Fantasy District Kabukichō Teaches Me About Reality

by Ashley Tham (Singapore)

I didn't expect to find Japan

The security guards weren’t sympathetic at all. Their grips iron-like as they dragged me away in front of hundreds of girls that forgot me as soon as they saw me. It didn’t take long to be forcefully removed from Yokohama Stadium. I had booked my ticket to Japan three days before my departure and it definitely wasn’t because I found out that my favourite band was having a concert there and I had just secured tickets. I had never been to Japan before and the thrill of going into a trip so unprepared and impulsively was intoxicating. (Also, those tickets were really good seats.) I didn’t even manage to stay long enough for one song. Turns out, you weren’t allowed to sneakily record a video during the performance even though everyone around you is attempting the same. And it also seems that when caught by an angry, heartless manager with an uneven haircut, you get thrown out of the very reason you flew 4000 miles for. I didn’t even get to keep my twenty-second video. So began my time in Japan. I arrived in Tokyo defeated but hoping that exploring Japan for the first time would lessen the heartache. The room looked nothing like the pictures on trip advisor. Where the floor was, two dirty mattresses were squished together instead. The toilet attached made aeroplane bathrooms seem like the height of luxury. Before I could process that I had been duped, a small old man with a deep frown rushed in and bowed deeply. “So sorry. I clean for you.” His eyes brimmed with sincerity, and despite everything, I liked him instantly. I was staying in a run-down motel in the heart of Kabukichō, Tokyo’s red-light district - broke college students can’t afford to be picky. I didn’t know it then but out of all of Tokyo’s attractions, the district locals deemed dodgy and dangerous would be my favourite place in Japan. Kabukichō likes to sleep in, only really waking up in the late afternoon. As the sun goes down, tourists and locals alike start to stream in. The pubs lining the narrow alleyways switch on their lanterns and striking signboards, the hum of electricity making the district buzz with life. I leave my motel and pass by a she-robot five times my size. There’s a ladder right in front of her, where people can climb to centre their heads right between her large fake breasts - a photo for keepsakes. No matter what my itinerary has planned for the day, every night is spent roaming this district and no night is the same. Hands sticky with the sweet sauce that drip from the Yakitori sticks I bought, Japan’s famously grilled chicken, I wave as I pass by the ladies stationed outside a love hotel. Their smiles warm and friendly, sometimes I think it’s because they know I’m not a potential customer. I have to squint to find the giant Godzilla head amidst the lit signboards, using that to orientate myself in the crowded lanes. Large pictures of men that look alarmingly similar plaster sides of clubs, advertising their time and affection for a price that’s deceivingly a third of the actual. Tourists and locals alike are equally swept up in the temporal magic of Kabukichō. It’s a fantasy land that isn’t afraid to embrace the realness of what freaky is. Nothing is weird here. And yet, none of it pretends to be more than what it is. The women that visit male hosts know the fabrication behind the affection but buy into it anyway, at least for an hour. Camaraderie formed between inebriated strangers at izakaya’s last as long as the drink does. But, as I witness all this from afar, it’s hard to persuade me that their interactions aren’t beautiful in their own way. That the excitement and joy from the district are merely commercial. Kabukichō wears her heart on her sleeve. An intoxicating beauty that’s tragic all the same, I expected none of this at all. Nothing in my dream trip went as planned yet stumbling across this district that balanced reality and fantasy so elegantly on a fine line, I could do the same.