WORK IN PROGRESS 10

THE MEGUMI STORIES
BY MEGUMI KATO AND FRIENDS

VOLUME 05: WORK IN PROGRESS
BY BOB WILLIAMS
ASSISTED BY MEGUMI, NORIKO, FUJIKO, AYUMI, SAEKO, 
MARIKO, TAMA, MAIKO, SHIZUE, MIE, AYAKO, TOMO, YUU 
AND RUMI 

PART 10

CHAPTER X 

The First Date Cafe

     The germ of this piece was an article I wrote for 
     a sex-tourism magazine interested in new 
     developments on the Tokyo sex scene. When I came 
     to look at it again, I thought it could be 
     expanded to give some of the background to this 
     highly successful venture - and include the 
     latest news of some old friends. 

Perhaps you remember Miss Mie Takahashi - or Mrs Alan 
Buller as I should correctly call her. She was for 
some time right at the top of the Japanese porn 
industry: she is tall, elegant and amazingly sexy, and 
the movies she made for Marucho are among the classics 
of the genre. Japanese sex stars do not last long, the 
pressure from eager newcomers hoping for their own 
careers is so intense; but Miss Takahashi continued 
for longer than most, so great was her popularity, and 
she quit, as they say, while she was ahead. Many 
lovers of Japanese erotic beauty sincerely mourned her 
retirement; but of course her place was soon taken by 
others. To mention developments at Marucho alone, 
there was Megumi Kato, of course, whom Miss Takahashi 
had herself spotted as her successor. There was 
Megumi's school-friend Kimiko Kobayashi who has 
developed into one of the stars of _ojosama_ or 
"Princess" movies, delightful stories in which a 
high-class young lady is kidnapped by roughs, taken to 
a secret hideaway, tied up and subjected to every kind 
of perverted and humiliating sex - which, of course, 
she soon finds she adores and can't get enough of. 
Then there is a promising and insatiable little slut 
called Emi, a _protegee_ of Megumi's whom she is 
grooming for stardom in the shorter videos which don't 
bother with a plot and start straight off with 
non-stop fucking: she is at present, on Megumi's 
instructions, broadening her experience working in the 
cheaper end of the sex-trade - as a bath-house girl, 
as a stripper in seedy theatres, and flitting like a 
swallow every fifteen minutes from cubicle to cubicle 
in the many "sex cafes" of Asakusa. Megumi tells me 
Emi is so happy in her work she may never want to 
return to the studio. There are so many delicious 
little sluts like that at the sleazier end of the 
Japanese sex-trade, bless them! It is a duty as well 
as a pleasure to seek them out and give them the 
thorough and intense fucking they love so much. Please 
remember that when you visit Tokyo. 

Meanwhile Miss Takahashi was living happily in England 
with her rich, elderly _gaijin_ husband. He was still 
besotted with her and she made sure to please him and 
satisfy his lust for her; he for his part had the 
sense to realise that a beautiful young woman in the 
flower of her sexuality could hardly be expected to 
limit herself to a single partner, and made no 
objection to her other affairs so long as she was 
discreet and occasionally came to his bed with new 
ideas and techniques for him to enjoy. I heard all 
this from Megumi and we were both glad for her. One of 
Miss Takahashi's virtues was that her former lovers - 
who included of course both Megumi and me - remembered 
her with deep affection and wanted her to be happy. 

One day the news reached us that Miss Takahashi had 
returned to Tokyo. A big international company had 
persuaded Mr Buller out of retirement to lead their 
expansion into Japan; and he and his lovely wife were 
living in one of the grandest expat houses in the 
city. Miss Takahashi soon made contact with her former 
friends and lovers and was as popular as ever. She had 
made it plain to her husband that she was there for 
him when he needed her - either in his bed or as 
hostess in his splendid house - but wanted to pursue a 
life of her own as well. She was not interested in 
returning to her acting career, but was looking for 
business interests where her experience of the 
sex-trade would be useful. 

