Neighbourhood sights in Tokyo
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A
Golden Gai
This ramshackle block of tiny bars became golden just in time for the ‘64 Olympics. By day, there’s not much to see here except for dozens of stray cats. But by night, the closet-sized bars, some accessed by stairways steep enough to bruise your shins as you ascend, light up and fill up, mostly with off-duty office workers. There’s been much speculation about the demise of Golden Gai’s rickety structures and narrow alleyways, but for the moment it seems a new generation is buying in and quietly setting up shop.
reviewed
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B
Kabukichō
Tokyo’s most notorious red-light district, which lies east of Shinjuku Station and north of Yasukuni-dōri, is made up of soaplands (bathhouse that offer sexual services), love hotels, peep shows, pink cabarets, porn booths, ‘nurse’ pubs, prostitutes and strip shows, all well attended by drunken salarymen out for the night. Female voices wail out invitations in accents from the Philippines, Thailand and China as well as Japan, while Japanese punks eke out a living passing out ads for karaoke boxes and peep shows. For the ladies, there are ‘men’s’ bars, with photos of foppish Japanese blokes with shaggy hair dyed along the spectrum from platinum to auburn, peering out from …
reviewed
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C
Love Hotel Hill
Anyone who thinks that Japan is all about raked pebble gardens, geisha in kimono and Zen meditation hasn’t strolled through Love Hotel Hill. Just west of central Shibuya, this neighbourhood offers one of the largest concentrations of love hotels in Tokyo, where men and women out on the prowl hope the night will end. Depending on your tastes, you can bed down in a variety of themed hotels ranging from miniature Gothic castles and kitschy Arabian palaces to traditional Japanese-themed inns and Balinese-inspired resorts. Although choosing where to go is the best part of visiting a love hotel (well, aside from the actual act itself), our personal favourite is a particular Car…
reviewed
