News On Japan

Osaka pickup artist arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting woman he got drunk for lesson

Mar 08 (soranews24.com) - The base concept behind the pick-up training industry is kind of strange On the one hand, customers are supposedly paying money to get lessons from experienced instructors in how to meet and seduce a romantic and/or sexual partner. But on the other hand, such extensive experience in picking up new people sort of implies that said instructors’ romantic connections aren’t of the quality that warrants repeat performances, and the techniques they’re teaching may not be so much putting your best foot forward, but relying on outright deception or other underhanded tricks.

For example, back in the fall of 2017, Osaka resident Yosuke Shoji, a now-37-year-old pick-up instructor employed by Tokyo-based Real Nampa Academy, went out for some in-the-field practice with one of his students, Koichi Yokoya (also now aged 37), an Osaka taxi driver. The two headed to an Osaka nightclub called Minami where they struck up a conversation with a pair of women, plying them with tequila and other high-alcohol content drinks.

While one of the women left on her own, Shoji and Yokoya took the other back to the teacher’s condominium, where, according to the Osaka Prefectural Police, the two men then sexually assaulted the woman while she was incapacitated from all the liquor she’d consumed at the men’s recommendation.

On March 4, the police formally arrested the men, who are charged with sexual assault on an incapacitated person. Shoji is believed to have been Real Nampa Academy’s top executive in Osaka, in light of the fact that he gave his pick-up lessons in his condo, which was referred to as Real Nampa Academy’s “Osaka House.”

While neither Shoji nor Yokoya have yet publicly entered a plea, Shoji’s arrest has sparked a larger-scale investigation of Real Nampa Academy’s operations in Osaka, and considering that its president and a number of employees were arrested on similar sexual assault charges in Tokyo last September, it’s likely this marks the end of the organization.

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