Shibuya is still shady
Mainichi’s WaiWai has yet another story up about Japan’s shady side. The topic of Today’s entry is Shibuya:
A few years ago, things were hairy in the entertainment district. The weekly says foreign drug dealers were everywhere and gangs roamed the Shibuya streets. A harder line taken by authorities was supposed to have wiped out these less appealing elements.
“Shibuya has definitely lost the risky types that used to be around. It’s definitely a much safer place,” a streetside talent scout says.
Nonetheless, Shibuya remains a magnet for runaway schoolgirls and the streets have junior high school girl runaways selling their bodies off, high school girls regularly indulging in hard drugs and other teens using fake IDs to find jobs working in the sex business.
Police efforts to crack down on enjo kosai — the euphemistic expression translated as “compensated dating” that is used to describe mostly teenage prostitution — were supposed to have worked, but the girls on the streets of Shibuya tell a different story.
“If the cops in Shibuya are giving us a hard time, we just go somewhere else,” a first-year high school girl engaging in enjo kosai tells Friday. “We can go to places like (other Tokyo districts) Ikebukuro or Uguisudani, where the cops aren’t so strict and there’re still lots of love hotels around to do business in. It’s not a problem at all.”
For a close look at the shady side of Shibuya, I suggest the following: Go to Shibuya at around the time the trains stop. Wander around the streets alone and see the wonderful sights! Marvel at the prostitutes who attempt to bring you to their establishments. If you look foreign, they might even try their poor English on you. It’s a shady experience you have to try at least once.
(But it doesn’t compare to the bouncer/staff guy standing outside of a Korean brothel in a certain city in Gunma who approached me as I was passing by and said, “Sex?” in his best English.
“No” I replied, not having the heart to tell him that his use of English implied that he was propositioning me to have sex with him.)
