A few months ago, rummaging through a pile of old magazines in a second-hand bookstore, I found a magazine called Onna no Hyakka (loosely translatable as "Womanology", "Chickopedia", etc.) published in 1962. The cover had a picture of une femme en déshabillé and the headline "女の性感をゲキする涼しい愛撫　真夏に役立つ２４時間の性生活" ("Cool caresses to drive women wild -- A 24-hour sex life for mid-summer.") I immediately resolved to blog it instead of making yet another "Japan is too goddamn hot" post when summer came around. Onna no Hyakka's time has come.

The main article begins with the tale of K子 (K-ko) and her fiance S. Like a good young couple, they put their summer bonus in the bank. But, as K-ko explains...

賭けマージャンで千五百円ばかりイタダイちゃったんでそれに千円ばかり足して買い物しちゃった。これがすごくゴキ（ゴキゲンのこと）なんで…

We won 1,500 yen playing mah jong, so we added another thousand and went shopping. Totally groovesville!*

And what did they buy? An icebox! Yes, they won't be able to afford a refrigerator for a couple of years, but S feels that an icebox is much better for a young couple like them anyhow -- why, K-ko comes over just about every night now! And that's when he turns on the charm.

He strips down to his singlet and suggests that she get comfortable in just her chemise. He mixes her a gin fizz (entertainingly katakanafied ジンフィーズ), which she praises. She puts the glass to her forehead and says "Ooh, that feels good." He says "I know something that'll feel even better." He fills a bag with ice and bashes it seductively against the wall a few times. He gives her an ice-pack massage. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, he's invented physiotherapy.

But it's not just engaged couples who can enjoy summer, the writer assures us, before inviting "Yotchan", a doorman at Cabaret S_____ in Shinjuku, to take center stage and explain his "cheap hotel + perfume tactic" (安ホテルで香水戦術). Amateurs, you see, will invite their lady friends to expensive hotels with air conditioning, but Yotchan knows what the ladies really want: to be taken to a cheap hotel with a pedestal fan in the room and then sprayed all over with even cheaper perfume.

The scent combines with the alcohol content to set the mood, and nature does the rest. This, Yotchan assures us, is a pleasure that one simply cannot savor in a room with actual air conditioning. Also, those places are expensive, so he only goes if he doesn't have to put up the geld (ゲル). Pure class.

Then there's Aihara, who recommends the old frozen-lemon massage trick -- Aihara is allegedly an intern at S______ Medical School, but this doesn't stop him from claiming that he personally has witnessed breast augmentation caused solely by the application of lemon -- and Yoshii, a bartender who smiles meaningfully as he explains his "siphon caress" technique (it involves empty glasses)... but it is late. Stay tuned next time for the best cool places to take your girlfriend when you run out of lemons at home.

* Yeah, yeah, you try translating goki after midnight.