JAPAN'S BIGGEST fleshpot, Kabukicho, sprawls over a one-kilometre block of central Tokyo - a gaudy patchwork of sex clubs, massage parlours and love hotels just two minutes' walk from the world's busiest train station.
On a Friday night, the streets teem with the flotsam of a wired city winding its way down into the weekend: drunken salary-men hunting for cut-priced kicks mingle with hawkers, hoodlums, curious high-school students and perhaps a more unlikely thrill-seeker: wealthy middle-aged women.
Some women are heading for a club called Ai (meaning Love), where Seiji Naruto works as a 'male host'. A lank-haired, lantern-jawed 30-year-old dressed in a designer suit and sporting a gold-embossed business card that smells of aftershave, Naruto's demeanour is thoughtful and attentive, a practised listener. Among the staff at Ai, he is known as No4, after his ranking in the club's league tables of earners for the month.
'I'd like to be No1, but I've got a long way to go,' he says. 'It is tough learning what women want.'
Outside the club, and on a nearby billboard, Naruto's neon-lit face smiles down at curious women, three photos down from a large mugshot of the top host, who is not half as good-looking, although he shows off more chest. 'Face is only part of this game,' Naruto says.
In other parts of the world, Naruto would be called a gigolo but in Japan he is just one of about 12,000 male entertainers - nearly half of them in Kabukicho - working in a perfectly legal US$1.5 billion-a-year industry, according to Forbes magazine. His job is to lavish attention on his female clients, persuade them to relax, laugh, and spend money on the club's outrageously priced drinks. Often, that means forming relationships with women outside the club.