crime

Police raid 'blind-date cafe' in Tokyo, taking 31 high school, college girls into custody

79 Comments

Police on Wednesday raided a so-called “blind-date cafe” in Ikebukuro for violation of a law related to the operation of “date clubs.” Thirty-one high school and college girls were taken into custody, police said, adding this was the first investigation into the activities of such cafes.

The cafes, where men and women meet each other at random and hang out afterward, are a new type of date club. However, police said that blind-date cafes have become venues for prostitution by minors.

According to police, there are more than 100 blind-date cafes operating nationwide where men pay women to meet them, usually arranged on the Internet. A loophole in the Child Welfare Law prevents police from arresting the owners of the cafes because they argue they are just providing a place for people to meet up.

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mmmm...in most countries the 'age of consent' is 13 to 16, that means that above that age, anybody can have sex with whoever one likes, and below that age is consider 'sexual abuse' by default. In my country, it's 13 and the only thing to be taken into consideration is there has been any kind of 'trick' to deceive below 16. Above this age, unless there has be violence, nothing can be said, unless parents complain. Another thing is if there is money in between, then the legal age for prostitution is 18. Pimps are illegal. Btw, my country is in the EU. The consent age in the Vatican is 12.

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BRAVO OMARI-SAN, LOCK THEM UP AND CLEAN THE STREETS OF THE REST.

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Sex means nothing. Even a handshake means more. What is self-respect? Most will give you a blank look if you ask them. Anyone ever heard of STDs? The thing is, none of this is going to get better any time soon. Meaning has been erased from the most intimate moment you can have with another person. I don't know if it'll come back in our lifetimes, so hang onto your socks, people.

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The girl in front seems to be in her school uniform?! That out fit is just like the ones I see the local parochial school girls wearing. The skirts may be a little longer on the ones I have observed, unless they decid to roll the waistband to make it shorter.

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Well, Keshii, there is always the exception. But parents can never be held unaccountable if their kids are minors.

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No one seems to have mentioned this yet, but I think it's possible that the parents don't expect the girls home for completely justifiable reasons - club activities and school meetings very often go on late into the night. Countless times I have seen the lights on and students working in the floors of our local high school as late as 10 at night. Then, after class, a lot of students go out and get dinner - since it is rather late - and catch the late trains home, and home can be as far as 2 1/2 hours away (I have one particular friend in my college who commutes for 4 1/2 hours every day).

Ultimately, it depends on the parents and the distance of the school from the home, of course, but I wouldn't be so quick to condemn the Japanese mothers. A lot of them are just trying their best (and may honestly be led to believe that their daughters are studying manically, as the case may be).

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Got parents?

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Well, the issue is bad parenting. Obviously the ones from functional and caring families wouldnt end up in a date cafe prostituting themselves. There seems to be no accountability for parents in Japan. People have kids as if they were a pet or a fashion. I am sure that is true to some degree the world over, but in more self policing cultures, the parents are held accountable, if not by the law, at least by the neighborhood or their peers.

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GW: while I applaud your putting williamsmith in place (as have others here), I think the rest of your post...

"...bottom line is this MOST parents just want their daughter raised & married quick as possible, get`em out the door, its the sons they put any parenting efforts into(although that often aint much either) & it boils down to one word most of the time STUDY."

...is a completely bogus and subjective comment on the society (shame, for someone having washed up so long ago). It's not correct at all. I too washed up here in the 90s and have met and dated plenty of females whose parents cared for them dearly. True, I have met those whose parents DIDN'T (seem to) care as well, but I don't think that was restricted to the child's being of the 'fairer sex' so much as it was simply bad parenting.

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Where exactly is this place?

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I didn't read that any were actually charged for prostitution. the middle paragraph says have become venues for prostitution by minors. But not that any were actually charged with offering their services. They have just met. I bet it happens a lot less than what people think. Not all the girls there could be guilty of trying to make a fast buck but maybe some do. that will be hard to prove. I'd suggest they tell the owner to restrict HS girls from going into them. ID should be required. The cafe is doing nothing wrong. What people do on their own time is when a potential crime happens. This reeks of scare tactic but hope it works with the HS girls.

