The line that made me open a spreadsheet is buried at the bottom of the shop's own concept copy, after two paragraphs of exclamation marks and a bowing emoticon:
※全て本指名の場合は適用となりませんので宜しくお願い致します — none of the above applies to repeat nomination, thank you for your understanding.
That's it. That's the whole shop, in one apologetic footnote.
One number, which is rarer than it sounds
Start with the thing Maxim Tokyo (マキシム東京) gets genuinely right, because it's the reason I'd send anyone here at all.
Yoshiwara soaplands conventionally quote you two prices. There's the nyūyokuryō (入浴料) — the bathing fee, the part that's legally a bathhouse admission, paid at the front desk. Then there's the sābisuryō (サービス料), settled separately with the woman in the room. Both are real, both are mandatory, and the number on the front of the ad is almost always the smaller one. Every first-timer in this district has had the moment where a ¥14,000 shop turns into a ¥34,000 shop somewhere between the counter and the elevator.
Maxim doesn't do that. Every price it publishes carries the tag 総額 — total — and spells it out: 税金、指名料全て込みの料金となります. Tax in. Nomination fee in. One number, and that number is what leaves your wallet.
I want to be precise about what that's worth. It isn't a discount. It's the same money either way. What it buys you is the ability to plan, and in Yoshiwara that's not nothing.
The menu is two lines long
| Course | Board price |
|---|---|
| 100 min | ¥30,000 |
| 130 min | ¥40,000 |
That's the entire menu. Two courses. The shop bills itself as 吉原最高コスパ中級店 — the best value-for-money mid-tier shop in Yoshiwara — and pitches it with 「こんな価格でこんなことまで……」, roughly at this price, we'll even do this…, trailing off into ellipsis because the alternative is writing something the platform won't host.
Now the three discounts, all of them running since 6 January 2026 with an expiry listed as 無期限 — indefinite. Seven and a half months and counting. These are not campaigns. This is the price list; the table above is the sticker on the windshield.
| Discount | Who it's for | 100 min | 130 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| フリー割 (free select) | You pick from the photo book at the shop | ¥27,000 | ¥37,000 |
| 新人割 (newcomer) | First nomination of a woman under 2 months in | ¥27,000 | ¥37,000 |
| ネット指名割 (net nomination) | First nomination of anyone else, booked online | ¥28,000 | ¥38,000 |
| (none) | 本指名 — you've had her before | ¥30,000 | ¥40,000 |
Three doors in. All three are cheaper than the board. And there is exactly one way to pay the board price: come back to someone.
What loyalty costs, in yen
Run it as a two-visit sequence, which is how anyone actually uses a shop like this.
| Visit | 100 min | vs. the best rate |
|---|---|---|
| Visit 1, her name booked online | ¥28,000 | — |
| Visit 2, same woman | ¥30,000 | +¥2,000 |
| Visit 2, a different woman, booked online | ¥28,000 | ±¥0 |
| Visit 2, free select, whoever's on the bench | ¥27,000 | −¥1,000 |
So the shop has priced going back to the woman you liked at ¥2,000 more than trying someone new, and ¥3,000 more than letting the counter decide. On the 130-minute course the gap is ¥3,000 either way. Call it a 7 to 10 percent surcharge for knowing what you want.
Here's the part that makes it interesting rather than just annoying: that surcharge is aimed squarely at this shop's best customers, and I can show it from the roster.
26 women, and one of them is a third of the shop
The board says 26. Not 60, not 90 — the girl list, filters and all, reads 26人中1-26人目. Ages run 21 to 25, a tighter and younger band than most of Yoshiwara, which tells you the casting brief without anyone having to write it down.
The filter counts, pulled the same afternoon:
| Filter | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 写メ日記アリ (keeps a photo diary) | 26 | 100% |
| 口コミアリ (has customer reviews) | 24 | 92% |
| 動画アリ (has video) | 1 | 4% |
| 新人 (newcomer, ≤2 months) | 0 | 0% |
| Waiting now or on today's board | 5 | 19% |
Two of those numbers stopped me.
