And I thought Hello Kitty pocket rocket vibrators were a little odd.

Imagine an entire Hello Kitty S&M-themed hotel room, complete with bondage restraints built into the bed, ball-gagged Kitty-Chan, a vending machine full of beer and sex toys… and a karaoke machine, of course.

That would be Room 501 of the Hotel Adonis, one of the increasing numbers of Love Hotels in Osaka, Japan, a place where anyone can go and discreetly fulfil their fantasies for about $70 a night.

Want to play perverted old boob-grabbing man in a crowded subway car? Why, simply hire some professional “schoolgirls,” select the Japanese subway car room on the hotel lobby’s video screen, swipe your credit card, and you’re good to go. No questions asked.

Love hotels aren’t just about catering to your perverted fantasies. They’re often the only option when your postage stamp of an apartment, often shared with extended family, doesn’t exactly offer privacy for you and your sweetie. Or say you’re two girls out on the town, and oops, you miss the midnight train — the last until 5 a.m. Guess the two of you will have to stay in a love hotel.

“In a country where homosexuality isn’t tolerated, the love hotel can provide a haven for lesbian couples,” says Midori, a sex educator, author and lecturer based in San Francisco (PlanetMidori.com) who was in Toronto recounting her experiences on a recent trip through Osaka’s sexual underbelly. “You just conveniently miss the last train and you have the perfect excuse.”

Midori, who grew up in Osaka with her Japanese mother and grandmother (her father was American), says this kind of discretion is reflective of the Japanese relationship to sex. She compares it to North America, where she believes our relationship with sex is all about shame. “In Judeo-Christian tradition, you are raised to believe there is a higher power watching your every move,” she explains. “So even if a boy is masturbating alone in the woods, he feels guilty.”

By contrast, in Japan, the focus is much more on appearances, and any guilt is much more likely to be about an inability to fulfil the obligations associated with your social position. As long as you maintain appearances as a successful male CEO with a wife and kids, then what goes on behind closed doors, as long as no one sees, is irrelevant. “So if a Japanese boy is in the woods jerking off to tentacle porn it simply equals orgasm,” laughs Midori.

Or if that same boy is on the subway looking at anime of cutesy, wide-eyed girls having sex with cartoon lobsters and someone catches a glimpse over his shoulder, it’s the person who has entered this boy’s private space who feels the shame, not the boy, she explains.

And yes, cutesy, animated, pubescent and anthropomorphic are the fetishized ideal in Japan. Which would explain “animal ear day” at one of the common “maid cafes.” Young-looking girls dressed as “maids” don, well, animal ears to greet young Japanese men as “lord masters” and serve them bubble tea.

Before you pull that face, Midori explains how, just as the busty, blond North American ideal came from boys raised on Playboy centrefolds and porn, young Japanese boys often grow up at home, with a highly regimented studying routine, getting their only kicks from comic books full of young, wide-eyed cartoon girls on the cusp of discovering their sexuality. The whole lord-master thing could be likened to a guy wanting to believe all women worship his cock, as depicted in so much traditional porn. Neither fantasy reflects reality.

And the whole animal thing? “In traditional Japanese fables,” explains Midori, “anthropomorphic figures were commonly used to represent one’s ego or sexual psyche.” Clearly, when it comes to sex, it’s to each culture its own.

For example, you’re probably not going to find a rack of pre-worn underwear in any North American porn shop. However, sure enough, in a city-block-sized porn shop, Midori found just that. Seems housewives and schoolgirls can make some side coin hanging out in their underwear, reading magazines, maybe riding an exercise bike to work up a bit of a sweat. The entrepreneurial types who hire them take pics and sell the funky gitch and the pics to porn stores. Everyone wins.

Or if you don’t find what you want in the porn shop, you can certainly find your fantasy fulfilment in an 11-storey sex-services building, where you can hire someone to play out anything from your favourite sexual harassment fantasy to a secretary or female boss as hooker scenario.

And then, afterwards, you can relax at the local public bathhouse where everyone is butt naked together. And where, of course, you cover your privates with a towel before getting in the bath.