"Thinking naughty thoughts again, aren't you, old man!"
      "Don't call me old man. I'm only thirty."
      "Oh, come on! If you're thirty, you're an old man!"
      "Am I now? How old are you?"
      "Me? I'm sweet seventeen!"
      "So, you're still in high school?"
      "Mm-hmmm!"

It's been four or five years since telephone clubs (terekura) burst onto the scene in Japan. At first I couldn't figure out what kept them going. A man pays a small fee (around 800 to 1500 yen [seven to thirteen dollars]) to enter a small room on the club premises. The room has a desk, a chair and a telephone. Some establishments provide a box of tissues, too.
      The man sits in the chair and waits for the phone to ring. He is waiting to hear from a variety of anonymous females from all walks of life. Telephone clubs field incoming calls in two ways: either first-come, first-serve, or round-robin. In the former, the first guy to answer his phone gets to take the call. You wait with the receiver glued to your ear and your finger on the hook so you can let go the instant the phone rings. The other method is less stressful. The proprietor assigns incoming calls to his patrons in turn.
      And that's basically it. You sit there and talk on the phone to women you don't know. I didn't get it. You can have more fun sitting in a bar flirting with the bartender, I thought to myself. But it wasn't long before I realized there was more to telephone clubs than I had previously thought.
      The phone conversation is just the beginning. If it goes well, the man and woman, complete strangers, can make plans to meet in person. When I learned this, I felt as though I had caught a glimpse into a deep, dark well. And as if to provide supporting evidence for my discovery, newspaper accounts of terekura-related incidents suddenly began catching my eye.

     

Kitakyushu: A man is arrested after he has sex with a fifteen-year old schoolgirl working as a prostitute through a terekura. The man is a telephone club employee.
Kumamoto: A female terekura employee (fifty) is arrested for pimping for a high school girl (sixteen).
Fukuoka: The proprietor of a dating club (fifty-one) is arrested after using a terekura to recruit girls to date his clients. The club owner explains that women who phone in to telephone clubs are easy to recruit into prostitution.
Fukuoka: In an incident involving middle and high school girls working as prostitutes through a terekura, Fukuoka police arrest six club patrons and take eighteen schoolgirls into custody for counseling.

Telephone clubs have evolved into hotbeds of prostitution for middle to high school girls. Certainly, from the girl's standpoint, it beats standing on a street corner. For the customer, too, talking on the phone to the girl beforehand softens the edges of the encounter. He can pretend that it's a sort of pseudo-love affair, not real prostitution never mind that he gives the girl a little "pocket money" afterward.
      It was a wrong number that finally sent me to a terekura myself.
      I had spent the day moving into a new apartment. Exhausted, I lay dozing on a futon I had just unpacked when the phone rang. Wondering who could be calling so soon after my change of residence, I picked up the receiver and heard a girl's childlike voice on the other end.
      "Thinking naughty thoughts again, aren't you, old man!"
      "Huh?"
      "Did you feel up some girls on the train again today?"
      "What?"
      "You really shouldn't do that, you know!'
      "Uh, whom did you wish to speak to?"
      I heard a gasp on the other end of the line, and the girl abruptly hung up. I replaced the receiver and sat there blankly for a few minutes. It's true that I'm constantly thinking dirty thoughts, but I have never once molested anyone. Why was this person saying these things to me?
      Then it dawned on me. I had just experienced a terekura transaction. No doubt the previous owner of this phone number had made the acquaintance of this girl through a telephone club, had given her his phone number and enjoyed getting occasional calls from her.
      That chance encounter got me interested enough to pay a visit to a terekura in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, where I had a conversation with a young girl.
      "Do you phone this sort of place often?"
      "Uh-huh, whenever I have time on my hands."
      "Where are you calling from now?"
      "My friend's room."
      "By room, you mean apartment?"
      "Yeah. She has her own place, so I use it a lot!"
      "Is your friend there now?"
      "Uh-uh. She's out on a date with Tatsuo. I'm all by myself, so that's why I'm calling."
      "On a date with Tatsuo, eh?"
      "Mm-hmm. He's really sweet. I want him myself!"
      "How do you get the phone numbers for places like this?"
      "From flyers in phone booths, ads in comic books . . ."
      "Comic books?"
      "You know, those sexy comics for girls."
      "Oh, you mean 'ladies' comics.'"
      I bought a few "ladies' comics" and checked out the ads. I was amazed; every issue had ten to thirteen pages of terekura ads. The ads were sandwiched between erotic tales that made men's comics look downright cute by comparison. The idea was presumably that female readers aroused by the comics would then call the terekura to engage in phone sex. I also found pages of text that looked like an article, but when I got to the end, I discovered I was reading a terekura ad. Here's an example:
      "When a girl gets the urge to chat with someone, she can call right away. There's no annoying procedure to go through! If you have a phone in front of you, it's chat time anytime you want it to be. You can relax at home, put your favorite music on the stereo, sip a cup of coffee . . . The men you'll chat with are all carefully screened club members, every one a gentleman. You will not be talking to men who do this for a living, or are trying to sell you something. You can chat freely, as you would with a friend . . . And the best thing is, there's no charge for women! It's free! Telephone club expenses are paid for entirely by male club members."
      Luckily for me, I wasn't "carefully screened"; all I had to do was pay 1,500 yen (thirteen dollars) and I was in.
      "Do your friends use telephone clubs a lot too?"
      "Uh-huh, all the girls in my group use terekura for fun."
      "For fun?"
      "You know, to tease weird old guys."
      "How do you tease them?"
      "You tell them you'll go out on a date with them, pick a time and place to meet, then you hide and watch them with your friends."
      "I see. Have any of your friends ever gotten into serious trouble because of a terekura?"
      "Well, one girl went out with a guy only once and got pregnant. Talk about a bummer!"
      "What happened to her?"
      "She had an abortion, of course. We all pitched in to help her pay for it."
      "By doing part-time work?"
      "Yeah, or making money from this kind of thing."
      "I suppose you mean getting 'pocket money' from men you meet through a terekura."
      "Mm-hmm, like that."
      "Do you do that yourself?"
      "I don't. I mean, that's risky. Besides, they're all old men. Say listen, today's Saturday. You want to meet somewhere? You'll have to treat me though!"
      I thought about it for a moment, then politely declined. I had a feeling there wouldn't be much for us to talk about.