Gaijin shitamachi: Kinshicho a low-cost alternative to Kabukicho

The warmth of spring may have finally arrived but the chill of the wave of recession is still readily apparent throughout the metropolis. Yet Takarajima (May) finds the entertainment area of Kinshicho, located three train stops away from Akihabara on the Chuo Line in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, to be surprisingly indifferent to these economic difficulties.

A visit one evening in March starts with a stroll down a street called Derby-dori, situated behind the Marui department store and outside the South Exit of the station building. After just a few meters, street touts in black suits quickly approach.

“How about for 4,000 yen? For three, it will be 10,000 yen.”

The club is named Eden of the World’s Beauties.

“It’s a Filipino pub. Lots of young girls are there. Russians, Romanians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, too. Hey shacho, are you interested? Wanna hang out with some young girls from South America?” Read more

Tokyo’s Kabukicho teeters on the brink

Once known as Asia’s top entertainment quarter, Shinjuku Ward’s red-light district of Kabukicho has seen a hallowing out at its core. Monthly magazine Takarajima (April) takes a look at the devastation wrought by police crackdowns and the ongoing recession.

At the end of 2008, the multi-use Koma Stadium, notably known as a home to enka theater performances for a half-century and situated at the heart of Kabukicho, shut its doors. Over a year later, a construction plan for the site has not been set in place. Meanwhile, near JR Shinjuku Station, a large 10-screen cinema complex has since opened at the edge of the Kabukicho boundary. This encroachment, which has forced the shuttering of other long-running theaters in the area, combined with the closing of the cinema screens inside the Koma Stadium complex, has left only four screens remaining in all of Kabukicho, which was once regarded as a cinema Mecca. Read more

Latest issue of Takarajima chock full of chicks

The September issue of Takarajima magazine features a 30-page special titled “Deai-kei no Onna-tachi,” about foul gals on the prowl. The report starts out with an essay by sociologist Shinji Miyadai — the maven of the enjo-kosai (“compensated dating”) crowd — that looks back on the two decades since terekura (“telephone clubs”) underwent a boom back in the mid-1980s. The next piece classifies the types of businesses where women on the make congregate, including o-miai (“matchmaking”) pubs and serikura, modern-day slave auctions where women agree to go out with the highest bidder.

Pages 24-27 look into the whos, whats and hows of the enjo-kosai trade, and provide a fascinating sidebar on “secret slang,” euphemisms used to prevent the gals’ commercial messages from being flagged by monitors hired to keep keitai sites clean. (One example: “Yukichi Ichi-san” means 13,000 yen, so said because the 10,000-yen bill bears the image of educator Yukichi Fukuzawa. “San” means three.) Read more