December 17th, 2023

Day 14

Today I will travel back to Kyoto! First up for today, breakfast.

Breakfast at this hotel isn’t half bad, and by isn’t half bad, I mean pretty good. The food items are varied, and they even have cheesecake. Not bad!

After breakfast, though, it will be my trip to Kyoto. It just then occurred to me that the strip theater is basically right next to Kyoto’s Toji, the temple that I wanted to visit but didn’t when I visited Kyoto on Day 5, Day 6, and Day 7. I don’t think I mentioned it earlier, but on either Day 5 or Day 7, I tried to take the subway to Toji station, but I missed a connecting train and had to wait 30 minutes to reach Toji. Didn’t want to do that, so I just went to another destination. Thought it was a shame that I didn’t visit Toji, didn’t think that I would see it that time. Life is funny sometimes.

Once I got to Toji Station through a few connecting trains, I headed straight to my hotel, which is like right across the street from the train station. The only reason why I chose this hotel over the Watermark Hotel that I stayed at on Day 6 and Day 7 is that this hotel is so much closer to both Toji and DX Tohji, within walking distance.

Hotel name: Comfort Hotel Era Kyoto Toji

Address: 54-1 Nishi-kujo Shima-machi, Minami-ku

Price: 356.71 RMB (50 USD)

Verdict: ★★★★☆

The hotel is not badly decorated. I liked its design. It has a central deck with three kiosks for check-in and check-outs shaped in a triangle, which was quite unique. I asked the staff to take my luggage until I get back, and he guided me to a locker room where you do it yourself with a passcode lock, which is kinda cool. After that, I headed straight to Toji.

Toji itself is very big. When I got there, there were only two buildings that can be entered, and both forbids photography. There are golden Buddha statues inside, and yes, they are breathtaking. There are large ones and small ones, but the large one, wow, it is magnificent.

Other than the two Buddha statues, there isn’t much to see, so I just got back to the entrance, bought a relationship Omamori and Omikuji pack (protection charm and fortune telling), and headed towards DX Tohji.

DX Tohji isn’t really far away from Toji, only takes a 10 minute walk. Tohji and Toji means the same thing, it’s just different spellings. I am guessing that Japan had a period where they were exploring different ways to incorporate Japanese into roman alphabet. There are of course different ways to spell Toji, and I can count to four.

The kanji for Toji is 東寺, but the hiragana, or the Japanese spelling for the kanji, is とうじ. To use the now standardized Japanese spelling guide, it would be spelled as “Touji”; but the “u” inside “Touji” is soundless and is only there to make the “o” sound longer, so to not confuse foreigners, it was shortened to “Toji”. The “h” in “Tohji” works the same way as the “u” in “Touji”, it’s there to emphasize the “o” sound. So for 東寺, you can spell it as “Toji”, “Tohji”, “Touji”, and “Tōji”, yes, another way to emphasize the “o” sound. The reason for this long tangent is to make sure you are not confused by the naming, but seeing how long this tangent came to be, I am sure it has added to your confusion. Anyways.

When I got to Tohji, the ticket price came to be 5,000 Yen, for early entrance. Ticket after 12:00 PM is 6,000, so be aware of your entrance timing. I honestly thought that DX Tohji would be the same as Kosei and Toyo, so, instead of vetting the theater first and then make the purchase, I just asked the staff if they sell pre-paid tickets, and bought one for 12,000 Yen. Like Kosei, this prepaid ticket also covers 3 entrances, which is a big discount from the regular ticket. Anyways, I got in, and was shocked by the size of the theater hall.

Let me just say this, it is much, much bigger than Kosei, almost three times as big, and is twice as big as Toyo. However, it is much, much more rundown compared to the two in Osaka. Everything is in patches, with scotch tape everywhere. The movie-theater like seats where they fold when not being seated are clearly there since the beginning of this theater, as when you unfold them, they don’t stop at a 90 degree angle, but 110 degrees, making the seating position extremely uncomfortable. It almost looked like someone heavy sat on them one by one and cracked the spring inside. Some seats were so beyond repair, that the folding cushion was just removed and was replaced with a very cheap looking folding chair that doesn’t look comfortable at all.

