Of People Watching and Red-Light Districts

Unfortunately, Kukhee couldn’t make it for the dinner that she, Jessica and I planned to have due to a cold. She missed out!

I got to Shinjuku a bit early because I wanted to check out Yodobashi Camera for the electronic dictionaries. I am pissed – the English focused ones have the crappy koku-go (Japanese-Japanese, think the Japanese version of the Oxford English dictionary) dictionary. I might just get the model that Prof. S. had – it may be old but it had Oxford, the good Koku-go dictionary and it’s cheap, so I can pimp it out with all the add on dictionaries.

After my futile trip to Yodobashi Camera, I still had about an hour; so I wandered around Studio Alta for a bit. Studio Alta is like OPA– big shopping mall designated for young women with a load of worthless crap. I did get a nice dark green beaded necklace, however; “normal” things are hard to find on a regular basis. Then I sat down outside JR Shinjuku station and people-watched for about 45 minutes.

Ah, people watching. Great thing to do when you are in a strange city; you really get a sense of the culture. Mind you, I am speaking with a slightly sarcastic and caustic tone here – the people watching in Shinjuku was ESPECIALLY interesting, mostly because my internal reaction mainly consisted of me saying “WTF?!?!” a lot, hence the sarcastic and caustic tone. First you had the homeless people that stole cigarette butts off the ground next to you and screaming at everyone else. Eh, fine that is something I see back home.

What you DEFINITELY do not see in NYC is this:

1) Japanese girls with orange skin + orange makeup and orange hair. And that is not ganguro (link on ganguro) – its just overly tan to the point of leather. Much worse than back in the States. Or girls with 4-inch heels and 2-inch shorts.
2) Japanese men with Louis Vuitton WOMEN’S HANDBAGS. Especially the Speedy style. Seriously, WTF?!?!?! I even saw a guy with the Hermes mini Grace Kelly bag. That guy is making a woman wait for 6 months on a Hermes waiting list, now that is just WRONG!
3) Said Japanese men actually accosting young women. I saw this in Kyoto as well (link to previous post); but here, I counted maybe 15 guys just loitering around the exit of JR Shinjuku, waiting for young women so that they can try to get them to the hostess bars or work at hostess bars. And later I realized why: Kabuki-cho, the red light district in Tokyo, was across the street from JR Shinjuku. The girls fell into one of several categories – very skinny, tan, sky-high heels, crazy orange hair and that particular Japanese style. Even “normal” looking girls were accosted, even right to the corner of the street. I estimated the distance from the exit to the street at about 10-20 meters. Maybe 30-60 seconds of hearing some asshole shorter and skinner than you trying to get you to a hostess bar. And they are bloody persistent!

I had dinner with Jessica and some of her friends – including her research assistant, Kazu – at this izakaya that actually ripped us off. Live and learn; I had this sinking feeling earlier that there wasn’t going to be much food at dinner so I just munched all day, hence the Mochi Cream from earlier.

We all wanted to do puri-kura, or the photo stickers after dinner. We actually ended up in Kabuki-cho; in spite of it being the red light district so long as you are not a pretty Japanese girl it’s fine. It’s just a lot of hostess bars, Karaoke and pachinko or game parlors.

What we all didn’t expect to end up doing was wait with a bunch of obaa-sans for this Japanese celebrity that is overly airbrushed in his promo photos to the point of looking like Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. Creepy.
We passed by a LONG line of middle-aged women and we all pressed on Kazu to ask them why they were waiting. Said Japanese celebrity is Enka singer “Kiyoshi” – Enka is a form of cheesy old-school Japanese music that is popular back in the 50s, according to Jessica. The obaasans gave us flyers with his face plastered over them; when the 5 of us started goofing off with the flyers, the obaa-sans joined in and asked us to take photos of us with them and the Kiyoshi flyers. Some of the women were holding these wands that light up – I actually went up to one women who had two (red and blue with a star and a heart) and asked her, “Those wands are so adorable, is it ok if I borrow them quickly and take a picture?” The woman – and all the others – were actually really happy that gaijin were interested in Kiyoshi; frankly, it was just all good fun. Out of the 5 of us, Jessica, Jay and I were the foreigners (Kazu brought her fried Yuki and Jay along) but Jay is Chinese so Jessica and I looked the most “foreign.”

While we were waiting, I took in the sights that was Kabuki-Cho: right across the street from us, there was a blinking billboard that advertised services by women for men. In fact earlier, I saw one of those places as well with a sign on the door that said in very big English letters, “Japanese ONLY!” I had heard of these signs before, but to finally see one was really interesting. Because of the shadiness that is Kabuki-Cho, Shinjuku has some problems with foreigners; good to know I learned something useful at the conference.

Being really “foreign-looking” sure had its payoff that evening! We were waiting and waiting and at one point I had to go to the bathroom; Yuki, Kazu and I ran to the closest pachinko parlor to use the bathroom. Luckily Kiyoshi hadn’t driven by yet. We all decided to wait till about 9:30; lo and behold, at 9:30 on the dot, a relative roar began to reach us. Kiyoshi had arrived!

There was security and middle aged men telling us to not take pictures with our cameras, Kiyoshi’s car was passing right by us. The window was just almost rolled all the way up when I saw him – he was carrying one of those wand things, except his was purple. Then for a fleeting moment our eyes met and he did the biggest double-take in the world – like “OMG, she is a FORIEGNER!” I wasn’t the only one that saw this; Jessica solidly confirmed that she got the same reaction when he saw her.