Sex, Drugs and Dougenzaka Posted 3/3/05 - 5:01 PM
-Seth Stevenson from "Tokyo on One Cliché a Day"
If you don't already know the definition of that last one, don't go looking for it. You'll rue the very second curiosity got the better of you. Another cliché is that the Japanese work hard and they play harder. Unlike the US, there is no cut off time for alcohol sales. The drinking age is 20, bars stay open all night and tiny "capsule" hotels in Tokyo cater to drunks that miss the last subway train home. Vending machines with at least one brand of beer in stock can be found on just about any street corner. Years ago I read an article on underage drinking in Japan. Local authorities don't concern themselves with the issue "because it's wrong." The author wasn't quoting a judge or a cop. These words came from a teenager living in Tokyo. Try wrapping your head around that one. From a western perspective this is incomprehensible. Japanese morality, like anyplace else on the planet, is regulated by numerous contradictions. The country's alcohol laws are as lax as its marijuana laws are strong. Just ask Paul McCartney who spent ten days in prison after a pot bust at Narita airport in 1980. Foreigners caught with drugs, after serving their sentence, are banned from the country for life (McCartney scored a reprieve 11 years later). Getting caught with a single joint could, theoretically at least, result in a 5-year sentence.
THE GATEWAY
Maybe Pac-Man's insatiable lust for pellets is a metaphor for what was waiting beyond the gate. Instead of finding one of the epic, five story gaming centers described in my Lonely Planet travel guide, I discovered several blocks filled with drug paraphernalia, massage parlors, love hotels and strip clubs. Life had suddenly begun imitating "House of the Rising Sun". Purely in the interest of this photo series (*ahem*), I decided to have a look around.
ADULT SHOPS
"In Japan, it is illegal for any commercial publications to depict the female clitoris or male glans. Any publications depicting the penis or vagina must be shrink-wrapped and barred from sale to minors. However, it is not uncommon for pictorial magazines to depict nude women with their genitalia airbrushed over in black, and video pornography routinely depicts explicit sex scenes with the participants' genitalia mosaicked out. Until 1991, the entire pubic region, including hair, was deemed obscene and unpublishable." A few years ago, a friend of mine was hit with a pang of sympathy for a colleague working abroad through the JET Program. He sent him a few magazines and a video. After spending a surprising amount of money on postage, the packet was searched and seized by Japanese customs. He lost $35 on the porn and a jaw-dropping $70 on shipping. While the "hoo-hoos" and "ya-yas" of live actors are typically obscured by pixilation, animated smut isn't susceptible to the same laws. As a result, it's much more popular, widely available and nasty. As a result, this shop's DVD aisles were loaded with x-rated anime.
I kept an eye out for them, but I didn't spot a single "love machines." I was skeptical that they even existed until I later found this photo online:
CONTRACEPTIVES
A smiling condom sign ushers visitors into the stores' cramped floor space littered with "NO PICTURE TAKING" signs. Inside, underneath multicolored party lights, the walls are covered with just about every type of rubber imaginable. Lubed, ribbed, camouflaged, covered in cartoon characters and fake tattoos. Worried that your condoms might fall out of your pockets while searching for your keys? Condomania sells contraceptives that come hidden in a canister that looks like an ordinary pack of Lifesavers (heh). While they even had condoms flavored like bananas (double heh), the store's highlight was an inflatable "punching" penis. Apparently, Condomania is a chain with two more locations in Tokyo's Harajuku and Odaiba districts. Prior to the chain, supposedly, condoms were sold only in Tokyo drugstores. Worse yet, they were wrapped in plain paper packages with only a vague description of the contents.
STRIP CLUBS
Juxtaposed between the larger clubs were tiny, open stairwells and stores marked with humble, neon-free signs. Maybe that's where all the love machines were hiding.
He also visited a very weird fertility festival. For more on that, click here for a description or here for photos.
PROSTITUTION AND LOVE HOTELS
Despite their efforts, the Shibuya's dark side lives on in the alleyways of Dougenzaka. While I was wandering around gawking at everything, a middle-aged woman with pink hair approached me. Her belly was hanging over an elastic beltline underneath a Playboy bunny t-shirt. "Would you like a massage," she asked in broken English. I shook my head and kept walking but she was undaunted. She repeated the question in German and finally in Japanese. Prostitution has been illegal in Japan for no less than 45 years but I was still offered plenty of "dates." I’m sorry to say I have no interesting anecdotes to break out here. I didn't indulge in a three-way in a nearby love hotel's traditional tearoom setting or in a room done up like the spaceship from Cowboy Bebop. A friend would later ask me: "Why the hell not?" Well, for one I was traveling on a tight budget and if Dougenzaka had a $10 hooker up for grabs, I sure wasn't buying. According to various guidebooks, many of these places don't admit foreigners. Plus, I've seen too many yakuza movies and have heard that whole "kidney thief" story one too many times. Talking your way out of nasty situation is fairly difficult when you don't speak the native language.
