I guess given that the weather is so finicky that this is a great time for movie watching. I just watched this documentary called the Great Happiness Space: Tales of an Osaka Love Thief which follows around Issei, the number 1 host at a host bar in Osaka. 
During the first of the two years I lived in Japan, Osaka became my second home. It was the easiest city to get to from my tiny farming town, and I was fortunate enough to make some fabulous friends there. It became my weekend sanctuary, my little American colony, where I could speak in English, eat cinnabons at Universal City, salsa dance at Balihai, or watch Africans impersonate New Yorkers while selling Sean Jean and FUBU gear in Americamura. I really got to know it well, not just the touristy parts either, I walked the city day and night, getting lost, getting found, having adventures, marveling at the sheer amount of electricity needed to keep all those signs aglow.
I even managed to go to a hostess bar, which was kind of an accident. The beautiful Shrilankan I was dating at the time was friends with an Osaka native with a penchant for hostesses, so when he came to visit me (he was living in Tokyo at the time) we ended up meeting up with his friend at his favorite spot. It's embarrassing, given that these are establishments synonymous with the exploitation of women, but I was kind of excited to get a chance to go. I wanted to see what it was like. I had imagined it to be a seedy tavern...more like a strip club than a bar, but in terms of looks, it was like any other bar...there was mood lighting and nice furniture...the only difference is that we were assigned a hostess, actually two, who were a combination of waitresses that never left and entertainment. A hostess gets paid to flirt and chat with you. Though I am sure there are some under the table agreements where you can get more for your money, the basic premise is just like going on a paid date.
As per usual, the mere sight of my brown skin caused a stir. All the hostesses gathered around me. My date's friend joked that he would always bring me back just to get all the free attention. I ordered a rum a coke, but they were out of Bacardi, so someone actually went to a store to buy it for me. In the meantime I was treated like a princess, all the hostesses wanted to touch my hair and skin...they were so nice about it that I didn't mind...and then they asked me if I could sing. It just so happens I am the karaoke queen, so I sang and they got out tambourines and jammed with me. It was loads of fun and probably ridiculously expensive, but I never saw the bill.
What I never realized is that there are also host bars with Japanese men as hosts. They aren't exactly prostitutes either. Well.....they could be...but they try to avoid sleeping with their clients because it keeps them coming back. They say they deal in fantasy...the illusion of love. This film was a fascinating look into a world I walked past a million times, but never really ventured into over the course of my two year stint.
It was both really sad to see all these women with painfully low self esteem spending THOUSANDS of dollars (tens of thousands of yen) just to get some flirtation and compliments from these guys and also really fascinating to see what their lives are like: both the hosts and the women who are seemingly addicting to visiting the hosts. Some of the women had even become prostitutes in order to support this insane cycle...and what is even more crazy about that is that they often make way less than the male hosts do, even though the physical demands on the men are much less. It was creepy, but definitely interesting and thought provoking.
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