Imagine making a thousand dollars a night to sit around and schmooze with people in a bar. That may sound incredible, but hundreds of young women are doing just that every night in the exclusive nightclubs of Japan. Listen to a clip from Tokyo Girls , in which Hilary talks about her first impressions of what a hostess is. The job of the hostess is, quite simply, a commercialization of the courtship ritual.
Clients can specify their preferred choice in hostess hair and skin colour.
The hostess provides the backdrop for the sealing of countless business deals. Today, Japan's foreign hostesses venture into a world where even many Japanese would hesitate to go. In the less respectable clubs, where gangsters procure and keep the women, the line between hostessing and prostitution is often nonexistent. Japan's overworked and overstressed corporate soldiers were hit hard by the recession in the late '90s. The turbocharged boom that spit out six-figure salaries and fancy imported suits is gone.