It was very sad in many respects. Many of the customers are bar hostesses who, after an evening of flattering and drinking with male customers, want to be flattered and pampered themselves.

Both sides do way too much drinking and smoking than is good for their health.

Was the movie you watched called "The Great Happiness Space"? If so, it's about the most beautifully edited documentary I've ever seen! By the end, you feel like you've really been squinting through a peephole into a host's life, and the director did it all without narration, by cutting together interviews with actual hosts and their customers. It's not the whole story of what it's like to be a host, and some things that are usual for the main guy in the film aren't typical for most hosts, but it's an amazingly accurate depiction of a world that absolutely doesn't exist in the West.

I've lived in Japan, and the whole hostess club/host club phenomenon always astounded me.

On Edit: I found your books on Amazon. I'm going to download them to my Kindle app.

It seemed that way to me, also...and yes, author said in her blog that much of the customer base were hostesses, as you said. She also said that many of these hosts were from poor areas and couldn't possibly make this sort of money otherwise. Indeed, there reportedly is excess drinking at enormous cost. Seems the workers drink it up as soon as they make it and, indeed, their pay is based on how much everyone pays to drink!

I think the cosmetics amazed me as well. In Patrick's blog, she even shows ads for the glue these workers use on their eyelids, to create the fold, which they consider the height of beauty.

The author obviously knows Japan.