The industry is so wide-ranging and well-developed 
that it took her a while to find a point of entry. But 
an idea came to her when she was visiting Megumi at 
Marucho's head office in Shibuya, and was sitting in 
on a series of interviews Megumi was conducting with 
young girls dreaming of acting careers in sex videos. 
They were all too young to have heard of her, of 
course, but Miss Takahashi liked meeting them, and 
sometimes picked out the prettiest and most 
enthusiastic to share her bed or serve as acceptable 
presents to her friends and lovers.[21] 

On this occasion Megumi was of course quizzing the 
applicants about their sex-lives and progress so far: 
what had been their first sexual experience, how old 
they had been when they were first properly fucked (in 
their cunts rather than their mouths, that is), how 
often they attended sex-parties, whether they had yet 
learnt to enjoy being whipped, and so on. Afterwards 
Miss Takahashi said, 

"Have you noticed something? They all said how 
difficult it was to get a boy to fuck them the first 
time." 

"Did you think so?" asked Megumi. "I thought they were 
just trying to show how keen they were." 

"Well, yes, maybe. But I do think that's something we 
do badly, providing the facilities for sex on a first 
date." 

"Oh, surely not! Tokyo is full of love-hotels!" 

"Yes, but they are for more experienced couples. Think 
of it: a young couple on their first date, both 
longing to fuck but neither sure how to approach the 
subject, the boy afraid to suggest a visit to a 
love-hotel in case she is shocked and upset, and not 
really knowing where to go and how much it would cost 
and whether he has the money ..." 

"H'm, I do see what you mean. They need guidance. A 
bit like the old days with the pillow-book." 

Megumi was genuinely interested in the history of 
pornography. That was partly my influence: I had 
shared with her some of the results of my own 
researches into sexual literature, like the 
eighteenth-century novels of the Marquis de Sade and 
Victorian publications like _The Pearl_.[22] The 
pillow-book was in a way the Japanese equivalent of 
such classical pornography. 

"How did that work?" asked Miss Takahashi, who was 
more interested in the present and the future. 

"Well, when a young couple were married, or were going 
to make love for the first time anyway, older friends 
or relations would place a book on their pillow with 
lots of pictures showing clearly all the nice things 
they could do to each other." 

"What a lovely idea!" said Miss Takahashi. "Of course 
today the problem isn't showing them _what_ to do - 
our industry does that very efficiently - it's 
providing somewhere to do it." She giggled. "Not the 
book so much as the pillow." 

So an important commercial idea was born. Megumi 
discussed it with her husband Mr Otani, who liked it 
and immediately saw how it could fit in with the 
promotion of their company; and sufficient capital was 
forthcoming from Marucho and from Miss Takahashi's own 
resources to develop it. What was needed, the two 
girls decided, was a simple cafe of the kind that a 
boy might take a girl to on a first date without 
feeling intimidated or worrying that he could not 
afford it, equipped with facilities for fucking which 
the young couple could progress to naturally and 
almost without noticing what was happening. Megumi 
wanted to give the establishment a classical name to 
do with the pillow-book, but Miss Takahashi said young 
Japanese wouldn't understand that and wanted a name 
which clearly told them what it was for. So they 
agreed on First Date Cafe or Fasuto Deito Kafe in 
Japlish. 

Real-estate agents were put to work and it wasn't long 
before Miss Takahashi announced she had found the 
ideal place. It was a former basement disco in 
Harajuku, in an area frequented by young people. The 
public area, the disco itself, had been designed as a 
large circle, which sounds a bit wasteful of space 
especially when you think what space costs in Tokyo; 
but actually is quite practical: you could fit a 
triangular entrance lobby into one curved corner, a 
cloakroom into another, and two washrooms into the 
others. Separate from the public area and with its own 
staff entrance was a small kitchen and serving area. 
There was room for about twenty-four tables round the 
outer circle of the main room, all tables for two and 
quite small and intimate so that knees and feet could 
touch underneath and hands find each other easily as 
if by accident. In the centre where the dance-floor 
had been a large, perfectly circular bed was 
installed, with twelve standard mattresses radiating 
out from it like the spokes of a wheel. The area with 
the tables was discreetly lit but the former 
dance-floor was well illuminated from the sides and 
overhead, with mirrors on the ceiling between the 
lights. The floor had been constructed out of a 
translucent plastic material and there were elaborate 
lighting systems underneath originally designed to 
show off the girls' legs as they danced: these of 
course were retained. 

