On the fourth floor of the hotel, after getting off the elevator and walking down the dimly lit hallway, I found the door. When I pressed the intercom button, a large Black staff member suddenly appeared. If I hadn’t known this was a lounge for Japanese guests, I think I would have turned on my heel and walked away.
Minato Ward — A Japanese Lounge in Kuala Lumpur
"MINATO ~Minato Ward~" is a lounge for Japanese people located in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Named after Tokyo’s Minato Ward, it offers a Japanese-style nightlife experience in a foreign land. Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, and a nightlife culture like Japan’s has not taken root there. In such an environment, a place like this—where Japanese people can enjoy drinks while speaking Japanese—serves as a kind of oasis for expatriates and travelers alike.
What sets this place apart is that many of the women working here are Japanese. They’ve come to study abroad or obtained visas to live here, and at night they work as hostesses at this club. These hostesses have a unique background that sets them apart from those in Ginza, Japan.
The journey itself is the challenge
When Hachimine visited this shop, the first thing that took him by surprise was the path leading up to the entrance.
The restaurant is located in the "Dorsett Hotel" in Kuala Lumpur. Judging by its exterior alone, it looks like an ordinary city hotel.
Pass through the entrance and head to the first-floor lobby. At this point, it still looks like a perfectly ordinary hotel.
Take the elevator to the fourth floor, get off, and walk a bit—and there you’ll find a rather suspicious-looking door. With no sign to speak of, it has an air about it that would make anyone visiting for the first time wonder, “Am I really in the right place?”
I steeled myself and rang the intercom, and a large Black staff member came to the door. It was completely different from the entrance to a typical Japanese hostess club. Hachimine’s honest impression was that some people might turn around and leave right then and there. Even someone who’d been working in Ginza for 20 years would feel a little apprehensive standing at this entrance.
But beyond the door was, surprisingly, an ordinary—no, a distinctly Japanese-style lounge.
Before I knew it, things were really heating up.
To be honest, Hachimine hadn’t intended to stay that long at first. He just wanted to take a quick look around the lounge in this foreign country, have a drink, and head home—that was the extent of his casual plan.
As it turned out, though, it was surprisingly fun. The female cast members who had crossed the ocean to live here each had their own interesting backgrounds and reasons for coming. As we got carried away chatting in Japanese with these young people from our hometown who were making a go of it in a foreign country, our sense of time gradually faded away. Before we knew it, the set had been automatically extended, the drinks were flowing, we were taking photos, and raising our glasses again—
By the time they’d repeated “Just one more” several times, their original plan to have “just a quick drink” had completely vanished. And, of course, a good time comes at a price. Hachimine was reminded of that fact when it came time to pay the bill.
The Shock of Accounting — It Was Supposed to Be the Local Price, But...
Now, the thing that concerns me most about this kind of restaurant is the bill. Restaurants catering to Japanese customers overseas sometimes charge even higher prices than in Japan. Let’s take a look at the amount Hachimine actually paid in Malaysian ringgit (at an exchange rate of approximately 40 yen per ringgit as of July 2026).
Set FeeFor one man, one set costs 500 ringgit (about 20,000 yen). On this day, the session was automatically extended to two sets, and with the addition of a 10% top-up, the total came to 1,100 ringgit (about 44,000 yen).
Order FeeThe "Hibiki" whiskey cost 1,850 ringgit (about 74,000 yen), the Charms cost 30 ringgit (about 1,200 yen), and the 12 bottles of mixers cost 360 ringgit (about 14,400 yen). The total came to 2,240 ringgit (about 89,600 yen).
Added to this were a service charge of 101 TP3T and a sales tax of 81 TP3T, bringing the total for the order alone to 2,643.20 ringgit (approximately 105,720 yen).
And the total amount due is——3,743.2 ringgit (approximately 149,728 yen)The following is a list of the most common problems with the
In a lounge in a foreign country, the bill came to about 150,000 yen. While Malaysia is generally perceived as a country with a low cost of living, that assumption doesn’t seem to apply when it comes to lounges catering to Japanese travelers. I suppose I was somewhat prepared for the cost once I ordered a bottle of “Hibiki,” but the final bill still came as quite a shock.
Summary
In a corner of a hotel in a foreign country, beyond a suspicious-looking door, lay a space that was unmistakably a Japanese nightlife scene. Perhaps the world of nightlife remains essentially the same even across national borders. At the very least, the feeling of your wallet getting lighter was universal.
