Japanese to-ran-su-re-ta, kudasai

Sitting here on a cool Saturday evening with my buddy Char, dressed in our finest, we were telling stories and I came across a reference in my story to a Japanese hostess. As we are both former teachers in Nippon, I wanted to use the official Japanese word for hostess. Which naturally led to the question, "What IS the Japanese word for hostess?" I couldn't remember and Char couldn't remember. So what do two inquisitive and resourceful girls like oursevles do? Call everyone who is Japanese or has taught in Nippon within Ka-na-da. Why wasn't everybody home, why would they go out on a Saturday evening? Darn it. We connected with a few people. The first thought hostess was simply translated as hostess-su but we were convinced there had to be a more unique Japanese translation. So somehow in tandem, we convinced her that simply could not be. So the next phone call yielded the same response. But this time around, he was more confident in his answer and our confidence was slightly worn as it was the second time we were facing this answer. He assured us it was "hostess-su". He asked us to google, but duh...we had already tried doing that but to no avail. All the sites we found were either stories about hostesses or literal tranlations (aka hostess to a group of people at your dinner party). So it seems the answer is "hostess-su". I can't speak for Char but that left me very unsatisfied and I will need to inquire some more. I will escalate the situation to level 2 and call some contacts in the land of the rising sun.