayside and we are left with a name that has faux foreign and romantic connotations, which keeps it neutral from the sleazier nuances of previous names.

When the Meguro Emperor opened in the 1970′s, it set the tone for a trademark feature of the love hotel as we think of it: kitsch. Before long most hotels were adopting gaudy exteriors, sometimes ridiculously elaborate (castles, see below) and with luxury rooms or even themed rooms (dungeons, carousels, cars… you name it).

Most love hotels, though, while they were bold in their colors and cheesy in their pseudo-European names, were fairly basic places inside. The stereotype of the outlandish themes is just that — a stereotype that only applies to a fraction of hotels.

In the 1970′s, certain hotels became popular for offering dendou or engata circular revolving beds, which were surrounded by mirror panels. There were some S&M rooms, but these were rare and usually out of town. Osaka has always been more exuberant in its love hotels, it seems. Osakan hotels often have youkai kanban — ornate signage with frescoes and so on.

Popular days for visiting a love hotel remain Valentine’s Day (introduced in Japan in 1958), White Day (March 14th, where the guys give the ladies chocolates), and Christmas Eve (the big night for couples to go on dates). However, there are surprising spikes in occupancy caused by international sporting events, where love hotels offer comfortable, reasonably priced places to watch Japanese players and teams compete late at night in a foreign country on a nice TV screen. Rather than squeezing into a crowded bar or staying up at home, you can watch the sporting event and then sleep, waking up in the city center the next day. This has been the case with the World Cup and Japan’s growing soccer culture.

The standard system is a “short stay” (2-3 hours) or overnight stay. Rates vary for weekdays and weekends or holidays. Lobbies are typically unmanned and discreet, ensuring privacy and speed of access. Often you will never see any other guests or members of staff, though you might hear them having a good time!

Love hotel districts in Tokyo include Shibuya, Uguisudani, Ebisu, Gotanda, Kabukicho and Ikebukuro. The love hotels eventually came to occupy the edges of drinking areas in major commercial hubs like Shinjuku and Shibuya. After all, alcohol and food have a tendency to lead to something else. However, sometimes hotels are located between shrines and temples, which would be unthinkable in a Judaeo-Christian society. One of Osaka’s main love hotel areas is right by its main cluster of Buddhist temples.

Is the love hotel surviving these uncertain economic times? Yes and no.

Love hotels are usually owned by private families, chains such as the Aine System Group (which owns 150 hotels), or the Yakuza mafia. Cleaning staff tend to be low-paid foreign immigrants.

A falling population and tighter regulations have conspired to force the industry into partial decline. Prices have gone up and even in city centers like Shibuya, it is common to see shabby or even closed-down hotels.

Its heyday may be long gone but then so is the Bubble. Rest assured, the love hotel is certainly not going away.

Today there has been a big push towards new kinds of amenities such as bathing (a big part of Japanese culture), karaoke, Wi-Fi, tanning beds, exercise bikes, massage chairs, TV entertainment systems, and food (from whole meals to snacks, and complimentary breakfasts). Moshi Moshi Pierot in Osaka even hired a five-star chef to provide meals to patrons. There are also party rooms aimed at single-sex groups.

The love hotel is now as much about comfort and enjoyable as the erotic or titillating.

In 1985 the law changed, forcing hotels to hide behind other legal categories or continue in accordance to harsher regulation. The semi-legal former became the majority, sometimes called “statutory love hotels”. There were 11,000 in 1985; by 2000 there were 7,000. But today there are perhaps only as few as 3,500. For every new opening, some say there are two closures.

And yet, the “statutory” hotels are often operating now as a third category, “non-love hotels” (regular hotels) on paper, so it is hard to speculate on the true health of the industry. As one random example illustrates, sometimes what we think is a love hotel is actually legally speaking a religious facility.

Just to end on a funny anecdote. The late Hiroshi Yamauchi set a up a love hotel in the early 1960′s when he was trying to diversify his business operations. However, he wasn’t cut out for this kind of industry and his hotel failed. He then steered his company’s towards the nascent video game industry. The company was called Nintendo and the rest is history.

Further Reading:
Sarah Chaplin, Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History
Philip Cox and Hikaru Toda, Love Hotel
Kotaku, Inside Japan’s Pleasure Hotels
Nippon.com, Japan’s Affection for Love Hotels: Learning from the Research of Kim Ikkyon