Internet Porn and Japan

So I was looking for an internet cafe in Sano where I was staying and as far as I could tell there weren't any. The public library still doesn't have internet. Random towns in Ecuador had much better internet access than this.

But I was really desperate since I wasn't sure when my flight was leaving so I asked everyone and I finally found one:





I don't think these photos even begin to capture how seedy the place was. The woman at the door offered me deals like a discount card where for a month you can get unlimited usage between 11PM and 8AM. Also there was a wall of porn comics for sale. I was there around 10 am and I'm pretty sure I could hear someone masturbating near my cube.

One interesting thing I've learned at Yahoo is that Japanese porn search rates are lower than US, but around half of cell phone searches are for porn (Japanese have way more cell phone internet coverage than us and they do a lot of searching). I guess market research showed that it's because most Japanese people don't like to look at porn while at work or at home. So I guess that's what the internet cafes are for. And maybe that stigma is why they're harder to find than in most countries.

On a related topic, I took this photo while biking home from the internet cafe:



Looking at the photo now (I took while I was biking by since there were a lot of people around and since I am a foreigner everyone watches what I do so I felt embarrased to be photographing it) I see some other stuff that looks like they could be jokes. But mostly this store is selling grave stones. You can't see them since there off to the right of the photo. I really wish I had taken this from another angle, but take my word for it that most of what this store sells is traditional looking head stones. So I'm still wondering, is it a joke? Or are they blind?