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Why do so many Japanese men like high school girls???

Because most college girls have already been around the block with everyone about a million times and most OLs are either completely unappealing dorks or total party-by-night harlots.

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williamsmith

you must either be a new arrival or not in Jpn, the poster who refered to

birth machines

is taking the term that a twit J-politician used in the last year or so, anyone here in Jpn wud instantly know that, it was HUGE NEWS, so now you know too, yr welcome.

now for some old reminicing, back in the early 90s when I 1st washed up on these shores & started dating I remember asking the ladies what time they needed to be home so daddy wudnt hit the roof, I asked this twice & never again because both ladies laughed in fact howled with laughter wud be more like it. They said their fathers didnt give a damn when or if they came home at night, bottom line is this MOST parents just want their daughter raised & married quick as possible, get`em out the door, its the sons they put any parenting efforts into(although that often aint much either) & it boils down to one word most of the time STUDY.

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medievaltimes when I used to walk the alley ways of Hinodecho in Yokohama a few years ago, I would see many Chinese/Thai women dressed in the high-school girl uniform, they all ways seemed to have customers. I guess it is just something in the psyche of Japanese males that go for this look, maybe thinking that they can show their manlyness and worldliness to someone who doesn't know much about those things, and they can probably feel a bit better about themselves and feel like they are bigger than they really are before they go back to the life as a salryman or small time cog in the big game.

Me, I prefer the older ones, that have been around a bit, but know what the game is and how to carry themself.

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medievaltimes - it has to be the cute-looking skirts for their uniforms and the hiked up hems. This theme is stressed more often than anything else in J-Manga....

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Why do so many Japanese men like high school girls???

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On a second thought, my prayers are with teh families of the 31 damsels found at this place....

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And I've been told athat enjo kosai is dead.......?

According to this, it looks like that practice is still alive and doing very well.......

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Obviously not a "dating" cafe. Dating, sex, prostitution are all interchangable terms in modern times.

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williamsmith, yes, I do believe we would still have it. There are now, and will always be, people whose drive in life is not to have things, but to have control. They don't care that they can do it legally. They care about making money off of someone else doing the work. To think otherwise is naive, and ridiculous. On your next point, it may be the oldest profession. What's your point? Always happened doesn't make it right. People have always been killing each other, always happened, always will. Is it right? So far from you, all I hear is that you support, and see nothing wrong with young girls being paid by older men to get what they have. Where's your daughter? Like smith said, I doubt you would be happy if say, I paid your 14 y/o daughter if you had one for a couple hours of what comes naturally, would you?

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A big yawn to this whole story, just a new twist on Enjo Kosei. This is nothing new around the world although it may be more common in Japan. Personally I don't care what these girls or their patrons do it means nothing to me. That said it sure should mean something to their parents so the question is where were they? I know I would question my daughters new found wealth and figure out exactly where her bags, clthes, etc. were coming from.

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that is a social problem,everyone have should take responsibility for that.

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Nobody would really mind if it was a 17-year-old man who was meeting older women in this cafe now would they? Trying to be PC we say it is wrong, but actually we are only conditioned to feel that women should be controlled.

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The article only makes metion of the girls in the cafe, c'mon, there had to be men involved as well, why did they leave out what happened to the males?

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hey, hey...where is ikebukuro?

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Wow, the coverage of sexual topics has so much care and dedication put into it. Ikebukuro revenue comes almost entirely from it's night life. West exit , North Exit, near sunshine, near the parks. Anywhere there is a love hotel in Ikebukuro there is prostitution occurring all the time.

Just watch as girls go into love hotels by themselves.

But without this business Ikebukuro would be a ghost town.

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Nobody would really mind if it was a 17-year-old man who was meeting older women in this cafe now would they? Trying to be PC we say it is wrong, but actually we are only conditioned to feel that women should be controlled.

