Playback ’14] This magazine’s reporter was also a victim! The clever tricks of “legal” rip-offs that roamed Shinjuku’s Kabukicho

What did “FRIDAY” report 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In “Playback Friday,” we take a look back at the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we will look back at a story that appeared in the October 17, 2002 issue 10 years ago : “A pair of men who should have paid 5,000 yen for an hour exceeded 100,000 yen! The tactics of the “new” rip-off clubs that are mushrooming in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district.

A new club opened in July!　It’s full of cute girls and only 5,000 yen for 60 minutes!

Two of our reporters, who are old men, were lured by such words of a tout and entered a cabaret club in Kabukicho. However, an hour later, they were confronted with a bill that sobered them up. (The descriptions in parentheses are quoted from past articles.)

A glass of wine costing 4,000 yen per glass was served in a gulp. ……

At the time of the interview in 2002, the old man reporter and his colleagues were taken by touts to a cabaret club called “P” in a small building. The interior, which had about 30 seats and was better than a cheap snack bar, was staffed with cabaret girls in their 20s, all dressed in dresses, and at first glance there was no scent of a rip-off. A cabaret girl who introduced herself as “Reiko” sat down next to the reporter, and at first they were having a good time talking about where they were from, their blood types, etc. ……

‘May I have a glass of wine~♡?’

I said, “Sure,” and the waitress brought me a glass of wine. For some reason, there was only a sip of wine in the glass. She downed it in an instant,

Can I have another glass?

I looked at the menu and saw that a glass of wine costs 4,000 yen!　I couldn’t help but stop her, but Reiko was even more gutsy.

I couldn’t help but stop her, but Reiko was even more insistent. Let’s have a good drink!

It’s too expensive!

After three such rallies, the boy changed girls. The next girl was Hazuki. Usually in a cabaret club, the girls hand out their business cards in order to get a nomination, but here, no one wants to give out theirs. It was a “once-in-a-lifetime encounter” from the start.

Hazuki was rough.

Please take a seat, ♡♡”

I said as I took my seat, and a glass of wine was brought to me.

I didn’t say you could drink it.

What?　Let’s just drink it!

The enigmatic phrase “legal rip-off.”

And the bill. The statement showed a one-hour set charge of 10,000 yen (for two people), 16,000 yen for four glasses of wine, 7,800 yen for tax and service charge, and 7,800 yen for credit card charges, for a total bill of 41,600 yen. The service charge and credit card fee were set at a whopping 30% of the total price, respectively.

I protested, “Isn’t that 5,000 yen per person?” The two tired old men paid the bill in tears. In the article, Mr. A, a veteran tout, describes a “new type of rip-off,” a method that was drastically increasing in Kabukicho at the time.

He said, “It is a legal rip-off. As it became known that this was a profitable business, the number of stores using the same technique increased rapidly this year, and there are now 100 stores in the area. They ostensibly comply with the Entertainment Business Law and ordinances, such as business hours and fee explanations. If they get into trouble with customers over fees, they don’t threaten them, they persuade them, and in the end, with statements in hand, they turn the customers in to the police. The police can’t do anything about it, so the customer has to cry himself to sleep. Did your brother fall for it too? (Laughs)

In the past, there were many rip-off stores where yakuza-like men would come out from the back of the store …… when you complained about being charged exorbitant fees, but since ’00, with the enforcement of the Ordinance for the Prevention of Nuisance, the so-called Anti-Rip-Off Ordinance, they have almost disappeared! The Tokyo Metropolitan Government enacted a new ordinance in ’05. In addition, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government revised the ordinance in 2005, and was making efforts to eradicate touts. However, the tactics of touts have become more sophisticated.

Some touts would approach customers after they had left a rip-off store and say, “I will introduce you to a better store. It was their MO to rip off customers who had been ripped off even more. In some cases, the girls drank drinks without permission, and the price quickly exceeded 100,000 yen.

It seems that the two male reporters paid a high “tuition fee.

They did whatever they wanted, taking advantage of the fact that the police couldn’t touch them.

In his comment in the article, Mr. A, the tout, uses the term “legal rip-off,” but it may be more correct to say “gray” rather than “legal,” since it is difficult to build a criminal case against him. Restaurants are free to set their own prices. No matter how high the price is, it is not a rip-off as long as it is explained to the customers in advance.

If the restaurant insists that it has explained the charges to the customer even if they have not been fully explained, it will only lead to a watercooler argument with the customer who says that they have not been explained. And as long as the store bills the customer and makes the customer pay, it is impossible to make a case as fraud. Therefore, at that time, even if one rushed to the police station, they would not take up the case because it was a “civil non-intervention. However, of course, it would have been a common occurrence for the police to take advantage of a customer’s intoxicated state to issue a bill with a padded amount.

This new type of rip-offs became very popular in Kabukicho from 2002 to 2003. According to reports at the time, there were more than 1,000 calls to the 110 police reporting victims of rip-offs between January and April 2003. At that time, the area in front of the police box in Kabukicho was crowded on weekends with both customers and clerks of rip-off stores. Some pointed out that the reason for the increase in rip-offs to this level was a problem with the police response.

The police response changed around June of ’15, and when customers and shopkeepers came to the police box, they were interviewed at the Shinjuku police station. Whether or not this was the direct cause of the problem is not known, but this type of rip-offs seem to have decreased since then.

In recent years, announcements have been made on the streets of Kabukicho warning people that “100% of touts are rip-offs,” but this has not eliminated the number of victims. After the COVID-19 crisis, there were many cases of women who were lured to rip-off restaurants by their matches on matching apps who told them that they had a restaurant they wanted to go to. The rip-offs have survived by changing their tactics and products.