You guys are both idiots. If you want to know what goes on in a host bar in Japan, I suggest you go to one and find out. There is a reason why the host bars are very public and very legal; nothing sexual goes on inside of them. Host bars were established sometime in the 1950s, and were originally setup as a private places for female cabaret performers to let down their hair, after the night's work was over, and to receive non-sexual care from charming young men. The original hosts were very much like what the American Porn Industry calls "suit case pimps." Later, over worked Japanese professional women and frustrated upper middle class housewives also wanted to receive the non-sexual care that hosts were providing, and gradually as the craze for cabaret died out, the clients for host bars became mostly professional women and upper middle class housewives. Fast forward to the video age, and the decline of Japan's economy, now most of the clients of hosts are young, financially desperate, Prada obsessed, reluctant sex workers, recruited into the Japan porn industry often times by the hosts themselves.

Every good host knows that he doesn't have sex with his clients, or they will start fighting over him, which will ultimately hurt his cash flow. There is little difference between a host and a pimp, and in Japan hosts are often called pimps.

"The Great Happiness Space" must be a very good documentary, because you got it. Only you didn't see that the "sex" industry of Japan is one sided. A lot of the hosts double as Scoutmen, which are charming men and boys that recruit women, literally off of the crowded streets in broad daylight, into either pornography or the many legal forms of prostitution, and then retain the women as long term clients of their agency. In short Scoutmen are legitimized pimps, and everything they do, pressuring girls and women into selling their nude photos or giving "soapies" and blow jobs for cash, is completely legal. Then at night the Scoutmen work as hosts collecting a service bill from their women, in addition to a percentage of their women's earnings from the pornography and the legal forms of prostitution their women engage in during the day time.

People talk a lot about trickle down economics, something that I have never seen in all my travels in both the third world and in the developed world, but I sure as shit know that there is trickle up economics.

Your average women spends a large amount of her hard earned money on cosmetics, hair care products and services, the latest fashion, and every other bit of crap that women don't really need (such as liposuction, boob jobs, plastic surgery, diet pills, diet programs, thigh masters and, in Japan, the host bar tab), and in the end all she has left is her credit card debt.

In my travels I came across a sex slave trafficer (a strip club owner who kept his foreign born strippers' passports), and he said "every woman, whether she knows it or not, is a whore." At the time I though he meant strictly in the sexual sense, but I have since come to realize what he really meant; every women of this world is ultimately working her ass off for a man.

It ultimately depends upon how you assess gender equality. No country on the planet has a good track record of insuring that their women are treated as fairly as men are in all sectors of their society.

Ironically Cuba has probably done the best job of leveling all fields between men and women.

My assessment of a nation's level of gender equality is based primarily on 3 things; how well single women live in the nation, legislation already on the books insuring gender equality, and the general tone of how women are presented and depicted in the nation's art and culture. Though, some times I add a forth one; how the nation's homosexuals are treated (which the South Koreans fail miserably at).

No one can doubt that South Korea has made substantial and steady progress in the areas of legislation and in culture in regards to gender equality, which ironically the South Koreans did to keep in step with North Korea. Where as conditions of gender inequality has changed little in Japan since General MacArthur left.

No, actual Geishas spends years learning to become Geisha, and have real talent.

Hosts just prey on frustrated, stressed out, over worked women.

To those of us that have traveled extensively throughout Asia and the Pacific, the general assessment is that the level of gender equality in South Korea far exceeds that of Japan, and in my humble opinion gender equality is more pronounced in South Korea than it is anywhere else in Asia or the Pacific, including Russia. Though, some may make an argument that Taiwan, if you distinguish it as separate from the rest of China, as closer to true gender equality.

Japan has always scored rather dismally on the gender equality scale, and the host bars are not a sign of improvement in Japan. The host bars came about from the shifting economical situation in Japan. After General MacArthur insisted on women's suffrage in post WWII Japan, which he did under the notion that a nation where women voted would be far less likely to ever invade another country, women soon found themselves allowed to work professional jobs. Since then the marriage rates and birth rates of Japan has gone down, and the result is a lot of women that never got married, work jobs and, because they continue to live with their parents, have managed to amass small personal fortunes.

Frustrated, stressed out, and over worked (often as much as 100 hours a week), but in possession of bank accounts and credit cards, will lead anyone to throw caution to wind to enjoy just a little bit of time with someone who is doing everything he can to charm you.