新人: 0. The newcomer discount — one of the two best rates in the house, ¥27,000 with the right to pick your own woman in advance — currently applies to nobody. Zero eligible names. It has been on the front page since January and today it is worth exactly ¥0 to you. Not a bait-and-switch; the coupon is real and presumably fires the moment somebody joins. But if you walked in planning to use it, plan again.
It also says something the shop would never brag about directly: nobody new has started here in over two months. In a district with the churn Yoshiwara has, a 26-woman roster that hasn't turned over is a quiet compliment to the management.
And every single woman keeps a photo diary. Twenty-six out of twenty-six. That isn't a coincidence, it's a house rule — the shameru nikki is the main way anyone reads a woman before booking her, and 100% compliance on a roster this size means somebody upstairs enforces it. For a shop whose cheapest entry is picking from photographs, that matters: the photo book is not the only information you get.
Now the review board.
| Reviews | |
|---|---|
| Shop total, all time | 1,015 |
| Sum across the 26 current profiles | 814 |
| Difference (women no longer listed) | ~201 |
And within those 814:
| Woman | Reviews | Share of current roster |
|---|---|---|
| ちあき (23) | 272 | 33% |
| りお (21) | 120 | 15% |
| みちる (21) | 110 | 14% |
| 愛 (23) | 57 | 7% |
| そら (23) | 44 | 5% |
| Top four combined | 559 | 69% |
| Remaining 22 women | 255 | 31% |
One woman is a third of the shop's written record. Four women are more than two-thirds of it. The bottom half of the roster — りん, あかり, まい, もか, ゆりこ, のぞみ, しろ — sits on one, two, three reviews apiece, and two women have none at all.
Chiaki is also the shop's July 本指名 ranking No. 1 — the repeat-nomination chart — and she's the name in the headline blurb at the top of the page. So the single most in-demand woman in the building, whose 272 reviews are overwhelmingly people coming back for her specifically, is attached to the one transaction type on which no discount in the house is valid.
The 130-minute course is the worst line on the board
Small piece of arithmetic that falls out of the flat-yen discount structure, and it points the same way every time.
| Course | Best rate | Per minute |
|---|---|---|
| 100 min | ¥27,000 | ¥270 |
| 130 min | ¥37,000 | ¥285 |
| The extra 30 minutes on its own | ¥10,000 | ¥333 |
That marginal half hour costs ¥333 a minute — 23% more than the block it's extending. And it's ¥10,000 flat whether you're discounted or not, because all three coupons take a fixed ¥2,000 or ¥3,000 off オールコース, not a percentage.
Which means the discount is worth more on the short course than the long one:
| Course | Discount | As % of board |
|---|---|---|
| 100 min | ¥3,000 off ¥30,000 | 10.0% |
| 130 min | ¥3,000 off ¥40,000 | 7.5% |
Buy the 100. If the extra half hour is worth ¥10,000 to you, buy the 130 and enjoy it — I'm not going to pretend time isn't worth money. Just know you're paying a premium rate for the back end of it, not a bulk rate.
Free select is ¥1,000 cheaper than choosing. Think about that.
The two live discounts differ by exactly ¥1,000, and what that thousand yen buys is the right to name her in advance, from home.
- フリー割, ¥27,000 — you choose at the shop, from the photo book. The fine print adds that free-select customers can still reserve a specific arrival time and course, so this isn't a walk-in-and-wait penalty. You're reserving a room, not a person.
- ネット指名割, ¥28,000 — you book online, name her, first time with her only. Write 「ネット割希望」 in the request field or it doesn't apply.
For ¥1,000, with 26 photo diaries and 1,015 reviews sitting right there to read first, naming her in advance is the obvious buy — unless it's a weekday afternoon and you genuinely don't mind. Five women showing as available when I pulled the page, and a weekly board carrying 82 shift entries across seven days — call it a dozen women a day — means free select on a quiet afternoon is choosing from maybe four or five faces, not twenty-six. That's the real cost of the cheaper door, and it isn't denominated in yen.
