Anton’s Big Tokyo Trip: Part 3 - JAV Hot Springs and Heart-to-Hearts

So! Now that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time faffing about, we’ve finally arrived at the meat on the bone, and I’m ready to take you all through each of the floors of SOD Land. Gather round, readers, and let me tell you a tale.

The basement, and indeed all the floors, was much smaller than I expected. Given what I’d seen from my own experiences at Ali Baba, and from my (admittedly minimal) experience with the Yakuza games, I shouldn’t have been too surprised. But there were only four bars on this floor, without even stools for us to sit on (though thankfully there are containers for you to put your bags and coats in). The aesthetic was done up to resemble a traditional onsen, with orange paper lanterns and wooden tablets on the upper walls for menu items (the former of which I kept hitting my head on). And behind each bar was a hostess dressed only in a white bath towel (just like you see in those Japanimations).

June and I sidled up to a bar, placed our things in the baskets, and had a look at the menu. Neither of us was in a mood for firewater that night, so we both ordered a pair of jasmine teas before I excused myself to the restroom (the drink that had stained my mask was starting to catch up to me). Just before I entered though, the woman behind the counter warned me not to pull back the curtain inside. If I did, it would make me visible to all the patrons and staff on the floor, and while I certainly would not have been embarrassed by such a display, I didn’t think anyone present was in a mood to see my junk, so the curtain remained drawn.

Once I’d taken care of business, I returned to the bar and tried not to hit my head as June and I struck up a conversation with our hostess for the evening. Her name was Rei Oki, and she had recently made her JAV debut (MEYD-804). I wish I’d known about her love of visiting shrines that night, as it would have made for a great talking topic, but mostly we just discussed her hobby of knitting. She showed off her debut film, and excitedly pointed out how the scarf in the trailer was one she’d knitted herself. And she’d had a lot of fun making the video.

Noting the name of Rei’s debut video, I decided to take a note of it for later, before I suddenly realized to my horror that I’d left my notebook, the one I take with me to every single event since Akari Niimura, back at my hotel room. It was still in the backpack now resting on my wall, and I stared aghast and slack jawed into space wondering what I was to do until June suggested I simply type on my phone notes.

This was an excellent idea, but it left me at something of a disadvantage. It’s much quicker and easier for me to scribble something down with a pencil than try to type something on a phone with my massive digits and those tiny keys, especially since I had only just gotten a new phone recently and thus wasn’t fully used to it yet. But I bring all this up to let everyone know that, for all the detail I put into these articles, it is only a fraction of what happened. I could have written even more about SOD Land, and there was so much more worth writing about, if I had not made this simple mistake. But as it is, I had to make the most of the hand I’d been dealt with, and that included doing my best to type on tiny letter buttons.

At this point I was shown a menu of several erotic activities I could ask of Rei, all of which, I confess, seemed slightly comical to me. One such activity, for instance, involved you high-fiving the actress after she’d massaged her breast, so you could still feel the warmth of her body on her palm when you touched it. But, ultimately I was there to try what SOD Land had to offer, and one activity was just so cute I simply had to give it a go.

As previously mentioned, this floor was modeled on a bathhouse. So after I asked them to, the staff filled one of those small wooden boxes you drink sake from with hot water (an ancient cure-all, that), and my index finger got to share a hot springs bath with Rei’s. June laughed as Rei’s finger sidled up closer to mine, and I chuckled in mock modesty.

“Madam!” quoth I. “Rather forward, aren’t we?” And though I joked, Rei certainly knew how to use her fingers. A single stroke along my digit elicited a firework of sensation, and June and I excitedly geeked out over the many myriad ways one can make another feel good without penetration. I didn’t get to mention the article on nipple licking that I wrote to June, but it was still nice to chat with a fellow sex nerd about our common interest.

At this point, Rei’s finger pounced, and we all howled with laughter as the two pointers flopped about on top of each other. I wondered if we should draw a curtain, in case the erotic charge was of too high a voltage for our fellow bar patrons to witness, but soon Rei and I were in the midst of a heated thumb war, our palms perched on the outer edges of the bath as we battled.

“Let her win! Let her win!” June insisted, and I certainly saw no reason not to oblige their request, so I handed (or, fingered, I suppose) Rei her victory, and she cheered happily while June clapped.

At that point, June asked if I had any questions for Rei, so I asked if there was anything foreign customers could do to help put SOD Land staff at ease. Her response was certainly not what I expected, but one I could certainly understand. She said that foreign customers should probably work their way down other floors before coming to the basement, since the activities offered down there were just so erotic, it was liable to make newcomers nervous. I couldn’t really argue with that, and wondered what activities awaited me on the upper floors, if things had been so saucy down here.

“So, where do you want to go next?” June asked.

“Well, I guess next up would be the first floor.”

June stared at me. “The first floor was the reception hall.”

I blinked. Then stammered. “Oh! I… wait, sorry, the second floor!”

“Okay,” June chuckled. And after a brief phone call to make sure the floor was open for more visitors, we were soon allowed to proceed upstairs.

