Watanabe Mai is a well-known sugar baby in Japan who goes by the nickname “Sugar Baby Riri.” She posts about her lavish lifestyle and gives tips to fans on social media, building up a following on Twitter (X) and other social media sites.
A sugar baby provides romantic—and usually also sexual—companionship to a typically older man. They receive gifts and money in return, something Watanabe Mai acknowledged online.
Besides being a sugar baby, the 25-year old also earned hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling a book about her experiences in the sugar baby industry. Entitled The Manual That Makes You All Money By Sugar Baby Riri-chan Who Receives 10M A Month, she gives tips on how to earn more money, such as by urging her readers to target “sad, lonely-looking” men who “have no hobbies and no apparent reason to live,” and men “with no experience in love.”
Watanabe said she made around 19.9 million yen ($133,221) from the manual itself. Including her sugar baby side jobs, she earned over 300 million yen (over $2 million) in total.
Despite having so much money, it was soon found that she was virtually broke. Watanabe revealed in a post on Twitter (X) that she had spent almost every penny on host clubs, places where customers are given alcohol and great company by charismatic hosts.
I gave it all to hosts and don’t have one yen left.
— Watanabe Mai
It was revealed that she had given thousands specifically to Tanaka Hiroshi, 26, who worked as a host in a club based in Kabukicho, the infamous red light district of Tokyo.
In a video on his YouTube channel entitled “The four characteristics of women at host clubs you should be wary of,” he shared a photo of the cash Watanabe Mai gave him. It was only a small sample of the money she spent to support him for three months.
Watanabe Mai was eventually arrested for coercing a man into giving her 38,461,000 yen ($257,479). When police came to take her to jail, she was found living in a cheap capsule hotel with less than $100 USD to her name.