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No, but if "hooking" like at this cafe was socially acceptable then maybe we wouldn't have women being enslaved in the underworld of prostitution. By allowing men to say what a women can and cannot do we are damning them to mem's barbarity. I repeat, nobody would really mind if it was a 17-year-old man who was meeting older women in this cafe now would they? Trying to be PC we say it is wrong, but actually we are only conditioned to feel that women should be controlled.

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rtrhead: In fact, i'd bet you pretty much anything you'll never see someone on here say, "MY daughter is 13 and works at a De-ai cafe, and I' proud as hell of her! She rakes in $500 in only an hour!!"

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So....who dictates who are "little girls"? Obviously before puberty is out of the question, argumentatively post puberty is acceptable in some parts of the world, universally agreed over 18 is green lit. But I was doing it at 15, so were all my peers. Does society or biology mandate the age for sexual activity? And prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. How about slapping the cuffs on the parents for a change? Where is their accountability?

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rtrhead: agreed, and are probably the same pervs with no kids of their own who cannot possibly empathize with the worries/concerns of the average citizen.

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I am kind of tired of hearing the same old misogynistic rants here. Little girls don't need to be hooking. The ones sticking up for it are probably the same ones who would partake in the activity...

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Some point, not reported by JT, is that the cafe was in an area near a high school, and there is a ordinance in Tokyo, which does not allow such cafe near a high school.

This is why the owner was arrested.

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and hang out afterward

Heheheh. That's a euphemism! Heheheheheheh.

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Horrible male-dominating language "birth machines". Is that all women are to you? Why not just circumcize them?! The fact is that your male-centric society only hates this sort of thing because it isn't controlled by men, the young women are actually empowered instead of being beaten with coat hangers by their pimps. You go girls! Do as you want with your youth and beauty, it isn't owned by men. But men struggle and fight, make laws and religions to control you because it's you that they want the most.

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Zen, if you are smart, yes, you will check it. That's the problem with society. No one wants to take personal responsibility. They just want to be able to say, it wasn't my fault, so and so told me it was okay. By the way, which countries are those? I haven't seen one. Then again, taking responsibility for the things I do isn't real difficult for me.

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Most likely the Ikebukuro decided to take action because the place had become a hotbed of venereal disease. Besides the moral wrongness of girls this young prostituting themselves their ignorance of the risks to their health and the pressure the men put on them to have unprotected sex leads to all kind of nasty issues. Not least rendering these potential birth machines unable to do their patriotic duty and conceive at a later age.

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Never been to Ikeburo...I live in the country, and guess what? It's no different here than it is there! Less traffic here is all.

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BTW, in the case of those date-clubs the girls give their real ages as the know younger ages will get higher pay.

You really need to read up on the subject, even the codes they use to advertise themselves are published.

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rtrhead1.

Most coutnries got a law if you take a girl home from a club that has a "No under 18 limit" you are not responsible. The club is for allowing under age 18 kids in.

If a club sez no "Under 18's allowed" will YOU check the id of the girl you pick up, I guess NOT.

You need to get up to date.

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Zen, are you completely naive? If you take a girl home from a club that has a rule of no one under the 18 in the club, and you take a girl home that is underage, you get busted. Ignorance is not an excuse. The police will tell you the same thing as they are slapping the bracelets on you.

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why not spend time getting these girls back into school or taking them home" Have any of you ever walked around Ikebukuro late at night, at 1am or Shibuya and on week nights?

I was shocked at the amount of school girls hanging out and on a school night. My mom's rule was street lights on, time to be in!

Where the hell are these girls parents? Let me catch my daughter going to a place like this and I swear I will send her to live with my mother - great Cuban Wisdom when it comes to young teen age girls!!!!

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Instead of blaming the cafe owners, who are just providing a place to meet, like any other restaurant, why not spend time getting these girls back into school or taking them home and grilling their parents about responsible parenting?

Doesn't matter if the cafe owner runs the cafe for the purpose of dating, people are responsible for their own actions. And if these cafes didn't exist, people would simply meet at their local McDonalds or someplace else, taking it underground and making it harder to control.