So let me describe what the First Date Cafe is like. 
The menu consists of simple snacks and dishes, so that 
no one need feel intimidated by complicated choices. 
No alcohol is served. This saves a lot of troublesome 
regulation, need to enquire into customers' ages, and 
so on; but as well as the usual long drinks the menu 
offers sweet non-alcoholic fruit cocktails of the kind 
Japanese girls love, with discreetly teasing names 
like "First Kiss", "Boy and Girl" and "Microskirt". 
There are a lot of pretty young waitresses, all 
dressed in a fantasy French maid outfit in various 
colours: wide short skirts held out from the bottom by 
a froth of petticoats, a lacy short-sleeved blouse cut 
to offer a coy glimpse of the breasts, black 
high-heels, a tiny impracticable apron tied in a big 
bow round the waist, and a matching bow in the hair. 
You have no doubt seen this sort of thing being worn 
(and taken off) hundreds of times in Japanese sex 
videos: in fact Megumi obtained the whole set of 
outfits cheap from a company specialising in supplying 
costumes to the porn industry. The waitresses look 
delightful, I must say. 

There are also half-a-dozen waiters, all young 
good-looking _gaijin_. Well, with the sort of looks 
young Japanese girls find exciting. They have been 
chosen from among the international drifters who come 
to Tokyo for a few months, supporting themselves by 
teaching English and, if they are lucky, by occasional 
parts in porn videos.[23] They don't speak much 
Japanese but all they have to do is greet the young 
couples, conduct them to their tables and produce 
menus with a flourish, leaving the orders to the 
waitresses. They wear tight trousers in various garish 
colours and are naked above the waist apart from white 
cuffs and a white collar decorated with a bow-tie in a 
colour matching their trousers. This teasing reference 
to the costume of the ubiquitous _Playboy_ bunny 
always makes the girl customers giggle, and wriggle 
discreetly on their seats as they feel their pussies 
lightly tingling and their panties becoming a little 
damp from the first drops of love-juice. 

The cafe is open from 5 p.m. till 11 at night. Each 
waiter is given two half-hour periods on special duty: 
they might be from 6.30 to 7 and again from 9.30 to 
10, for example. Before the doors open, each waiter 
chooses by lot two waitresses to be his partners 
during these periods. Exactly on the hour and on the 
half-hour a couple, waiter and waitress, proceed to 
the circular bed in the centre of the floor and make 
love, gently undressing each other and going through 
an undemanding fucking routine designed to reach 
climax in twenty or twenty-five minutes. Of course the 
customers are fascinated and thrilled by this. They 
watch open-mouthed, and some of the bolder ones gather 
round the bed. Hands reach for hands, eyes meet, and 
couples know without having to say anything that they 
are both longing to share the same beautiful 
experience themselves. The beds round the perimeter of 
the dance-floor are soon filling up with young lovers. 
It is, I must admit, even for a debauched old lecher 
like me, a very pretty sight. 

The cafe has been a great success, and is now 
developing quickly into a chain. Rather than run it 
all themselves, Miss Takahashi, Megumi and Mr Otani 
have decided to franchise it, insisting that the 
details of the original cafe are carried through 
unaltered into all the others. 

Two things all Japanese like are being included in a 
group or club, and being given a free gift or _sabisu_ 
as part of a retail transaction. When a young couple 
have finished making love, they are gently helped to 
the washrooms by the waitresses, who discreetly ask 
their names. In due course they return to their table, 
the young man stiff but proud and the girl shy but 
radiant, to find special souvenirs of their experience 
waiting for them. 