Here is a drawing of the stage situation at DX Tohji. Yes, there are two spinning platforms; but since this place is so rundown, only one works, and doesn’t work well. Only the one close to the stage works, but it works barely; while it still spins, it spins like a broken record, which means it stutters a lot. The spinning platform is for the dancers to do the special poses, so when it spins but stutters, you can visibly see that the dancers were not ready for such sudden gaps and had to hold themselves up.

Still, since this is the only two spinning platforms place I’ve ever seen, I can’t say with certainty that this is the only theater that has this special arrangement. Though, even though the spinning platform farthest from the main stage doesn’t spin, all the dancers come to this one in the end anyways. I am getting ahead of myself, but this really was an interesting place.

When I first arrived, I didn’t know what seat I should take, because this is the first time of me encountering a two platform theater. I wasn’t alone. I was also with an old guy with a full head of white hair and a young guy in his 30s. The young guy recommended us to sit in the seats that faces the stage directly, and so we did. These seats are metal seats that were tied using zip-ties on the chair legs, so either all move or none moves.

After I put my stuff down on my chair, I went outside and asked the staff member if it’s okay for me to go out to a convenience store to buy some food and asked for the nearest one. He said okay, and the nearest one was a Lawson. It wasn’t really near, as it required 20 minutes of back and forth walking. Though, I got myself a sandwich and a bottle of water. Thought this would be enough to get me through the night.

When I got back, though, I went to the staff member and asked if it is okay to take the “dirty pictures” here at this theater, and got a resounding no. By the way, I learned the word “dirty picture” here with the old guys, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I walked back to the theater, and people started to show up. There was another youngish looking guy in his 30s, and we chatted for a while. I said that I came from Osaka in the morning, but this guy is even more dedicated — he came from Tokyo, just to see the strip shows. He’s seen the ones in Kosei and Toyo already, so we had a lot to talk about.

I must also mention the fact that the theater is extremely cold. The weather turned cold overnight, and I was not prepared for such coldness when I woke up this morning. It didn’t help when the theater is so rundown, it had only one air conditioner at the very back corner of the theater working, which means that the heat does not travel far enough to heat up the entire theater. I didn’t anticipate this weather, so I just wore my denim jacket that I wore to Korea and a sweater inside. It was freezing.

So yeah, the show started. The first to come up stage, was 工藤リナ, or Kudo Rina. At first, I was kinda surprised, because she is in no way “lean”. It’s rude to call people overweight, but that’s what she is. However, her dances are not sluggish in any way. No, her dances are so energetic, it made me think that how the other skinnier girls should do so much better. Even though she is overweight, the fat on her body spreads evenly and is actually quite adorable. Like Kingyo, she is also sending off a different kind of vibe; but unlike Kingyo who is trying to act cool and distant, Rina is like a friendly mean girl. Her music choice is also very addictive. They’ve stuck in my ears for weeks and I couldn’t figure out the names to the songs. All in all, she is very adorable and lovable, and it made me certain for one thing: dancing does not help you lose weight.

Next up, 環, or Tamaki. I did not know how to pronounce that name until much later. She is the only Tamaki out there, but her full name on the strip-theater information website is 舞子環, or Dancing Girl Tamaki. There’s a term in Japanese called “ちょっといいブス”, or “ugly done right”, for lack of better words. It means something like when a girl is just ugly enough to make her really cute, and that’s Tamaki. She is extremely adorable, but she is not the universal standardized definition of what would be considered pretty. I am not being mean, I am just stating the facts; actually out of all four dancers today, I liked her the most.

The third to come on stage, was 萩尾のばら, or Hagio Nobara. I am not sure that I am pronouncing the last name correctly, because it was the first time that I encountered this Kanji in both Chinese and Japanese. Anyways, Nobara, is extremely lean; lean to the point that she has no chest elevation. Just to be frank here, I like girls with big chests, that’s just me, I’m not ashamed of it. She has no boobs at all, and that’s not my thing. She is pretty, though, can’t complain about that.

The last to come on stage was 白石さやか, or Shiroishi Sayaka. She’s lean, she has an incredibly fit body; but oh my god she is not pretty. Unlike Tamaki, who looks adorable, Sayaka just doesn’t look good. She is not hideous in anyway, she is just not my type, and when it’s not my type, she just ain’t pretty. Her dance is innovative, though.