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williamsmith,

no one forced those girls to go there. there is no control

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My point being is that the girls are NOT victims but are instigators by signing up to date-sites offering their services, etc. And thus should be prosecuted as such, rather than being treated as poor damsel, etc.

Don't get me wrong the date-sites are as wrong to let them sign-up same way night-clubs are wrong to let them into in to attract guys.

It all boils down to bucks get a ton of ton of young ladies and the guys will follow who will spend the bucks.

Nothing new.

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williamsmith...huh? I personally have no desire to control women. I think this is wrong because men who want to take advantage of J-girls desire to buy designer bags is sick. Let's be honest, we all glance at the girls on the trains with the hiked-up skirts. But, normal, well-adjusted men leave it at that. They don't prey on them via the animosity provided by the Internet.

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Yes, I agree. So in some way we are all brainwashed to be outraged, and to impose our cultural superiority upon others until we change our values once again.

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My point is is that they are fully aware. It is only considered wrong because men say so. Men say so because they want to control women.

Can't disagree. But those are the times. Take it back 100yrs(if that much) and it would be fine(sex with a 10yr old prostitute was common). Anywhere on the globe.

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Zen_builder My point is is that they are fully aware. It is only considered wrong because men say so. Men say so because they want to control women.

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"31 high school, college girls" ... seems to be a bigger place. Was it crowded?

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Society has already made prostitution fashionable in Japan. Women are brought up to only have respect if they are with a guy makes an "effort" for her, and taught to feel bad about themselves if they simply "give it away for nothing".

What we're seeing here is the extreme end result of society's mores. It's not that these girls need the money - it's because society chastises them into it anyway, and if they're going to do it at all -- may as well profit from it, right?

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24+ men dating 16 year old girls.

Yeah, some of them have been with hundreds of guys, apparently.

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24+ men dating 16 year old girls. makes me sick. welcome to Japanese culture.

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williamsmit.

An how would you explain 14yrs old proposing to strangers, grabbing their foreign teachers by privates, etc.

Those teens are FUllY aware and know what they are doing same as teens evreywhere.

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This is just another example of men trying to control and oppress women. In the case trying to control how their decide to use their own bodies. Don't give me this outragous "age" excuse! They are not children. Control, control, control. Male domination.

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Gee.. just when I thought it was ok to discuss Greek Philosophy in private this happens.

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Loophole in the law? The J cops should pull out all the stops on this one. The cops should have arrested the girls (not placed them in protective custody) with prostitution. They should also pursue to "schools" and "parents" of these children for negligence. Let's face it, these kids ain't been brought up right. They cops have also arrested all the "clients" and the staff of this operation, both of whom should have been charged with anything that would stick. If they couldn't get anything to stick, they should be "verballed" these people, which is something the J cops are very good at. Furthermore, the names of both the clients and staff should be both published in national newspapers (along with the names of their employers) and kept on file with the J cops as potential "kiddy-fiddlers."

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The guys who use these sites are obviously a problem, but so are these girls. Some of these girls who prostitute themselves do have serious problems (financial etc.) but many of them do it for other reasons. The latter girls really need to be examined very closely, what really makes them do it? What mindset makes you want to prostitute yourself for the sake of a LV or Hermes bag? It's not only the girls, but society that helps push them into it.

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good. throw the book at the little skanks and their Oyaji scum lovers

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vs = via

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Enjo kosai = girls offer services vs sites and guys take advantage.

Might be as small as having a cuppa together or more sexual, depends on both parties.

In short "enjo-kosai" is a term for teen-prostitution. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a a fool.

Does it matter if you pay for sex with a fancy meal, a LV bag, etc. You still paid for sex.

Doubt it, look up the meaning of prostitution.

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Finally girls collared!!

I do not understand this enjo kosai trend.

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Guys.

Will the oyaji get it if the teens don't offer? Who makes a 13/14yr old sign up to a dating site for sex?

