Sublime

Shobashi comes alive at night. From appearances, it’s a dump. And from sundown to sun-up, on the third floor of a building throbbing with karaoke reverb, you’ll find the bar where Makiko works, five nights a week, from seven until around midnight.

Makiko was a hostess, but that can mean all kinds of different things. Some good, some not so good. Osaka is rife with drinking spots, but an address is enough to tell you what you should expect, in terms of clientele and atmosphere and hostesses. She worked in Shobashi, the neighborhood the three of us worked in for years after we ran off that

Not that Coyote wasn’t tempted, but it was his dick that got him stuck here in the first place: a jungle neighborhood, driving a beater car through a gridlock of perverts and junkies with a squalling kid strapped into the backseat.

Nowadays, you hardly ever see monks practicing takuhatsu. In Kyoto, they are found on the bridges; in Tokyo, they are usually in Ueno and in some more traditional neighborhoods; and in Nara, you can see them near the temples, but not inside.

She’d been just another anonymous buckle bunny, one of the many women who made themselves available to rodeo cowboys after the events were over and the partying began.

the luau served as the innocent public surrogate for prostitution.

Sorakichi Matsuda moved to the USA in the 1880s, living his life virtually in poverty as he pursued his dream of becoming a professional wrestler.