The practical stuff
Hours are 9:00–24:00, the standard Yoshiwara frame, but the schedule board tells a different story: the earliest shift starts at 10:00 and the latest runs to 23:30. Nobody is working the 9am hour. Don't build a plan around it.
Getting there. The address is Senzoku 4-25-11, Taito-ku — the heart of the old district, north of Asakusa. Access is listed via JR at Ueno, Nippori or Minami-Senju, and by subway at Minowa, Iriya, Asakusa or Tawaramachi across the Hibiya, Ginza and Tsukuba Express lines. None of those is at the shop; Yoshiwara has no station of its own and never has. Figure a walk or a short cab from Minowa or Iriya. Parking is available, which in Taito-ku is a genuine amenity.
Say 「ヘブン見た」 — Heaven mita, I saw it on Heaven — when you call. The shop asks for it in three separate places on its own page.
On language and who this is for: the site is Japanese-only, there's no English page, and the shop states no policy either way about non-Japanese customers. That's not a green light and it isn't a red one — it's an unanswered question, and the answer is a phone call, not a gamble at the door. Sister shop is Buckingham (バッキンガム), filed under Yoshiwara's gekiyasu — deep-discount — bracket, if the mid-tier number sits above where you're shopping.
About the shop
Soapland, standard class, Yoshiwara. Senzoku 4-25-11, Taito-ku, Tokyo. Tel 03-3871-1048. Hours 9:00–24:00. Access via JR Ueno / Nippori / Minami-Senju, or subway Minowa / Iriya / Asakusa / Tawaramachi (Hibiya, Ginza, Tsukuba Express lines). Parking available. Official site max-bk.com. Two courses: 100 min ¥30,000 and 130 min ¥40,000, both quoted as sōgaku — all-inclusive of tax and nomination fee. Three standing discounts, all valid from 6 January 2026 with no expiry: free select ¥27,000 / ¥37,000, newcomer first-nomination ¥27,000 / ¥37,000, online first-nomination ¥28,000 / ¥38,000. All three are void on repeat nomination (本指名). The newcomer discount currently has zero eligible women. Roster of 26, ages 21–25; 26 keep photo diaries, 24 carry reviews, 1 has video. Shop review board: 1,015 posts. Weekly schedule shows 82 shift entries over seven days. Sister shop Buckingham (budget soap, Yoshiwara). No under-18s admitted and none employed. Mention 「ヘブン見た」 when you call; for the online discount, write 「ネット割希望」 in the request field.
The verdict
| Item | Rating |
|---|---|
| Price transparency (one all-in number, tax and nomination included) | ★★★★★ |
| Information depth (100% photo diaries, 1,015 reviews, 92% of roster covered) | ★★★★★ |
| Best available rate — ¥27,000 for 100 minutes, everything in | ★★★★☆ |
| Menu simplicity (two courses, no option ladder) | ★★★★☆ |
| Roster stability (no turnover in 2+ months) | ★★★★☆ |
| Depth of choice on a given day (~12 of 26 working) | ★★★☆☆ |
| Value of the 130-minute course (¥333/min on the extension) | ★★☆☆☆ |
| How it treats a returning customer | ★★☆☆☆ |
| Overall | ★★★★☆ |
Four stars, and the fourth one is for honesty.
Maxim Tokyo does the single most useful thing a Yoshiwara soap can do, which is tell you the whole price before you're standing in the lobby holding your shoes. ¥27,000 for 100 minutes with tax, nomination and room folded in is a real mid-tier number in a district where the advertised figure is usually a down payment. The roster is small, young, stable, and — every woman writing a diary, 92% carrying reviews — more legible before you book than almost anything at this price.
The stars I'm holding back are for a discount structure that runs precisely backwards from how the shop actually earns. A house where one woman holds 272 of 814 reviews is a house built on people coming back, and coming back is the only thing here that costs extra. It's rational. It's also printed in the smallest type on the page, under a bow.
Read the footnote before the banner. At this shop it's the footnote that has the price in it.