 This sign hangs over the entrance to a love hotel (or so I’m told. If you can read the sign and it says otherwise, drop me a line). Establishments like these cater to prostitues and their clientel, adulterers, couples looking for a spot for a quick one night stand, etc. Love hotels typically charge by the hour. The lobbies are usually vacant and contain a board with photos of each room. If a photo is lit up, the room is vacant. An annoymous attendant behind dark glass takes your money and hands you a key. Inexpensive love hotels are fairly basic whereas higher up rooms have fanciful decor, vibrating beds or dungeon-setups complete with s & m gear. For more on these establishments, here’s a link.
DRUG PARAPHANELLIA + STREET VENDORS
Every block or so I came across a street vendor. Most were selling watches and other knick-knacks. At one I spotted a fake Rolex.
ME: "How much?"
I reached for my wallet and broke out 1,500 Yen (roughly $15). RUSSIAN STREET VENDOR: "No, one hundred, fifty thousand." ME: "Oh, shucks. I don't have that much." Rather than chasing me off with an insult, he politely explained the exchange rate. "15" in Tokyo vendor speak apparently stands for "150,000." On another block I spotted a Japanese hippie dressed like a sheik. He was standing in front of a card table covered in pocket-sized bong/hookahs. I broke out 3,500 Yen ($35 US) as he carefully began wrapping one of the "bonkahs" (as I like to call them) in a brown paper bag.
Disclaimer time. Mom, if you're out there reading this, it was a gift for a friend. Condomania also featured a stairwell near its front entrance. It led to an underground smoking bar called "Amsterdam." I tried to get a look but a hipster/bouncer blocked the entrance. I gestured towards the stairwell but all he offered in return was a stern stare. I took the hint and continued on my way.
BARS & BEER
Miniature bars like this are supposedly typical in red light districts. According to the Travel Channel, this bar may or may not have once been a waiting room for a brothel. Drinking in Tokyo is pretty much out of the question for an American traveling with little cash to spare. As I passed various bars in various districts throughout the trip, I checked their menus, usually posted outside on sandwich boards. An imported bottle of Budweiser typically ran $7. The cheapest beer I spotted, Sapporo, ran $5 in one tavern. But beer purchased from a vending machine or a corner store? Much the same as the US. Another bonus? Drinking in public is legal. While waiting for a train in the bowels of Tokyo Station, I enjoyed a crisp, refreshing brew while chatting with a cop in broken English about train schedules. The experience was so surreal that I decided to keep it. I've seen people in US tossed in squad cars for merely walking down the street with an empty beer can.
BREAKDANCERS
These three drew a crowd big enough to block an entire street near Condomania. The outskirts of Dougenzaka were littered with hip-hop shops selling NBA jerseys and rap CDs. As I passed one, a shirtless local in a baseball cap started shadow-boxing me as I walked down the sidewalk. Did he work there? If so, his place must not cater to foreign tourists.
EXODUS
The last trains out of Shibuya Station, the end of several lines in Tokyo's subway system, were leaving around 12:15 AM. As I headed back towards Shibuya Crossing, a massive inserection sitting beneath video screens taller than God, I was joined by a wave of incredibly drunk locals. I pulled over and waited for a break in the crowd next to these creepy statues of underaged nudists.
I was running low on time but the crowd was only getting bigger and louder. I jumped in the fray. It was a muggy Friday night and everyone around me was dressed in business attire. Secretaries were hanging on the arms of their bosses, the buttons of their blouses coming undone. A line of coworkers screamed out the words to pop songs. The smell in this ocean of throbbing hormones? Horrible. My nostrils filled with the rank BO of thousands of people who had been drinking heavily and sucking down edamame in blazing humidity since happy hour. It was the human equivalent of a river of salmon heading up stream. This was Japan? The land of repressed emotions and strict social mores? Everyone was laughing and singing and flirting- some covered in vomit, others falling on their asses. Women in pink business suits were being carried like sacks of kitty litter. All of us/them staggering trough a five-lane crosswalk, struggling to get into the subway, under the terrified gaze of a ten-story tall Halley Joel Osment. "I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!" His words echoed off the intersection's glass walls like the voice of a disdainful, preadolescent god. The Village had just been released in Tokyo and the ad, displayed on one of the crossing's gigantic monitors, consisted of quick flashes from each of M. Night Shyamalan's films. After a shot of a monster having a door slammed in its face, the screen cut to an enormous dinosaur strutting to an electronic beat. 60 seconds later, Osmet popped up again. "I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!"
The train was pulling up as I dashed to the platform. Inside, a rider next to me dry heaved while clinging to a rail for dear life. All those loud conversations had suddenly been replaced by stifled laughter and indoor voices. On the ride I watched a local with an Eraserhead hairdo and a huge Star of David necklace flirt with a demure woman staring at her shoes. He waved "good-bye" and hopped off at one stop. I had to transfer to another train in the now vacant Tokyo Station. As I walked through the main hub I came across a tall man in an expensive suit. He had the facial expression of a punch drunk boxer and half of his suit was covered in bright orange vomit. Under his left arm was a tiny woman struggling to keep him upright. They looked like the last survivors of an office party gone horribly wrong. At any second the man was going to collapse in the middle of the station and, based on her facial expression, she was going to have to drag him a quarter-mile to their platform. She gave me a look of terror and embarrassment as she pushed him through a turnstile. The train back to the inn was quiet and half-full. There were no last minute hook-ups in this carriage. Many were sleeping, like this guy:
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