Shibaura!’ drones the PA system, sounding bored out of its mind as the train trundles into Tokyo’s most humdrum office district. The ‘salarymen’ in their ill-fitted suits, who have been hogging all the train seats up until this moment, start showing the first signs of life. In a minute or so, this train will belch out a hundred or so humdrum men on their way to a hundred or so humdrum jobs. That part of it is no surprise.

It’s the women who throw me off. Here I am, the only Indian employee at a Japanese company, expecting to see Japan dressed for success. But, as I head toward the exit doors, a virtual thicket of shapely Japanese legs does the same. Squeezed into leather pants, mini-skirts, fishnet stockings and thigh-high boots, the sexiest workforce on the planet is off to work. I consider saying: Ladies, you do know the secretary on the cover of Playboy doesn’t exactly spend her day typing memos, don’t you?

There are giant mirrors in all the stations where my female co-passengers give themselves a final once-over before tottering off in stilettos to spend the day making tea or photocopies. That’s right: in Japan, you don’t have to be a secretary to do these things; it’s enough to be a woman.

Take as prime specimen, Kaho-san, all of 22, who can trump anyone at being kawai – or Japanese-style cute. Now, if I had a female employee who dressed like a dominatrix and giggled like a schoolgirl, I’d pack her off to the funny farm faster than she could say sayonara. Kaho-san does this – and lands herself a job. She hobbles into the office in high heels, then slips her battered feet into slippers and fetches our male boss a ‘cuppa’ green tea.Kaho-san epitomises service with a smile, but the operative word here isn’t ‘service’, it’s ‘smile’. The smile in question reveals two fang-like canines – dental stalactites that Kaho-san has had surgically implanted because they’re a certified come-hither for Japanese men. (From my standpoint, though, the only Japanese man making a beeline for Kaho-san should be her dentist.)

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