I wrote recently about a perverse new trend in Japan, in which young, comic-book-addled Japanese men pay women to treat them, basically, like nerd-gods but without sex. Well, I'm here to tell you today: It gets worse.
Japanese men traveling on the famously crowded Tokyo subway system do so much groping of their female co-passengers that the system is now offering woman-only cars. Rather than slinking away in shame like the normal, self-loathing sick-os men are, Japanese men are turning to a new type of theme restaurant. The restaurant is the creation of the Japanese magazine Tokusatsu Shinsengumi -- which, according to this powerful, Internet-based translation supercomputer, means "Tokusatsu Shinsengumi."
The magazine introduces "Train Cafe," an establishment five minutes from the north exit of Tokyo's Ikebukuro station, where, after paying an initial membership of 5,000 yen, male customers can ride on a simulated commuter train — complete with hand straps — and fulfill their most perverted railway fantasies.
"Female company employees or girls on their way home from school come to hang out at our shop," the manager tells Tokusatsu Shinsengumi's reporter. "But we operate differently from other coffee shops. Once each hour, we have an "all aboard" event, where the paying male members "board" the train together with the girls and engage in simulated 'chikan' (groper) play."
You have to give the Japanese points for their entrepreneurial spirit, but still: How screwed-up are Japanese men, anyway?
The customers are free to run their hands up a nearby girl's skirt or fondle her breasts from behind. Upon commencement of the action, the female employees may chose to whisper in hushed, desperate tones, "Ah! Iyaaaa. Yamete kudasai." (Ohh! Noooo, don't! Please stop it!)
Which reminds me, somehow, of the latest Republican plan to curb the power of political lobbyists.
Tokusatsu refers to the cheesy "special effects" Japanese movie & TV show genre of superheros vs. villians, all of whom prance about in silly costumes (Ultraman, Kikaida, etc.), that was most popular in the 60s and 70s. How that fits in here is a mystery.
Shinsengumi refers to a group of samurai who were a kind of special police force in the 1860s; they were recently the subject of NHK's (i.e., the Japanese semi-equivalent of the BBC) year-long once-a-week historical melodrama TV series. Again, the relevance of this word to the business in question is mysterious; I suspect that they're just trying to play off of a recently-popular fad.
The shop itself seems perfectly in keeping with Japanese sexuality--a fascinating topic.
Posted by: Squidley | 02/18/2006 at 05:36 PM