When the first show ended, I went up to the people next to me and asked if this was it, and it evidently was. Turns out, at DX Tohji, there are only 4 girls per show cycle, instead of 5 like all the other theaters. The theater closes at 8 PM, which sounds about right. The thing with this theater is that, unlike all the other theaters where the dancers strip completely and do the poses commando; the panties of the dancers in DX Tohji stay on at all times. It is such a bummer that this was the case. It doesn’t help when each photo costs 1,000 Yen, double the price of everywhere else, and the camera is a polaroid camera, where the photo comes out immediately after being taken. There’s some old-school charm with this type of camera, but for me who is interested in photo quality, this is not some welcoming news.

So yes, there are many things different with DX Tohji that I’m not a fan of, and is actively making me regret that I paid for a pre-paid ticket already; but I had fun. Not the kind of fun that I had at Kosei and Toyo, fun as in talking with the other guys. I know I am weird, I really should focus on the boobs; but the conversation with the older guys are very interesting. They are some genuinely, down to earth, nice guys, and to prove my point, the older guy who sat next to me on the metal chairs, saw that I was cold with no other clothes, literally gave me a self-heating pack so I could warm up. I do have a winter jacket folded in my backpack; but since he gave me this heating pack because he thought I have no other clothes, to respect him, I didn’t take it out and wear it. That was dumb, but there’s a certain kinda code among fellers like us.

It’s also through the conversation with these old guys that I started to really know the world of Japanese strip theaters. It turns out that the girls do not belong to one theater and stay there forever; they have a roster, and they switch every 10 days. For example, both Rina and Tamaki will head to Kosei a few weeks later, and they have no connection with DX Tohji other than the fact that they were invited to dance for the week. I like Tamaki, and I like the “dirty pictures”, so I am happy that she would be heading to Kosei a few weeks later.

Oh yes, dirty pictures. In Japanese, it’s called エロポラ, literally “dirty pictures”. It’s the specific term designated for photos where the girl’s vagina is on full display and was purposefully exposed for the sake of taking pictures. This used to be standard practice of strip theaters everywhere, but right now, there are only two theaters in all of Japan that still allow this; one is Kosei, and one is Ueno, a theater in Tokyo. Learned that from the old guys, and wouldn’t elsewhere. According to them, Ueno is extremely small, much, much smaller than Kosei, about 1/3 of its size. I was shocked by the size of the theater, and was a bit wary of the fact that it’s only the other theater that still allows dirty pictures.

The nice old guy who gave me a self-heating pack also told me this wonderful website called Strip Schedule, www.strip-schedule.xyz . It is your all in one website for information about the girl’s whereabouts and the next roster of a specific theater’s week. While it doesn’t give you the most future-ready information like 3 weeks in advance; for that, you would need to follow the twitter account of either the dancers or the theaters; but it is practical enough for you to get a heads up.

Learned a lot today!

There are also a lot of interesting things that went on today that I couldn’t remember exactly when. For one thing, though, I do remember that at Rina’s second show’s picture time, since there’s only one working AC that doesn’t work well, everyone stands in front of it to get a little bit of warmth. After I took a picture with Rina, I stood there as well, and Rina noticed. She was yelping that she was so cold while taking these pictures and those guys stood there bathed in the warmth of the AC. That was funny.

The second show was also the time that I started to use my AirPods as a noise-cancelling machine only. The music that is being played while the dancers danced was extremely loud, and according to my Apple Watch, it was going over 85 decibels. That’s when I remembered that my AirPods Pro could reduce noise to some extent, so I put it on. My ears are very sensitive, and I do not like loud noise. Thanks to my AirPods, it made listening to the music less of a pain. I tried to play my music from Spotify while the dancers danced, but that didn’t work really well, so I just turned my music off and used my AirPods as noise-cancellers only.

