The other thread I started on this topic ("Tokyo club scene") evolved into a "what happened to sushidoll" thread, so I thought I should make a new one to actually give info on the current (Feb 05) situation in the Roppongi clubs, to the extent I can judge from a customer's perspective:
Basically, times look to be a bit hard. So far I have only been on Saturday and Monday nights though. The former is not traditionally as busy in Japan as most places because a lot of guys (are expected to) head home immediately after work to get an early start on Sunday, "family day" in Japan, and the latter is also usually considered a "dead night" I think. Friday night is supposed to be the best.
Anyway, the clubs all seem to be running specials like mad; they always did, but even more so now it seems. You can get into 7th Heaven for 3000 freaking yen before 8pm and have "all you can drink" for an hour, for example. And it is the top of the heap...or used to be, most famous anyway. Also, the doormen and managers seem very happy to make a deal to get you in the door...cut the prices or add extra drinks and such. There also seem to be some small, no-name type clubs running in the general neighborhood of Gas Panic which are pushing 3-4000 yen entrance fees during prime hours. But their touts were obnoxious and made me feel like I would be ripped off, so I haven't been in any of them and know nothing more about them.
In the clubs, there seem to be a much higher percentage of Japanese dancers than I ever recall seeing previously; it looked to me like a third of the staff or more at 7th H. I have no cllue, at this point, whether this is just a fluke or is because foreign dancers are staying away because of relatively poor earnings or because they are having more visa/immigration hassles than in the past (see the other thread for more on that topic) or because the ever faddish Japanese tastes have swung back more towards local babes than exotic foreign ones...or some other reason.
The number of customers looked moderate to me. At Divino late on a Monday night, there were maybe almost as many custys as dancers...maybe 5 dancers for every 4 customers, not bad for that night of the week.
However, nobody looked like they were spending much. I was there for several hours, and I think only two other guys and me bought ANY private dances, and I was the ONLY one who gave a dancer (the one who was sitting with me) a stage tip; another night it was just one other guy and me. (Now, note that the smallest denom bill and thus smallest reasonable stage tip is a 1000 yen note, worth about US$10...so not quite like typical US$1 tips in the states.) The dancers even seemed to be hustling for drinks (1500 yen = US$15) at a much lower rate than I recall being the norm in these clubs, perhaps for fear of driving away their custys. The dancer I was sitting with at Divino asked for maybe 3 drinks in over 2 hours, maybe around 1 drink every 45 min.
And I noticed at least a few customers come and go without even sitting with a dancer, stage tipping, buying a private dance or anything...just paid the entrance fee, watched the stage show, drank the two or three drinks that are "included" and then left. I could be wrong, but I don't recall seeing much of that sort of thing in the old Tokyo club scene I remember over past years. It always looked to me like guys were spending money like it was water. Often you would have to wait in a freakin queue/line to even get into a private dance room, etc. A doorman I chatted up told me that it would be like that if came back at midnight or after on Friday night...maybe so.
Anyway, I think that these clubs (and their dancers) would make more if they dropped the prices on the private dances a bit. They are fairly long (like 4 to 5 min each) now, so they could drop the length a bit too without making it seem really short.
Sorry to file such a negative sounding report. As is obvious to anyone paying attention (to me), I love Japan and the Tokyo clubs and hate to discourage any dancer from coming over here to give it a try, but I feel like I should tell it straight. I suspect that you can still make decent money here, though maybe not all that much better than other places, and it is a totally fascinating country to visit, imo...so still worth considering. And maybe it is still possible to make the big $$$ here somehow; all the above is based on just a few nights in a few clubs in one particular winter month...so not sensible to draw any reallly huge conclusions.
-Ww



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