Avoiding human trafficking when getting a massage in Japan
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 8 Aug, 2023
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What jpatokal says is true, except the part about what you’ll get if you order up a massage from your hotel. I don’t know how many times he’s done that, but I have done it twice so far (from onsen type hotel) and that wasn’t my experience either time. First time was a man, much to my disappointment – although it was a good massage. Second time was actually a young attractive girl – but there was no offer of “more”. Her massage was fairly weak though, and she didn’t seem very experienced – so maybe if I had the Japanese language skills I could have gotten more if I had asked. I only mention this stuff because I don’t want people to get discouraged from ordering massage from hotels because you don’t want what jpatokal describes. I don’t think it’s the most common thing. And you should also note that you can usually talk to the concierge to get whatever it is you want – this is true in any country and pretty much any decent hotel.
As for taxi drivers – yes, they usually know where to find just about anything, but in my experience, not that many speak English. I suppose you could call the taxi company and specifically ask for an English speaking driver – calling a taxi company comes with a 1000Y surcharge, just FYI.
For the traveller, this is pretty much a non-problem.
First, the costs of human trafficking are too high to pay back with anything other than sex, so your run-of-the-mill hotel massage is going to be performed by an Japanese obasan (old lady), often blind, with fingers of steel. (Shiatsu means “finger pressure”, and they ain’t kidding. It’s about as sensual as getting repeatedly whacked with a baseball bat.) So, no, you’re not going to be contributing to the Yakuza if you dial up a massage from the hotel.
Second, as a foreigner you will have a very easy time distinguishing between non-sexual and sexual services, because the latter will:
- not advertise in English
- have much higher prices: think upwards of Y10,000 per 30 min. Unfortunately these are rarely spelled out in full, but having a price of >Y5000 for some unspecified “service” (サービス) without a clear corresponding time should set alarm bells ringing.
- very often use the color pink in their signs, so much so that “pink salon” (pinku saron) is a standard term for a certain flavor of establishment
- plaster undressed cartoon characters and/or photos of the ladies working in the shop outside
In other words, they look like this:
And if you still manage to miss the clues and try to get in anyway, no worries, since nearly all sex industry establishments make a point of refusing entry to foreigners.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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