J-Bars as bars that are mostly frequented by Japanese customers

J-Bars as bars that are mostly frequented by Japanese customers. How this came about, we have no way of knowing. Most likely some bars are actively promoted, talked about at certain websites, and mentioned as Japanese-friendly in Japanese guidebooks.
In any case, some of these bars are among the most busy at Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy. The Rainbow bars at Nana Plaza, and Baccara bar at Soi Cowboy are the most popular venues for Japanese visitors to the nightlife scene.
Historically Japanese visitors had their own entertainment venues around Silom and scattered in karaoke bars and lounges around town. Often, signs would tell visitors only Japanese customers were allowed inside. But over the last few years Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy have become popular with this group of visitors. Most likely, these venues are much cheaper to visit.
The coming of the Japanese has some important consequences for the bars involved, the bar girls, and the (farang) customers.The bars, that have a lot of Japanese customers, seem to be doing well, kind of without exception. The Rainbow bars at Nana Plaza actually still have lower beverages prices than most, so customers are not overcharged, even if they can be assumed to have more to spend.
The girls benefit, because this group of customers spends much more on drinks and on the girls. We have it from good sources (that is, the girls themselves) that minimum short-time pay starts from 2,500 baht and up (4000 baht is not unusual). Once the girls have tasted this, it is very understandably very hard for them to accost a farang customer, who still may want to bargain for a 1,000 bath outing. We fully also understand this situation. After all, when working for a certain salary, would we accept and continue working is the salary dropped by half the next month?
While they still may like individual customers, most of the girls dancing and working at J-bars, hardly make eye contact with farangs, and concentrate on the Japanese customers. It has to be said, there seem to be two distinct groups of Japanese visitors to the bars. One group are the people who work here for a Thai-Japanese company. The other group consists of tourists. Most of the latter group seem to be rather young people, fashionably dressed, with blonded hair and the like, and are very popular with the bargirls. No way the average, middle-aged, bald and overweight farang can compete with these young people.
Since the Japanese seem to be much more attracted to beauty and cuteness, the girls in the bars tend to be better looking than average, and certainly better looking than in most of the other bars. It has become fashionable since a few years for bar girls to adapt the Japanese custom of dying one's hair, and you will find few girls with (attractive) Asian black hair. The fact that a lot of the girls in these bars are good looking, makes them still attractive to visit to farang customers, even though their chances of attracting the girls are minor (unless they indicate wanting to spend a lot of money)
Japanese customers (and other Asian visitors) are spreading out, and we do not know what the long-term effect of this will be on the nightlife at Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy. After all, Asian tourists have long overtaken farang tourists to the land of smiles, and this now shows itself at the nightlife venues, that up to about 7-10 year ago were almost exclusively visited by customers from Europe and U.S.A.