Host Clubs
A host club (ja:ホストクラブ) is similar to a hostess club, except that female customers pay for male company. Some host clubs also specialize in female-to-male transsexual hosts. Host clubs are typically found in more populated areas of Japan, and are famed for being numerous in Tokyo districts such as Kabukichō, and Osaka's Umeda and Namba. Customers are typically wives of rich men or women working as hostesses in hostess clubs.
The first host club was opened in Tokyo in 1966. In 1996, the number of Tokyo host clubs was estimated to be 200, and a night of non-sexual entertainment could cost $500 to $600. A women's studies professor explained the phenomenon by Japanese men's lack of true listening to the problems of women, and by women's desire to take care of a man and be loved back.
Read more about this topic: Host And Hostess Clubs
Famous quotes containing the words host and/or clubs:
“Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
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—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.5 (1985)