DX Tohji only has 4 dancers, and to make the ticket worth a little bit more, it is required that the dancers prepare for 4 different dances for all four shows. That is considerably more challenging than the ones I’ve seen at Toyo and Kosei where the dancers only need to prepare two for a week. I was actually quite surprised by that. Still, it didn’t help when the dancers still wear their panties in the end; and since these dances are not theater specific and still have moments where they take off their panties at other theaters, the dancers wear two and take off the outer most one. Yes, you read right, they wear two and take the outer most one off. That is just idiotic. I am guessing that DX Tohji is being monitored considerably more than the other theaters just because of its proximity to an actual Buddhist temple ground, which could also be the reason why it closes at 8 PM.

There’s one guy, who stood near the stage where he faced the back of the dancer, tossed out ribbons every time Nobara started to do her special pose. He didn’t do it for any other girls, and it seemed like a tiresome job. These ribbons are individually folded, so when he tossed it out, he needs to quickly retrieve it by pulling it back, quickly fold them together and put it in a bag for used ribbons, and grab another one and throw it out in time for the next pose. Maybe he is a fan of Nobara, but I don’t understand the point of throwing ribbons. When he stood there at the stage side, he literally faces the back of the dancer, which means that he won’t get to see anything good. The dancer also surely doesn’t like this kind of fan behavior, because the ribbons go over their heads and may hit the unsuspecting dancer. Nobara was startled a couple of times.

Anyways, there’s so much that happened today that I only have a few fuzzy memories left. For example, the kind old guy with a full head of white hair shared with me that he has a daughter in California as well, and her daughter just had a kid of her own. There is another chubby old guy, when I said that I’m probably not gonna come to strip theaters again if I get a girlfriend in the future, replied that I should just take her with me. It’s through conversation like this that I am starting to get a picture of the strip theaters’ main audience. These people are already married and have kids; but they still come to these theaters for thrill. I for one won’t come here if I am married, but it is not my place to judge them; they are still some nice people.

Since DX Tohji doesn’t allow dirty pictures, with the photo being polaroids and costing 1,000 per photo, I have no drive to take more pictures of girls in their panties, so I have refrained from taking more than 3 photos per person. It has always been me taking a two-shot with the girl fully dressed, me taking a two-shot with the girl naked, and a final picture where I ask the girl to do whatever pose she is most proud of. Like I said earlier, all of the girls wear two panties, but the inner panties covered everything so well, they might as well didn’t take anything off. That was not the case with Rina, who wore a string of pearls inside. While the string of pearls still covered the line of the lady bits, she wore it loosely, so after a while, the pearls would go sideways and reveal everything. At the picture time of Rina’s fourth show, I already took 3 pictures, so I wasn’t going to take another picture. Except, when I saw that Rina’s string of pearls went sideways, I took another one.

The old guys were making fun of me for taking so many pictures, cuz in the end, I took home 13 pictures, and that’s 13,000 Yen in total. Most guys just took 3 or 4 cuz it’s so expensive here.

At the end of Nobara’s third show, people started to leave. Even though there’s still one last dance left by Sayaka, a lot of people left. I actually wanted to leave as well, because I am really not a big fan of how Sayaka looks. She is not hideous, don’t get me wrong, she is just not attractive looking in my opinion. But, on second thought, it would be too horrible that there’s only like 3 people left when she was the last one to get on stage, so I decided to stay. It helped a lot that Sayaka had a special trick up her sleeve. While it was completely dark on stage, she, with the help of a flashlight, tied a hula hoop to a harness that suspended on top of the stage, and proceeded to dance with that vertically spinning hula hoop. That required some real training and upper body strength, and it was very entertaining. Choosing to stay till the end was a wise choice.

DX Tohji Verdict:

★★★☆☆

Either way, after Sayaka’s last dance, the remaining few audiences, including me, left together. Since the theater closes by only 8 PM and with Osaka so close to Kyoto, all of the other guys took the train back to their homes. I was the only one who booked a hotel for the night because I thought it would be an all-nighter situation like at Kosei. With my hotel being next to the train station, we walked together, and had some decent conversation that was helpful to my Japanese training.

After I got close to my hotel, I bought a slender cylinder shaped rice wrap from the lawson next door and devoured it when I got back to my hotel room. Who knew that a small sandwich does not get you through the day. Booked the hotel for tomorrow, and slept soundly.

Activity Tally