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Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess (2008)

por Lea Jacobson

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763349,016 (3.4)1
During daylight hours, the city of Tokyo is the very image of robotic conformity. At night, however, it transforms into a "floating world" of escapism, as "all-work" salarymen seek a place to play. Though fascinated by Japanese language and culture, American Lea Jacobson had some difficulty conforming to Japan's rigidly structured society. After she was fired from her job as an English teacher, Lea found work as a nightclub hostess on Tokyo's Ginza strip and transformed herself into a doll-like confection whose job it was to flatter, flirt, and engage in mock relationships with her middle-aged clients. Working as a hostess--the occupation a direct descendant of the geisha tradition--quickly became lucrative...and addictive. Her perceptions distorted by the drinks she was paid to consume, her identity confused by the fake personalities she assumed nightly, Jacobson began to lose herself in this fantasy culture. As she descended into self-abuse and alcoholism, she found that the seductive lifestyle she loved so much seemed impossible to escape.Jacobson's searing insights into Japan's cultural dynamics, erotic fascinations, gender politics, and her own spiral into sensory excess create a haunting and mesmerizing memoir that will leave readers transfixed.… (más)
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Gave me the creeps after a while ( )
  picardyrose | Nov 10, 2009 |
I enjoy memoirs and travel books that take the reader deep within a foreign culture, and I hate memoirs that detail the author's self-destruction. What do I make of a book that combines both? It's still pretty good.

Lea Jacobson spent a little more than a year working in Tokyo at a hostess bar, part of the city's "floating world" of women selling fantasy and romance. At the bar, the hostesses flirt and coax wealthy salarimen to buy exorbitant drinks. Surprisingly, there is no touching or nudity allowed -- the men are there to spend time with, not fondle or ogle the girls.

Though the environment is sexually restrained, it would be a mistake to call Palace or Heaven, the two clubs Jacobson works for, healthy environments. The women must drink so much (to keep up with the men buying them drinks) that many sneak away to vomit before returning to the table for more. Jacobson, who wasn't completely stable to begin with, spirals out of control in the hedonistic, superficial world of the hostess bar. Tedious trauma ensues.

Despite my distaste for human disaster stories, the glimpse of Japanese culture, with its unique customs and sometimes disturbing social mores, is fascinating. Before I picked up this book, I had never heard of a hostess bar, much less a dohan, or a bar mama. Learning about this variety of Japanese life made slogging through the flame outs more than worth it. ( )
  verbafacio | Aug 21, 2008 |
In Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess, Lea Jacobson recounts the roughly two years she spent as a nightclub hostess in Tokyo’s Ginza district.

After she went to Japan in 2003 to work as an English teacher, Jacobson was fired from her job after a psychiatrist spilled the beans to her employer about her fragile emotional condition. She then went to Tokyo, where she began work as a hostess, entertaining Japanese “sararimen,” even though she was psychologically unwell and unable to cope with the rigid demands of Japanese culture. Jacobson describes this underbelly of Tokyo culture as being in a “floating world,” where everything is fluid and nothing stays constant for very long. As a result, Jacobson’s identity kept changing. Along the way, we’re introduced to a variety of interesting characters, including a dragon-like mama-san, an Irish boyfriend named Nigel, who lies to her and breaks her heart; and a four-year-old girl who learned fluent English entirely from Disney movies.

Jacobson’s knowledge and analysis of Japanese culture is spot-on. She details her drug addiction without feeling sorry for herself, and I found myself becoming emotionally invested in her heartbreaking story. But Jacobson learns a valuable lesson from her mistakes, and she does a wonderful job of analyzing, not rationalizing, her decisions. ( )
  Kasthu | Aug 16, 2008 |
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You have to give her credit. Lots of party girls placate themselves by “gathering material” for a memoir that never gets written, but Lea Jacobson actually untangled herself from alcohol and depression, quit her job as a Tokyo bar hostess, found a new way to pay the bills, and then wrote a book about it.

The result is a swooping, lurching memoir, which seems fairly appropriate considering that she is inebriated through much of her story. The book takes on a solemn tone at about the same time that Jacobson decides to get sober, and if it loses something in vivacity, it gains more than it loses in insight.

“Taking shit with grace” — that’s how Jacobson describes the job of a hostess. The downside of hostessing may be putting up with misogynist, condescending, demeaning attitudes, but it’s the upside, too. It’s how you get drinks, presents and a salary. Jacobson likens hostessing to teaching English: “Both jobs basically require one to act as both a cultural exhibition and an entertainer.”

If anyone would know, she would; after being fired from her job teaching English at a kindergarten for the heinous crime of consulting a psychotherapist, Jacobson got work at a Tokyo hostess bar. What started as a rowdy way to make rent quickly morphed into an all-consuming lifestyle, and Jacobson found herself trapped in an intricate game in which she was both the contestant and the prize.

Many who pick up a hostess’s memoir will be hoping for some juicy gossip on what really happens after hours, but Jacobson sticks to the party line: no, they really don’t sleep with their customers. (You can practically hear her rolling her eyes.) While some readers may be skeptical, Jacobson’s explanation makes perfect sense. The thrill for customers is the chase, the dance and the negotiation. He pays in drinks and gifts, and she provides him with an ever-fresh fantasy. A hostess who sleeps with her customer ends this charming game. She morphs from a miraculously accommodating vision into a flesh-and-blood mistress, one who needs to be financially supported, talked to and argued with. In short, when her clothes come off, she loses the very aura of fantasy that made her so appealing in the first place.