The young man receives a handsome laminated folder. On 
the front is a certificate confirming that he, 
identified by name, is now a member of the First Date 
Club complete with membership number, and enjoyed a 
First Date at the First Date Cafe on such-and-such a 
day. On the back the address details of the Cafe are 
shown, together with a map of the location. On the two 
inside pages are four carefully chosen and very 
tasteful photographs of him and his girl fucking, 
which he can proudly show to his friends. She receives 
a folder with just "First Date Cafe" on the front in 
elegant gold script. Inside, tucked into the left-hand 
pocket, is a miniature pad of diary pages, accompanied 
by a pretty little gilt ball-point. The first page is 
headed by her name and the date, and the words "Today 
I visited the First Date Cafe with ..." and the name 
of her lover. The rest of the page is for her to 
record her feelings and experiences: Japanese girls 
are insatiable diary-keepers, and love to share what 
they have written with their friends. In the 
right-hand pocket are two items: a certificate like 
his though printed in a much more feminine and girlish 
style, and a coupon entitling her, when she has 
collected three of them, to a free video disc. 

This of course encourages her to visit the cafe twice 
more and earn the other coupons, gaining in sexual 
confidence and poise as she does so. When at last she 
sends for her free disc, she will receive a video 
carefully selected from the _kawaii_ or "sweet" part 
of Marucho's catalogue, designed to appeal to the 
company's younger female customers. It will show a 
pretty girl, one of Megumi's latest recruits, being 
beautifully and tastefully fucked. The sex will be 
straightforward and elementary, starting perhaps with 
the girl flirting in charmingly provocative clothes 
and ending maybe with her pretty face decorated with 
cum, but with no whip or clamp or other sex-toy to be 
seen: nothing to frighten or worry the shyest 
beginner. This too she is almost bound to share with 
her friends. At the end will appear some individually 
prepared text frames. The first will congratulate the 
girl again, by name, on being a member of the First 
Date Club. The second will guide her to the Marucho 
website where the full catalogue of products is shown, 
and tell her that by entering her membership number 
she can obtain discounts. The third will inform her 
that the First Date Cafe and Marucho are both looking 
for part-time employees (performers in sex acts in 
public or on camera, of course, though it will not say 
so outright) and giving her a single contact number 
for both if she wishes to be considered. 

The secret of success in business comes in several 
stages. First, identify a gap in the market which has 
remained unfilled. Second, encourage repeat business 
and word-of-mouth recommendation. Third, promote the 
sale of tie-ins from your core business. Fourth, when 
you have a winning formula, franchise it. And this is 
the story of how two porn video idols, one retired and 
the other still very active, and a clever 
Japanese-American businessman, started a successful 
retail chain selling sex to young couples. 


FOOTNOTES

[21] She once gave me such a present: an adorable 
little creature called Nozomi, hopelessly in love with 
her and eagerly carrying out her instructions to 
please me and do everything I wanted. "You _will_ tell 
Her that I pleased you, won't you?" she would ask 
anxiously after enthusiastically fulfilling whatever 
sexually advanced demand I made of her. She still 
adores Miss Takahashi, of course; but is now, at only 
seventeen, the live-in companion of an older man - 
older than me, I mean - famous for the ingenuity and 
imagination with which he invents new variations of 
sadism. I met them recently at a party and she 
introduced me. He knew who I was, and paid me the 
great compliment of thanking me for having trained his 
little girl so well. Meanwhile she blushed and looked 
virginal, knowing of course that that was the best way 
of tickling his depraved lust. I managed a quick 
private word with her. Was she happy? I asked. "Oh 
_yes_, in _Heaven_!" she replied with an angelic 
smile, before being whisked off, shivering with 
delighted anticipation, to another session of 
wonderfully sadistic debauchery in his secret 
underground dungeon. 

[22] _The Pearl_ was one of several pornographic 
magazines published in England at the height of the 
Victorian era. It lasted for eighteen issues, from 
July 1879 to December 1880, plus two special 
"Christmas issues", and contained a total of seven 
full-length novels, most of them still well worth 
reading. 

[23] If you detect a touch of jealousy here, you are 
right. I once applied for a job as a waiter in the 
First Date Cafe - the pay is low and the sex plain 
vanilla, but the waitresses are pretty and willing - 
and was rejected as too old! Huh. 


[Next in Part 11: Ayako: Personal Best] 

For complete series so far see 
http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/Bob_Williams