What’s the best way to achieve cross-cultural communication? Here’s a hint—it’s not an international tea party.

As the Shukan Post reports and the Daily Mainichi passes on, South Korean men are conducting their own international exchange programs in Tokyo soapland establishments. A soapland is where young women are paid a fee to play rub-a-dub-dub, two in a tub. Years ago, they used to be called toruko, after Turkish baths, until the Turkish ambassador complained. Then, as if by magic, they became “soaplands” overnight throughout the country.

Despite the friction in Japanese-Korean relations, these guys seem intent on creating a different kind of friction when in Japan. The influx of Korean customers into Tokyo’s soaplands is attributed two factors—the waiving of visa requirements for Koreans in March, and the crackdown on the sex industry in South Korea. Reportedly, the men either visit on a break from an ordinary business trip, or they come specifically to get soaped.

The article also reports that the Internet in Korea provides a lot of useful information for people wanting to patronize these establishments, including detailed information on pricing and services.

They say the grass is always greener in the other fellow’s back yard, but I wonder—authorities may be getting tough with the South Korean sex industry, but it was reportedly such a thriving trade that it’s hard to believe they put that much of a crimp in the business. Then again, when Japanese men have talked to me about patronizing establishments of this sort, they never mention the ones at home. One doctor, for example, was rapturous when he told me about his visit to Taiwan. Perhaps it’s not that the grass is greener elsewhere–maybe it’s that the suds are soapier.

In the end, however, I have to feel sorry for the Korean visitors. Here’s what one of the female workers had to say.

“I suppose the biggest impression left on me is that all the time we’re going at it, they keep asking me in broken Japanese, ‘Am I better than a Japanese guy or what?’”

The poor guys can’t even forget themselves and enjoy the pleasure that they paid for. They have to prove themselves—to sex workers—and worry about how they measure up against the Japanese. Now I see what the foreign bloggers in Korea mean when they talk about the Korean inferiority complex, especially when it comes to Japan and the U.S.

I wonder if they think the girls actually give them an honest answer.