The term "working poor" has become a familiar one to Japanese wage earners. And many such individuals, notes Friday Nov 18 , gaze ruefully at their empty savings accounts and their anxieties for the future keep mounting. Is there no getting off the poverty treadmill? There is, at least for those willing to seek employment in the sex industry.
Friday profiles two such females. One, who goes by the name Aki, is a willowy year-old hair and makeup coordinator who toils by day for a bridal service. After leaving work, she moonlights for a "delivery health" outcall sex service. But once I started my job, I sold them off. Nor did I join coworkers going out drinking. And as coworkers began getting married, one after the next, I had to pitch in with the others.
Even though the monetary gifts that way were just 7, yen, it became a drain on the budget. After Aki finished paying off the loan for her school tuition, at age 28, she was invited to go into business with a colleague.
That was when she began moonlighting in the sex trade. Upon being requested by a customer, she accompanies him to a nearby hotel, where she is compensated to the tune of 20, yen per hour. Appointments and specific preferences of her customers could be communicated in advance through exchanges via the "deriheru's" web site. A spreadsheet of income and expenditures showed how lucrative such work can be. While Aki's meals and "miscellaneous expenses" rose considerably, other living costs remained nearly the same.
As a result, monthly income went from , yen with zero savings to , yen of which half -- , yen -- wound up in the bank. After a year, she was 4 million yen richer.
