I am aware this is quite a random post to most of you but I figure there are a few people here who live in Japan and might know a thing or two about this.

So while I was living in Japan I was fooling around with this Japanese guy who knew absolutely no English. He told me he worked in a cabaret club and he was adamant that it was not the same as a host/ess club. I never figured out what the difference was due to my highly inadequate Japanese skills. But it has been bugging me, google search hasn't given me much and I am still curious. Does anyone know the difference between the two? =/

For me cabarets and hostess clubs are the same (male customers), while host clubs cater to female clientele. I guess your friend wanted you to understand he worked as a waiter/tout and not as a male host. There could be other differences I'm not aware of of course. I've always wondered if a cabaret would still be called a cabaret if there wasn't any kind of show.

I'd love to be a male host in Japan, seemed like great money and a great life. There was a cool documentary on that too.

Maybe when I move back ..

Quote:seemed like [...] a great life.

I think you're in for a disappointment

May as well try to join up with the local Yakuza, while you're at it. For all that great money and lifestyle. lol

pretty sure you're not allowed to if you don't have the right visa. Government tries to limit people coming to work in certain fields...

Cabaret Clubs have performances while Hostess Clubs concentrate on the customer being served by a pretty hostess. Couples might frequent Caberet Clubs (especially performed by new hafuu or transexual performers) while guys go alone to hostess clubs.

I should add I'm not experienced in this field so just going off what I could readily figure out both from dramas and what my wife and friends explain.

The terminology of all these types of bars is pretty confusing--Snacks, Girl's Bar, Lounge, Cabaret Clubs, and Hostess Clubs. The meanings also vary by city, so the following is my impression based on Kyoto, with a dash of Osaka, and touches of Nagoya, Yokohama, and Tokyo.

Hostess clubs are the most expensive (maybe anything cheaper than 7,000 yen an hour wouldn't really be a hostess club) and the classiest--girls wear gowns and guys wear suits. Hosstesses are generally 25-ish and up. A lot of hostess clubs are by intro only--you can't come unless you come with a friend who knows the club.

Guys who come to hostess bars are usually pretty rich, and it's expected that the girls will sometimes meet customers outside of work. He'll pay for dinner and be respectful, there's no expectation of sex or anything like that. Guys that go to hostess clubs often take pride in making the girls more elegant--teaching them more about the world, about people, about high class life, etc. They bring them to super nice places.

Cabaret Clubs have a reputation for younger girls, are open to the public, and don't have such a high-class exclusive reputation. They're still probably the second most classy though, and second most expensive. Whereas, something like a girls bar is just talking to a girl (behind a counter, instead of next to you) for 3,000 yen or something.

Confusingly, you might refer to a girl from any of those places as a 'hostess' in English, and even in Japanese the term is used pretty loosely it seems--especially between lounges, cabaret clubs, and hostess clubs, where you might call all the girls hostesses.

Anyway, I'm not tooooo sure about any of this. I have a friend who works as a hostess, and I recently talked to a cabaret girl I met in Golden Gai for a long time, and they both have explained it to me a bit but it's a bit silly and hard to remember after the fact (getting to understand any of this seems interesting but is really just boring).

I guess I've been to snacks, girls bars, and a couple lounge/cabaret-ish places before (in Nagoya and Yokohama), but never a proper hostess club. Still, I have no idea too specifically. To me it really seems like--snack is where old guys talk to an old lady and maybe there's a young girl or two about; in girls bars a girl is assigned to talk to you from behind a counter for fairly cheap; in anything higher than that you get a girl who sits next to you and talks to you, with various degrees of classiness and outfits.

Ah that makes sense now. Finally I got my answer!! I never went to a 'cabaret club'. That would have been interesting to see the difference. He REALLY didn't want me to think he was a host. From what I gathered I feel that a majority of Japanese people tend to really look down on guys that are hosts.

NightSky Wrote:I'd love to be a male host in Japan, seemed like great money and a great life. There was a cool documentary on that too.

Maybe when I move back ..

I love host clubs and hostess clubs as a guest! Going in a group can be even better with the right hosts and hostesses. Having experienced what its like to work and it sucks. Now dates are a chore and I avoid them at all costs. In the end a customer service job is a customer serice job no matter what you do. Lots of talking with people you dont know or care about. For hosts it's muuuch worse. Girls be cray. The stories I've heard o.O