Tsutaya in Shibuya has had Ladies' Day once a week (where girls can rent movies with a discount) for quite a while now, and now they also have Men's Day, which is a similar offer, but with one strange and significant restriction: it only applies to adult videos. And they openly advertise it throughout the shop. Now, we all know what kind of content was the driving force behind rental video (and DVD and the Internet) and how the classical video shop is structured, but Tsutaya Culture Convenience Club is a big family-friendly chain store with large, modern stores in prime locations and rental video is only part of their business (Tsutaya also sells DVD, audio CD, games, movie tickets, books). In other countries they would probably not have an adult video section at all. But Japan is a very macho island with women's rights not as developed as in Western countries. One just has to look at the comics and magazines and even news papers salarymen read on commuter trains. It does not seem to bother anyone that they are enjoying to learn about very weird things happening to fictitious school girls, all the while sitting just an arm's length away from a real one. Tsutaya's Men's Day is just a natural result of this culture.

Oh, and just for the record, in preparation of the farewell session for our TV (more on that later) I got Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Undercover Brother, and Very Bad Things, none of which qualifies for the discount.