HAPPENING BARS & SWINGERS BARS

The Japanese consumer has an insatiable thirst for the new. If it’s new, they want it. For example, every year each of the major breweries market several “new” brands of beer that are indistinguishable from last years brand. And they sell. Consumers of the sex industry are not immune to this trend, with ever-more specialized forms of establishment catering to their desires being marketed. One of the latest types of establishment is the “Happening Bar”. Similar in most ways to Swingers Bars, which have been around a lot longer, the only difference being that Happenings Bars will allow in single people while Swingers Bars only allow in couples. There are reputed to be about 40 such clubs in Tokyo, about evenly split between Happening and Swingers. After paying a hefty membership fee followed by an entrance fee (females only pay a nominal fee) you enter a bar area. What happens next is up to you and the other patrons who are present. Maybe you try on one of the many costumes that may be available, or join a group in one of the smaller semi-private rooms, but the general rule seems to be “anything goes”, with S&M being fairly popular. Obviously, in such a public space it attracts many of those with a voyeuristic or exhibitionistic bent. Happening Bars made the news in the summer of 2005 when Japan’s most famous male porno star, Chocoball, (so named for the color of a certain part of his anatomy, was arrested in one for indecent exposure. He had made the mistake of advertising on his website that he would be “performing”, and the police had to act in the face of such a breach of the unwritten code that protects illegal sex businesses from police scrutiny. For more on Chocoball read Speed Tribes by Karl Taro Greenfeld.