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Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Just after nine o'clock one morning, I was unpleasantly awoken by a digital ringing sound..." (more)
Key Phrases: ear glower, ear dower, homestay mother, Lea Jacobson, Mama Destiny, New York (more...)

3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What saves this youthful memoir from being a dreary litany of boozy nights spent entertaining drunken big-spenders at Tokyo clubs is American translator Jacobson's knowledge of Japanese culture and language. Having originally landed in Japan in 2003 after college at McGill to work as a kindergarten teacher, Jacobson was fired from her job at the Happy Learning English School in Yokosuka city because the psychiatrist she saw for anxiety revealed her condition in a letter to her employer. Outspoken about discrimination against women in Japanese society, fond of drinking and prone to eating disorders and self-cutting, Jacobson drifted among teaching jobs before settling into the more lucrative but taxing employment as a hostess at the Palace, on Tokyo's Ginza strip, where the reigning mama-san taught her the fine art of being a decorative bar flower who serves men drinks and light conversation without being touched. Jacobson soon found her job leaching into all aspects of her life, and the paid dates, drinking and partying prompted a destructive spiral of cutting and blacking out. Truly fascinated by Japanese mores, Jacobson nonetheless elevates her story with compelling digressions into ukiyo (the floating world), geisha tradition and the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, among other topics, for a candid version of cultural immersion. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Her debut memoir intrigues because it opens a window into a little-seen portion of Japanese culture: ‘the floating world’ of transience and personal gratification.... A juicy read for anyone interested in the intriguingly lascivious underworld of a purportedly straight-laced culture.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Truly fascinated by Japanese mores, Jacobson elevates her story…for a candid version of cultural immersion.”—Publishers Weekly

"[An] endlessley candid and engaging true tale." —Booklist

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Product Details

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (April 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312368976
ISBN-13: 978-0312368975
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #562,761 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#39 in Books > Travel > Asia > Japan > Tokyo

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
Just after nine o'clock one morning, I was unpleasantly awoken by a digital ringing sound. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
ear glower, ear dower, homestay mother, gaijin house, mizu shobai, hostess bars, other hostesses, nightclub hostess

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Lea Jacobson, Mama Destiny, New York, Mama Mari, Mount Fuji, Louis Vuitton, The Last Samurai, One Eyed Zacks, Roppongi Crossing, Lucie Blackman, Happy Learning, Club Heaven, Yamanote Line, Shinjuku Station, Hideo Marui, Eastern Bloc, Ayumi Hamasaki, Britney Spears, Dom P�rignon, Shot Bar, Venus Lounge, Hello Kitty

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	85% buy the item featured on this page: Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess 3.3 out of 5 stars (11) $18.96
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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not spectacular, June 12, 2008

By	MB "claire's mommy" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

I enjoyed the mini-lessons about Japanese language and culture, however, I found this book to be written simplistically and with a lot of excessive detail that was unrelated to the storyline itself. I felt like there were a lot of unnecessary "fluffy anecdotes" that left me wondering about their significance, instead of relevant details.

Additionally, the beginning of the book was lacking in character development. As I read the good and bad things that happened to Lea, I was not invested enough in her character to really care. I felt no emotion throughout the entire book, but I finished it anyway because it was a fast read.

I do not recommend this book.

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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars honest and insightful, April 23, 2008

By	Tokyo Red Head - See all my reviews

In this book, Jacobson reveals a side of Japan that hardly gets any attention. An educated Japanophile with a keen eye for detail, she travels through the seedy and fascinating night time world of Tokyo, and takes us along for the ride. She shows us a dream world where beautiful girls in slinky dresses entertain red-faced, drunk business men. And she doesn't flinch when the dream shatters into a million ugly pieces.

Jacobson becomes an expert at flirting and coddling men for her benefit. However, as an educated woman from the land of opportunity, she ultimately realizes that she really should know better. Luckily for us, she gets up to a lot of adventures before she does. Fun, then devastating, and finally inspiring, you will not regret buying this book.

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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Diasappointing, November 5, 2008

By	Albrecht Stahmer (Tokyo) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As someone who has lived in central Tokyo for almost eight years, I was hoping to find an interesting insider's tale of hostessing in Japan. Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly unique in this book that I couldn't have learned from anyone in a local bar. And by no means are her anecdotes decadent in a truly Tokyo way; the combo hostess/strip clubs in Roppongi are much wilder and much more self-destructive for the women working there, not to mention the s&m bars or the private naked/partner swap parties. Her wild nights were not nearly as wild as an ordinary night out in Roppongi for a drunken expat banker. She also has a poor geographical memory as she misplaces numerous bars that she frequented. Can't understand why she is perpetually broke if she's making such big money hostessing--including three dohans per week versus the quota of two per month--pays only about $500 per month in rent (roughly half the cost of one of her regular's nightly tabs) and never has to buy her own dinner or drinks as she is an expert in getting those for free, yet can't afford the cost of a moving van, which from personal experience runs about $300 for a one-day in-town move. Everything regarding her hostessing career seems greatly exaggerated, as if she were writing a memoir based on other people's stories. While I trust she was a hostess, her story nonetheless reads like a revisionist diary. The most interesting part was her relationship with little Ayu, a story line which was completely abandoned once her hostessing began. Lots of sloppy errors with dates and geography. While she has a moving story with regards to the August 2005 anniversary of the WWII A-bombing, her interpretation of the somber mood over all of Japan is simply wrong. On the contrary, Japanese news shows, as well as CNN, ran numerous interviews with Japanese citizens on the street who had no idea why August 6 and 9 were significant in Japanese history. Ultimately, the book is disappointing for old Tokyo hands as her attempt to prove her immersion into Japanese culture are revealed as exaggerated by numerous mistakes and failure to experience many of the more decadent floating world. Though obviously cathartic for the author, the book is rather sophomoric.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars I wish I had read this 29 years ago...
As a recovering Japan addict, former wife of a Japanese lolikon (a man with a Lolita complex), and technical translator, I was glad to read a book that described Japan in less... Read more

Published 7 months ago by Stacy G.

4.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling
I picked this book up on a whim in the store and after sitting in the aisle reading 8 chapters of it, I felt it would be a good idea to buy it. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Megan Schimming

3.0 out of 5 stars The Floating Girl
Like Lea Jacobsen, I also went to Japan to teach English and spent nearly 6 years in the country. Unlike her, I never strayed from the straight economy into the `mizu shobai'... Read more

Published 12 months ago by Hikari

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring but thankfully short
Wow. This book was pretty bad in my opinion. Reading it was painful because of the author's own comments on strung together observations. Read more

Published 13 months ago by petite treat

2.0 out of 5 stars questionable details and bad editing
Survivor first aired in on May 31, 2000. Lea Jacobson first went to Japan in 2003. Why is this significant? Read more

Published 15 months ago by S. Lukas

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking
In Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess, Lea Jacobson recounts the roughly two years she spent as a nightclub hostess in Tokyo's... Read more

Published 16 months ago

5.0 out of 5 stars One of a kind
Just finished the book. I picked it up in the first place because I was on a quest to read everything ever written about hostessing; this book was by far the best source of... Read more

Published 16 months ago by Ukifune

4.0 out of 5 stars A Life in tokyo
Lea Jacobson's memoir is subtitled " My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess. Read more

Published 16 months ago by Luanne Ollivier

› See all 11 customer reviews...

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