If you thought Tokyo had reached the pinnacle of its creative prowess with the introduction of cat café, you'd be wrong. So very wrong.

The city's Love Joule bar -- where artwork has been replaced by rows of curious-looking rainbow-coloured vibrators -- is being touted as a "self-pleasuring" bar, a "masturbation" bar or a "girls-only" bar.


The latter is the most accurate -- though I'm certain the women flocking to the Shibuya district establishment, which opened in July, would prefer to be referred to as women. Because, despite what the headlines announcing the opening would have you believe, it's just a place women go to talk. "Once they take a seat, customers are able to experience a pleasant place in which they can openly discuss masturbation," says owner Megumi Nakagawa. "Since most people view female masturbation as something of a mystery or taboo, it is not a usual topic at typical bars."

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Designating a specific location to talk about the art of self-love might seem overkill, but what's considered passable at a London bar could be perceived as insulting or even punishable in another city. As one Vietnamese fan succinctly puts it, "Japan girl can have more fun at here, in my country that is forbidden. Yes, Japanese are so great." For a country that was ranked 101st in the World Economic Forum's gender discrimination report, seeing women reclaim the conversation in this way is impressive. And if they have to setup their own bar to do it, why not?

Attitudes in Japan towards the subject have been rapidly changing, according to Dr Ikuko Ikeshita of Ikeshita Ladies'


Clinic, who says, "Traditionally, whenever a female patient would come in with a problem like having a sex toy get stuck, hospital staff would look at them coldly... Now people realise that it's just something that happens."

Not wanting to wait around, Love Joule is proactively pushing this change forward. "Customers are happy that they have a place they can start talking about masturbation from the moment they sit down," says Nakagawa. "Many people still see female masturbation as a 'Pandora's Box'. It's not something you can easily talk about at regular bars."

At Love Joule women can smash that box and extoll their complaints, anecdotes and fetishes without fear (or at least a lot fewer) of lecherous eavesdropping.

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The city of extremes might appear to be pulling out the big guns to shock, but it's actually a sensible premise. As someone who attended an all-girls school, where the word masturbation was bizarrely only used combatively as an insult or accusation directed at someone usually too mortified to respond, stimulating conversation in a very public sphere around what is pretty much a universal norm in the private sphere can only be a good thing.

Especially when popular culture -- arguably a teenage girls' handbook to sex -- often chooses to ignore the issue.

In film and TV there are plenty of awkward walk-in-on-the-teenage-boy scenes, sure, but the female equivalents are few and far between. The most recent to come to mind being Natalie Portman in Black Swan -- midway through her demise from doe-eyed dancer to tortured, and possibly schizophrenic, daughter to a disappointed mother. Naturally. The 2011 film Hysteria explained this tradition somewhat, with its depiction of Joseph Mortimer Granville inventing the vibrator as a practical solution to the tiresome practice of manually subduing hysterical, depressed, insomniac female patients by inducing orgasm.

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Those same schoolgirls that once shied away, and even those who threw out the insults, now discuss the subject openly -- usually after a few drinks, sometimes in inadvertently booming tones and always with cackles of glee at a shared truth. This progression from mortification to provocatively loud restaurant companion is not mirrored the world over, however, and Love Joule plans to bridge that gap.

My one concern: the staff are already proudly claiming that Japan's famous porn stars are regulars -- that's probably not a selling point to anyone who feels they need to go to a specially designated location to speak openly about it, and could intimidate and alienate them further.

Regardless, the bar's Facebook page has played host to overwhelming positive response, the world over. From Italy to Vietnam, the reactions are the same: "I want one".