A hostess who sleeps with her customers, says Jacobson, is just bad at her job. There is, however, an important caveat: all bets are off if the bar is in Shinjuku. Girls who work in more upscale areas like Ginza or Akasaka apparently play by the rules, Tokyo urban legend notwithstanding.

The specter of Lucie Blackman, the murdered English hostess who worked at a well-known hostess bar in Roppongi, haunts the popular imagination — and it haunts “Bar Flower,” too. Still, Jacobson contends that young women are actually safer working within the strict confines of a hostess bar than they are partying at watering holes like 911. Under the mercenary gaze of a mama-san, the rules are clear and the boundaries drawn in stone: no touching, no kissing; the man buys the drinks, and in return he gets flattering female companionship.

In fact, Jacobson has obligatory sex only once in the narrative — and not with a customer. Reluctantly going on a “normal” date, she finds herself succumbing to the oldest assumption in the male chauvinist handbook: dinner plus champagne equals sex. After the staged theater of the hostess bar, her own boundaries are almost nonexistent.

So why does she stay? The contrast between women in dire economic straits and someone like Jacobson, an American with a graduate degree, is one of the most compelling tensions throughout the book. Jacobson explores the interweaving factors of low self-esteem, inertia, a need for male approval, and the cycle of her addiction to alcohol, but never quite untangles the knot at the center: she drinks to help her get through the job, but why does she have the job in the first place? Before she can completely unravel this conundrum, and also before she succumbs to a total alcoholic breakdown, Jacobson attends an AA meeting, feels the first lift of possibility, and begins her long journey away from alcohol.

Though occasionally Jacobson’s prose is overblown and she could have used a more ruthless editor, “Bar Flower” offers special treats for those familiar with Tokyo. She tackles the exoticized arena of the hostess bar with neither the reverence of most Japanophiles nor the jaded contempt of many long-term expats. She likes it, she sees its absurdity, and it makes her sad or it makes her laugh — but it never makes her turn off. The intensity of her curiosity is what lingers on my tongue long after the more awkward passages are forgotten. It’s a bit like the taste of champagne, followed by a “chuhai” chaser for the walk home — but without the headache.
añadido por susieimage | editarJapan Today, Anna Kunnecke (Oct 2, 2008)
 
The rigidity of Japanese society strikes the frail American blossom Lea Jacobson like a kendo stick. She bruises easily, but makes much out of the pain in this memoir that yields an abundance of cross-cultural and sociological insights into the famously different land to our northeast. Lea soon turns out to be a hardier soul than one assumes from her recollections of teaching at Happy Learning English School. But when she moves from Kanagawa city to Tokyo, after she loses her job, the sensory overload and neon-hued anxiety vibrates on the pages.

This disturbing, boozy romp takes us down a road often travelled by Westerners seeking affirmation for time spent in an often baffling land. So why should we care? Jacobson’s prose is fluid and elegant, and her many digressions into what makes Japan tick with such a distinctive tock are fascinating. It’s also an intense journey into the psyche of the writer, who anesthetizes her pain with drink. Her emotional freefall is all the faster for taking place in a society where nonconformity is a sign of weakness.

Bar Flower says much about Japan’s less-than-progressive attitude to mental health, and about the feisty and resourceful woman who wrote it. Our heroine winds up as a hostess at some seedy joint called The Palace. Here the mama-san teaches her the art of being a decorative waif, serving salarymen drinks, lighting their cigarettes and stoking the flames of desire. A no-touching rule is more or less observed; nevertheless this is no job for someone in her condition.

Somehow, through this account of a gratuitously messedup life, Jacobson shines as a luckless and rather self-absorbed diarist who writes with an admirably bold spirit.
 
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For Alecia Atlas, my first real writing teacher, and for Fran Killilea, my first Japanese sensei. Although a memoir like this could not have been what either of you had in mind when you first opened these doors for me at Northport High School, I give it to you anyway.
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Just after nine o'clock one morning, I was unpleasantly awoken by a digital ringing sound.
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During daylight hours, the city of Tokyo is the very image of robotic conformity. At night, however, it transforms into a "floating world" of escapism, as "all-work" salarymen seek a place to play. Though fascinated by Japanese language and culture, American Lea Jacobson had some difficulty conforming to Japan's rigidly structured society. After she was fired from her job as an English teacher, Lea found work as a nightclub hostess on Tokyo's Ginza strip and transformed herself into a doll-like confection whose job it was to flatter, flirt, and engage in mock relationships with her middle-aged clients. Working as a hostess--the occupation a direct descendant of the geisha tradition--quickly became lucrative...and addictive. Her perceptions distorted by the drinks she was paid to consume, her identity confused by the fake personalities she assumed nightly, Jacobson began to lose herself in this fantasy culture. As she descended into self-abuse and alcoholism, she found that the seductive lifestyle she loved so much seemed impossible to escape.Jacobson's searing insights into Japan's cultural dynamics, erotic fascinations, gender politics, and her own spiral into sensory excess create a haunting and mesmerizing memoir that will leave readers transfixed.

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