(FORTUNE Magazine) – Apartment life is so cramped in Tokyo that the most common pets are tropical fish and parakeets. But as the Japanese get richer, their taste for something more exotic is rising. The current craze: reptiles. Even though they can take up a mite more space -- they're six inches to about three feet long -- lizards are silent and unlikely to threaten the no- pet clause in most leases. Pet shop owners say young women account for 30% of sales. Among them: Izumi Kihara, 24, who works in the new-products department at Pola Cosmetics. She owns a 20-inch giant skink lizard named Omaki. Says Kihara: ''I used to keep grasshoppers, but they're very difficult to pet. The lizard is nicer to hold.'' The hottest reptile: the iguana. Japan imported about 2,000 last year from the U.S. and Honduras. They sell for about $150, but if you're a champion pachinko (pinball) player, you might get one free. A Tokyo pachinko parlor offers lizards, snakes, and turtles as prizes. Hikaru Shiraishi, editor of Fish magazine, which has a regular section for reptile fanciers, predicts that the next lizard likely to catch Japan's fancy will be the Bengal monitor, a flesh-eating 3-footer from India. Says Shiraishi: ''Iguanas are cute, but these lizards are larger, so it's easier to know where they are in the apartment.'' The Bengals, which go for up to $700, are an endangered species, however, and Japan now bans their import. Possible result: a black market for the critters.