Agreed, that the club-owners, etc should be penalized. Don't get me wrong not saying I approve of it.

But it is human nature if there is a demand some people will offer and others will take advantage.

Same way if you look at the west if a club has a rules of no one below 18 you cannot get prosecuted for taking a teen home you met there. Yet the clubs invite teens, etc to get male customers. And if you think otherwise.

Nuff said

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Why are all their faces covered? I thought the Japanese were big on shaming people. Let the rest of the country see the cheap tart school girls and slimy men.

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rtrhead1...Agree completely. If J-men did not have unhealthy fascination/obcession with underage girls in school uniforms, there would be no such thing as "blind date cafes". (Yet another great Japanese expression to hide a sickness, like "groping".) Sure, the gals knowingly put themselves in this position, but if there were no demand for their "company", the problem would be solved. I hope the police confiscate these girls mobile phones and make a personal contact, during business hours, with every J-guy who has their number on them. Since guilt/conscience doesn't effect these guys, maybe public shame will.

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Yeah Zen, and back in the day beating your wife was looked at as "keeping them in line". What's your point? My point is that society evolves and moves forward, not look back at what we used to be able to do.

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Zen Builder

A teen thinking that it's a bit of a lark dating an oyaji and getting paid for it relly doesn't know what they are doing in the bigger context. But the oyaji does. That's the difference. The owner's of the clubs should be penalised, but they probably pay the police off...

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How stupid are these teenagers

not as stupid as them cops.

I am surprised none of these teens tried to make a run for it.

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May it be sarcasm.

The teens are as much a part of the game as the adults, don't under estimate the teens because they are "minors". Yet, the teens face little punishment and they know it as they are "minors" and thus manipulated by adults in legal terms.

Time to crack down on teen crime and hold them responsible, IMHO.

This is where modern criminal justice and judeo/christian values got it wrong, IMHO. Back in the day a 14yr old got married and were considered an adult and tried as such.

What has changed = very little.

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Zen: Yup, speaking as a teenager living in southern US of A, this is still going on. Cases of teachers having sex with their students: Teachers fired/jailed, students get nothing but the humiliation(Well, depends on gender and hotness of teacher, I guess. If the student is a guy and the teacher is hot, the word "humiliation" is meant to be read as "pat on the back from peers. Possibly father, too.")

No matter the circumstances, it seems minors are always the "Victims". Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with a nice man I met on the internet yesterday. "Sugardaddy44", I'm on my way!

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I thought that any "club" or cafe is basically a blind date place. You pay to go in (in the case of a club) and you try to "get lucky" if you can.

Shouldn't the girls be hit with truancy (if the raids occured during school hours).

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How stupid are these teenagers

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That's right, arrest the girls, and let the old men go. Seems like the right thing to do. That's sarcasm, by the way. The teens definately need this on their permanent record. The oyaji's will get it on theirs, so should the girls.

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Teens the world over are more aware of their rights than any other group. That is why the pick pocket ringleaders "hire" teens in London, Barcelona etc etc.

I hope it is more than a threat to tell their parents and schools - it should be enforced and the law changed to put some kind of curfew on those caught until they are "of age". If that means a parent having to give up work to look after the child after school then that would have some sting in the tail...

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Only in Japan....

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Yet, many will still claim that the teens are misguided and don't know what they are doing. Who made those teens sign up for date-clubs, etc. Who held the "guns" to their head.

IMO, the teens who are willing just as much a problem as the oyaji's meeting them. But when it comes down the oyaji's get jail and the teens = nothing at worst a slap on the wrist.

Not even saying this is japan specific as I knew of the same on-goings in the west when I was a teen(many decades ago).

But the teens know 100% what they are doing but get off free.

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The cops have known about this place for a long time, they were the main customers.

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What are they going to charge them with? Going to a cafe? Or perhaps just the threat of telling their parents and school teachers is disincentive enough (though a legal grey area).

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However, police said that blind-date cafes have become venues for prostitution by minors.

What took them so long to realize this! This has been going on for ages now.

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