A tourist finds Japan’s secret heart lies beyond Tokyo’s glitz and glamour.
Today we’ve traveled to the Greek islands. The walls are a wrap-around vista of limpid blue sea and distant isles. Faux marble columns flank our raft of a bed. Two hours of ‘rest’ in this Mediterranean paradise cost us 6,000 yen. Taka and I never get much rest.
I gaze into the mirrored sky at two figures: the woman on her back, her blonde hair fanned out over the pillow; the man’s dark head at her breast, his elegantly tapered torso bronze against her milky skin. The head glides lower, revealing the woman’s coral nipples, stiff and pointy from her lover’s careful attention. The man eases her thighs open into pale wings and bends to taste her. His head bobs faintly, rhythmically. Even from behind I can see the pleasure in his feast. Fruit is said to be especially juicy in these sunny climes. My eyes swim as I glance down at the ocean vista. If I squint, it does seem like I’ve been carried off to Greece. Or maybe it’s just the magic of Taka’s tongue. He flicks my clit lightly, then stirs tiny circles in my swollen flesh, a little to the right, just where I like it. The Grecian sun throbs in my belly as Taka quickens the pace, lashing me with rapid-fire strokes. My body seems to lift off the bed, rising ever higher until I can look down over all of Love Hotel Hill, an entire block of wantonness in the sober sea of daytime Tokyo. I spot the fake doctor’s office, the jungle glade, the feudal lord’s harem room, all the places we’ve made love. New bodies couple there now, trembling, moaning, climbing toward release.
“Irete. Hayaku.” “Put it in now.” My Japanese has gotten much better since I started spending Sundays with Taka. He reaches for the condom. I’m as wet as the ocean and he slides right in. We both groan, a language that needs no translation. He knows to hold himself still, letting me rise up to him with quick, desperate thrusts of my hips. We fit together perfectly, his balls tickling my anus, his pubic hair rubbing against my clit. His lips take one nipple, his fingers the other. Suddenly the sun explodes inside me, blasting through my throat in a cry of pleasure. Taka starts to buck, faster, harder, grunting as he comes. Afterwards we lie together, floating. I look up at the intertwined bodies suspended in the sky. The blonde woman’s lips stretch into a smile.
My friend Jessica assured me she was passing on a gift of a job. For 80,000 yen a month I’d spend two hours a week teaching English conversation to some tasty twenty-something lads at a company that made fancy pens. When I walked into the classroom that first Wednesday evening, I gave silent thanks to Jessica for her bounty. Right away I noticed Taka. But all I thought at the time was: cute. I’d no idea that within a month all I’d ever think about was screwing him on Sunday afternoons in a rented bed on Love Hotel Hill. After class, my students invited me for drinks, pouring out compliments on my beauty, my teacherly wisdom, my bravery in coming to a foreign country alone. All of this was more intoxicating than alcohol for a 23-year-old who had no clue what she really wanted to do with her life. As I swayed out of the first bar toward the train station, Taka and a friend suggested the three of us move on to a “second party” at a smoky little dive the size of a postage stamp. “What kind of music do you like?” “What is your impression of Japan?” “Do you have a boyfriend—no? Ah, now I have hope.” Mr Ishida, the designated clown, rolled his eyes in love-struck wonder. Taka only smiled at his colleague’s foolishness and reached over to refill my beer glass. Our hands touched. That one glancing brush of bare skin was enough to send an electric jolt sizzling straight to my pussy.
That’s when I knew it was just the beginning.
“International Love House.” Taka lets me choose the hotels and this one seems especially appropriate. Beyond the entryway curtain, the eerily empty ‘lobby’ is a wall of computer screens advertising each of the 40 rooms. I notice the deluxe units already taken. It’s a busy Sunday for sex in Tokyo. “How about this one?” I point to a photo of a mocked-up underground carriage. Taka laughs. He finds my taste in campy themes amusing. “There’s no bed, I think.”
“Who needs a bed?” I reply. Taka touches the ‘rest’ button on the corner of the screen. The image shifts to a welcome message directing us to follow the blinking red lights to our room. I push open the door, automatically unlocked for us by computer. Suddenly we’re in a brightly lit underground carriage. Or a tiny slice of one, with a padded plastic bench. Clever touches add authenticity: an overhead rack for briefcases, posters warning us to ride safely, an emergency alarm. The click-clack of a moving train fills the room. A conductor calls out the next station. Ginza. We’re now approaching Ginza. I giggle. A strange smile plays over Taka’s lips. “So, you want it so much, we have to do it on the train?” In Japanese his voice is deeper, assured. It makes me sopping wet in an instant. He guides me over to the seat and positions my hands in the two rings hanging from the bar overhead. The secret muscles in my belly clench like a fist. With no further preliminaries, he sits down before me and lifts my skirt. His warm hands peel down my tights and knickers. The spicy, fresh-bread scent of female arousal fills the room.
