News TAG 10th Anniversary - Thank you!

TAG Manager

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Tokyo Adult Guide - Celebrates 10 Years of Operations

It is a hard thing to swallow, no pun intended, that TAG has been running for the past 10 years. The last few years have moved swiftly, and the 10-year mark really surprised us. Earlier this week, I realized that we should probably release something for this monumental achievement, so this is what I have come up with. It is far from perfect, which is the intent. This is something real that has not been edited 100 times over and sent for review and final approval, it’s just a raw statement to say thank you for your patronage.

TAG opened its [virtual] doors on September 1, 2009. But what many people do not know is that we had been involved in the Japan adult scene for a few years leading up to what was to become TAG as you know it today. There was no website, but the two of us who became embedded in the scene in a completely accidental manner, began networking and communicating with many of the ladies who made up the Japan adult scene (not JAV) including some who had branched off to work for foreign agencies that catered to foreigners.

At that time, many or most Japanese agencies were still off-limits to foreigners. There were some agencies that would deal with foreigners who could speak decent Japanese and could understand the rules. Still, many of the agencies kept the 'Japanese Only' rule for years to come. Only recently, in the past few years, more of the traditional agencies began opening their services to non-Japanese. We assume that the change is mostly centered around the material fact that the Japanese population is declining and the actual interest of younger Japanese males in adult services has declined, significantly. The overall economy does not help, but easy access to porn and self-help sexual aids has also diminished the utilization of once popular agencies such as delivery health, fashion health, soaplands and defunct services such as hotel health or mansion health.

Unfortunately, a side effect of that change in the tide was the advent of predatory agencies and services that began to target non-Japanese clients, which left a bad impression of the Japan scene on their unfortunate clientele after their visit was completed. Even some services that had a stellar reputation in the beginning began to discount the value of their clients and eventually failed to provide decent - or even honest - customer service. Even in our private lives, where we do not identify ourselves as TAG personnel, the amount of negative feedback we heard through the grapevine was increasing rapidly. Now, at the time of this writing, we believe the market has hit a plateau and we are now bracing to see what will happen post-Olympics 2020 when the foreign client pool starts to shrink and reputations become more and more important.

We developed TAG and run it now, to provide an open environment for adult discussions and information sharing. For the most part, we have been able to keep that primary objective in place, but we have faced some hardships over the past years where we have had to enforce more strict moderation. This was not unforeseen, it's the same experiences that other medium to large sites face in the form of growing pains. This is just a fact that we must live with to keep the ecosystem relatively clean and our content reputable.

To our valued members, guests, critics and true friends, we value each one of you, no matter what side of the fence you sit on. We all work together in some form or fashion, for better or worse, to help bring a balance to the industry that is beneficial for our beloved providers, their agencies and others who work tirelessly to provide a service that our readers will want to use again and again.

An extra special thanks goes out to our long-term members and contributors, some of whom I have had the pleasure of dining with or sharing a drink with. A special thanks goes out to all the providers that we have had the pleasure to speak to over the years, your insights and information that you share with us, has been invaluable. To our clients that we work with directly, thank you for your continued business!

In closing, we would like to thank you, the reader, even if you do not appreciate TAG’s mission and purpose, you at least took the time to come and read what we had to say at this important anniversary event. We realize that even outside Japan’s borders, we face a difficult position where our industry is trying to be stomped out of existence in other global locations. We will continue to try and keep the balance between the clients, agencies and the providers that work on the front-lines.

We cannot be sure what will happen in the coming days, weeks, months, years or decades. Where possible, we will continue to keep TAG running for those who find true value here. Many friendships have been made here and some even broken… Relationships have started here and ended here as well…

For all your feedback, positive and negative, it is greatly appreciated. Please just keep in mind that we cannot always act upon everything that comes into our mailbox. But, please do not let that stop you from writing us either privately or publicly.

Finally, we are nearing the completion of TAG v3 which has been an ongoing project since early 2019. Some of our senior members have had a test drive already but we are slowly moving closer to a final release that will hopefully see the light of day before Christmas 2019. (I’m personally hoping sooner, but we are a small shop and development costs money and thus our budget is quite small!)

10 Years of TAG.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Chris V.
Karen (Catherine) R.
Meiji