Apparently a number of years back this schoolgirl panty thing was big among Tokyo`s salarymen. There were gallons of burusera shops in the dodgier areas like Kabuki-cho and Shibuya and Nippori, and panty vending machines on every corner, like little shrines, where you tithe your 500 yen offering, and out pops the little salty eucharist.
Until scandal hit.
Now you wouldnt have thought production costs would be too high in this industry, considering that you`re buying and selling shitty and sweaty underpants, things which in any normal country have essentially negative value.
Just send your purchasing team down to an interschool athletics gymkharna with a suitcase full of Hello Kitty and Winnie the Pooh plush keyrings, and trade them off for panties. Were I the local yakuza boss that’s what I’d have done.
But no. Always looking for ways to cut costs. Which lead to the downfall of the entire pre-loved-panty industry.
Now keep in mind, that I’m sure that you and I may find all this amusing.
And the salarymen were always more than happy to keep a spare pair in their bottom drawers for those little panty-emergencies.
The yakuza were getting fat off the profits.
And the schoolgirls were able to keep themselves in floppy socks, and Disney and Louis Vuitton paraphernalia.
But you can’t please everybody all the time.
It was the wives you see. The wives just weren’t impressed. And they got together with the church groups, in order to condemn the trade.
And it wasn`t long before they came upon a soiled panty factory.
To be honest, when I first heard about a soiled panty factory, it conjured up rather arousing images of a huge open hall filled with schoolgirls wearing nothing but cotton knickers and bras, doing aerobics, starjumps, running on treadmills, and wrestling.
But the reality was different.
The reality was closer to an old woman wearing a white apron and surgical mask with an easel, and a palette. But rather than paints on the palette of course, there was, well, you know, faeces, piss and brine. And of course a bit of blood for the premium panties.
And the clincher?
Not all of the blood shit and piss was even human.
Not all of the blood shit and piss was even human.
Damn.
Think of it. To discover that the panties you`d been wearing on your head while you flogged off in the lounge when no-one was home, that you thought had been baptised with the healing innocent juices of a virgin schoolgirl had just in fact been crassly besmirched with a bit of dogshit.
It`d be enough to make me, well, perhaps not engage in such a depraved act!!
Once word got out, those vending machines became untouchable.
Something had to be done. So the yakuza bosses got a think tank together, and came up with a new concept: nama-sera.
This word that has been haunting me.
I haven`t actually ever SEEN a namasera store, but the idea is thus: you go inside, and there`s a heap of photos of cute chicks on the wall. You indicate the one you want, and step into a back room. You slide open the panel, and there`s the girl, the actual girl, in a room, working on the Stairmaster, or whatever, doing sit-ups. She comes over to the window, removes her panties and hands them to you through the panel. You pay a little extra, but you can be absolutely assured, they`re, well, freshly squeezed.
But as for the vending machines themselves, well their relevance to Japanese society has been tested and found wanting. They are nothing now but painful reminders, like scars, or the line of pale skin on the ring finger of a divorcee. Painful reminders of a time, when a subculture of over-stressed men, spent their evenings beating off to the smell of dogshit. These machines have been removed, replaced, discarded. They are relics of an innocent era, one of trust. Now they are lost to us, they are artifacts. All that remains is that sweet fragrance of a story, of a memory, of myth.
THE END
honest dave