Read: 90-Day Geisha

Picked this up at Changi Int'l Airport, Singapore just before my flight home. I've read a quarter of the book so far and it really is an interesting read. Author and former Canadian model Chelsea Haywood provides an insight into her personal experience as a "modern-day Geisha" being a hostess in Tokyo, Japan. It may be a surprise to those thinking of Japanese culture as traditional and modest because Tokyo-lites have not only kept the art of hostessing alive but they've upped-the-ante by giving any big spender the chance to buy a hostess experience with foreign, and almost always Caucasian hostesses. All of this smack in the centre of bustling Tokyo hotspot: Roppongi. 

Ah, how it pays to be beautiful.

"90-Day Geisha: My Time As A Tokyo Hostess" available on Amazon.com for US$10 here.

A little bit about the author: 

From an early age Chelsea found herself to be a voracious reader and a bit of a smartie pants who loved to read the dictionary. She graduated early. For a while she modelled in a profoundly un-famous, gypsy-like way, wearing Prada and Lanvin for wages and dressing up in that red, maiko-inspired creation by John Galliano for Dior while chumming with Chase Aston for Elle. While fashion was fun, her favorite thing about it was the catering, and eating all the food.
Needless to say, she needed a more appropriate career and so around the casting calls, the jobs and the eighteen kilometres that she’d run five days a week to keep that kind of figure, she began to dream up a creative and entrepreneurial endeavour of her own. It was while eating a (delicious!) slice of New York cheesecake in a food loft high above Sukhumvit in Bangkok that she was struck with the idea to write 90 Day Geisha, and two days later Chelsea was en route to Tokyo.