If you’ve ever stayed at a traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan, especially a somewhat smaller one, you have likely encountered the women who run them, known as the okami (meaning proprietress, not to be confused with okami — pronounced with a longer oh — that means wolf).
Though younger women are often busy doing many of the tasks, a slightly older woman is usually in charge. Like the mama-san who runs a hostess club, she’s a more mature yet still alluring prospect.
Well, we are likely romanticizing things because the gap between reality and fantasy gets misty here: ryokan ladies are the stuff of sexploitation and porn, and such an ingrained trope that it can be hard to remember what they are really like.
Fortunately, we now have help. Collectible cards.
If you have a hankering for the older charms of such ryokan women, you can now indulge your fantasy with these collectible cards that come with, er, popcorn.
Yes, this is pretty incongruous. Popcorn and ryokan women. Not a marriage made in heaven, but the cards are great.
They feature pictures of the women, many of whom are a comely thirty or fortysomething (and at least a couple seem to be even younger), with their name, information about their inn, plus points for “physique” and “support.”
The cards, then, effectively function as advertising, but we love the gimmick of “collecting” cards of Japanese jukujo waiting in the countryside for your custom.
All the women work at 20 ryokan in Ibaraki Prefecture participating in the campaign. The cards come with packs of Frito Lay’s oddly named Mike popcorn.
Will the pictures entice you to stay at the ryokan on the card in the hope that the lady featured will be there to greet and show you to your room?
The Ibaraki brainchild of a tourism organization, the cards even seem to include a foreign-born female proprietor.
The bags of popcorn with the cards are available until December 31 at selected stores in Ibaraki.
