Dangers still lurk for foreign women who work as hostesses in Japan's nightlife districts, despite claims of better regulation in the wake of the Lucie Blackman slaying, according to an international security consultant who recently investigated the nightclub scene.

The consultant, Dai Davies, found that bars in Tokyo still employ young foreign women without proper working visas, as in Blackman's case, leaving them less likely to complain to police if assaulted by clients because they are working illegally.

Davies aided undercover Welsh TV reporter Sian Morgan, who was making a documentary posing as a British hostess without a working visa.