Along the staircase we saw something truly delightful. There were portraits of Soft on Demand’s biggest stars lining the wall, with a description describing their beauty. But here’s the best part, each actress had her own adverb to qualify her beauty, so June and I chuckled as we read all the various words like “elegantly beautiful”, “charmingly beautiful”, “exotically beautiful”, and so many others. Too many to count, too many to type down, and of all the moments when I regretted not bringing along my notebook, this one stood out the most. I really wish I’d been allowed to take pictures or write down all the adoring, amorous adverbs I saw on that stairway, but it would have taken far too much time to type them all out on my phone’s notes, and we had to cover all five floors in two hours.

As with all floors, including the basement, on the second floor there were pictures of which actresses we would find in the room, I presume so that customers could request the company of one actress in particular. But I didn’t really mind who I chatted with, so June and I were soon seated (yes, thank goodness, there were seats this time around) with a woman named Hinata Seno. To my surprise, and, surprisingly, June’s surprise, Hinata and June knew each other through a mutual friend. So as June and I ordered another round of jasmine tea, the two ladies started gabbing away excitedly.

I should note at this point that if you hire June as a tour guide, that you won’t simply be getting rehearsed descriptions of various locales and history. Instead, they’ll take time to engage with the people at the places you visit, especially if you yourself feel too nervous or inarticulate in Japanese to be as amiable and sociable as you’d normally be. This helped so much over the course of our night at SOD Land, and is perhaps June’s strongest selling point in the tour guide department.

I don’t know what exactly June and Hinata talked about, but they seemed quite happy, so I hope the conversation was good. Come to think of it, most people were cheerful. I heard several outright guffaws from some customers, a sight I’m not used to in Kanto, while the actresses politely giggled. But even if some of the customers were louder than what I’d expect from a Tokyo establishment, no-one was disorderly or disruptive, and the mood remained pleasant.

This floor of the venue was almost like a cafe. The lights weren’t as bright as the basement, but not as dim as they’d be on upper floors, and if there were special menu options for erotic activities like on other floors, I can’t remember them. It gave the air of a locale one would see in a lo-fi beats Youtube video, and the primary aim of the floor seems to have been simply a relaxing environment to chat with actresses.

As June explained to me when I joined the conversation, this floor used to be for women who worked outside of JAV. But after the recent closure, when SOD Land reopened this changed, so now the women on the second floor are all JAV actresses, though Hinata was now retired. But though the makeup of the women there had changed, the basic idea of a chin-wagging environment remained, and as June also explained to me, SOD Land offers a package deal where you can have an interpreter beside you when you converse with the actresses.

You can also use a translating app, as Hinata noted when I asked what foreign customers could potentially do to put the staff at ease. Something like Deepl, or even Google Translate, or really just anything that shows you’re trying to meet the people at SOD Land halfway when it comes to communication. You don’t need to be fully fluent. Lord knows I’m not. But don’t be the sort of boorish tourist who gets upset when everyone around you doesn’t speak perfect English like Jesus did (“What d’ya mean there’s no fackin’ chips, I come ‘ere on a plane, ya cunt!”).

At this point June began to regale me with tales of the many fun, sexy venues they’d visited during their time in Tokyo, particularly a BDSM bar where you could watch people get spanked while you had your drink. I confess, I’m not entirely green. I’ve been to a few saucy, sexy places in my time. But I’ve certainly never been to any place where they spank you. I’ve never even eaten at the Heart Attack Grill, and honestly am not sure if I want to, but that’s neither here nor there. As June described how you could also see people tied up and dangling from the ceiling, and people inside the cages that were placed under your tables, I couldn’t help but grin. This sounded like the sort of place where, even if the patrons’ kinks were not my kinks, a night there would certainly be a memorable life experience, and one in which I could have at least some kind of fun.

After that, we began to chat about our travels, and the various places we’d managed to visit for work and for pleasure. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Beijing (all of which are in the same country! Ha! Haha! Uh… don’t want to upset any nickel soldiers that may be in the comments section), as well as other places such as Seoul and Manila. Despite not being all that far apart (certainly no farther than most cities in the continental United States), each city is so wildly different than Tokyo. Different languages, different customs, different sights to see and different beaten paths to stray from in one’s search for adventure. And yet, in all places, the universal desire of sexual expression and fulfillment remains a constant. And JAV is just as popular in all those places as it is in its home country.

Like I said, I’m not entirely green. I’ve seen some sights and had some nights in my time. And yet, as I listened to June and Hinata excitedly talk about the places they’d been and the fun they’d had, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy at my own lack of worldliness.

However, to see where that tiny thought led to, you’ll have to wait for the next installment of this series, when, after getting Hinata’s socials and phoning the third floor to see if we could go there, June and I proceeded to the next exciting floor of SOD Land. Until then, please, check out Rei and Hinata. Buy their works, follow their socials, show them some love. They were wonderful hostesses, and they deserve a bit of appreciation cast their way.

Hinata Seno Instagram and Twitter