Increased competition amid the economic doldrums means the sex clubs are resorting to wilder antics, younger women and cheaper prices.

Phone up that call-girl flier in the mailbox, and you're likely to get a housewife working part-time for extra cash. An estimated 5 percent of Tokyo's middle-school and high-school girls have turned tricks in order to buy the designer handbags and latest fashions that are harder to afford but still viewed as trendy necessities.

The tougher competition has upped the pressure on the staid world of Yoshiwara, where prices are buoyed by the overhead of equipping each room with a bed, bath, television, air conditioner and perhaps even a sauna or karaoke machine.

At the cramped pink salons jammed into back-street tenement buildings, customers are often separated by no more than a curtain....

Train stations are surrounded by "pink salons" promising sexual massage and "telephone clubs" where men line up liaisons with teenage girls.

Convenience stores stock brothel guides as thick as telephone books. Household mailboxes are stuffed with unsolicited "delivery health" ads emblazoned with color photos of lusty schoolgirls tearing off their plaid skirts....

Soaplands duck the law by billing themselves as assisted bath houses. The tacit understanding is whatever else happens inside is a matter between consenting adults.