Out there, beyond Love Hotel Hill, he has never even held my hand in public. In here, his boldness takes my breath away. His hand snakes around to squeeze my bare buttocks, the other slides between my legs. The heat rises in my cheeks, my mouth twitches. He watches my face, his velvet eyes stroking my flesh like another pair of hands. Taka usually teases me until I beg for it, but the droning voice of the conductor has put him in a rush hour mood. He pulls out a condom, yanks down his pants and pulls me down to straddle his cock. I push my shirt up over my breasts and unsnap the front clasp of my bra, an invitation for him to paint my nipples with my own moisture, in slow, teasing circles. His lips brush my ear. “Let’s show everyone your beautiful arse.”
“No,” I whimper, but instinctively I push my buttocks up as if I do want strangers to see. His finger glides down my cleft, tickling my sensitive, puckery hole. “They’re watching you, they know how much you like it.” How does he know I want this, when I hadn’t even known it myself? The idea of a train full of drooling businessmen and envious office ladies watching Taka play with my bare bottom sends a gush of my juices to coat his belly and balls. “Everyone sees you, you naughty girl,” Taka hisses and pinches my nipple. The sensation shoots straight to my c**t, setting off the first contraction of my climax. I roar like a train picking up speed. Taka throws his head back, lost in his own dream of transgression. When the conductor announces Shinjuku station, we’ve both arrived at our destination.
“What did you do last weekend, Mr Nomura?” At the beginning of every class, I go around the table and ask each student the same question. Taka’s voice is softer in English, old velvet gliding over my skin. “Last Sunday I met a friend in Shibuya. We had lunch at – how do you say in English? – Indo-ryori?”
“An Indian restaurant,” I say, to suppressing a smile. He’s describing our last date. “Was the food good?” He gives a half nod, half bow. “Very delicious, yes. And then my friend and I went for a walk.” He looks straight at me. And we headed straight to Love Hotel Hill and had such a grand time fucking in the Igloo Room we had to buy an extra two hours. Of course he does not say this part. His lips give nothing away. Even his eyes are shuttered, protecting our secret from the world. I’m the one who blushes and looks away.
“I know why all the love hotel rooms have handcuffs.”
“Why?” Taka looks up from his pork cutlet curry. We always grab a quick lunch beforehand as fuel. “Because Japan is basically an S&M society. The hierarchy, the levels of politeness, the stoic endurance.” After he looks up ‘hierarchy’ and ‘stoic’ in his pocket dictionary, Taka tells me I understand Japan very well. It’s only fitting then to choose the ‘Soap Play Room’ today. The large bathroom features a black bondage cross: two human sized lollipop sticks crossed like an X and equipped with plastic wrist and ankle cuffs. The question hovers in the air between us. Who gets the handcuffs? I decide I’m in a bossy mood. “Take off your clothes,” I order in English. I stand before his naked, shackled body and strip slowly, revelling in the hunger in his eyes, the jerking and twitching of his penis as it rises hard against his belly. “Do you like this?” I ask. “Yes, but I’m lonely,” he smiles forlornly. “I want to touch you.”
“Soon,” I promise, blowing him a kiss. I fill the washing basin with warm water and pour it over his chest and shoulders, leaving just enough to baptise his cock with a final splash. Then I squirt some fruity liquid soap from the dispenser – a viscous, opalescent substance, like ejaculate – and spread it on my breasts. Pressing myself against his chest, I shimmy us both to a lather. “Do you like this?”
“Yes,” he swallows. “Very much.” I like it, too. I’m so aroused, I rub more soap on my slit and hump his thigh like a bitch in heat. My slippery fingers stroke him behind, while I pump his shaft with my lubed fist. His eyes flutter closed. I see he is indeed enduring his torture with stoicism, and my heart softens. Filling another basin, I rinse him carefully, then dry him with the thin towel. As I kneel to wipe his cock, I feel less a dominatrix than a shrine maiden performing ceremonial ablutions to the resident god. I flash on a memory of my first Sunday afternoon as a tourist in this faceless city. I’d spent hours wandering around Tokyo, but there’d been nothing to charm me. Then, by chance, I spotted a little Shinto shrine of gleaming wood, tucked between a convenience store and a beauty parlour. Without thinking, I walked right through the orange gates and stood before the altar, enraptured by the statues of the slender foxes with their tapered snouts. There was magic in this city, I realised, I just needed to find it. That’s when I decided to stay.
Suddenly my bondage game seems all wrong. In here with me, Taka should never be bound. I release him from the cuffs. Smiling in gratitude, he takes me in his arms backwards from the torture chamber to the heavenly softness of the bed. We fall onto the sheets, his damp skin melting into mine. He rolls on top, and parts my legs with his knees. It’s an ancient ritual: momentary, timeless, magical. And as he buries himself inside me, I know that I’ve found what I was seeking that long ago Sunday. For it is here on Love Hotel Hill that I touch Japan’s secret heart.
