<figure id="attachment_250107" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 749px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-250107"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="0f07c827"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/06/17e9fe07232bb10eb757b27682414bc8.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-250107" class="wp-caption-text">Several women holding their smartphones stand around Okubo Park at night.The author asked, &#8220;Do you want to tell me a lot of things about this neighborhood for an article? Oh no, I don&#8217;t have time. Well, I&#8217;ll buy you dinner and give you money as well? Well, I&#8217;d be happy to pay for dinner plus 5,000 yen.&#8221;
The 20-year-old woman, who called herself Mizuki, was wary of the author&#8217;s approach, but complied.
At around 8 p.m. on a weekday night in early June, Mizuki was standing in an alley between Okubo Park, located about a two to three-minute walk from Seibu Shinjuku Station, and Okubo Hospital directly across the street, fiddling with her phone.
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<figure id="attachment_249955" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1108px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-249955"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="c8970709"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/06/84f3d6aa71e10681270b8a1ae283f93b.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-249955" class="wp-caption-text">Mizuki (pseudonym), an aid worker near Okubo Park.</figcaption></figure>
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On the same street, in addition to her, five or six other young women and about 20 to 30 middle-aged men, mostly in their 30s to 50s, could be seen. Sometimes, some of the middle-aged men would whisper to the women, asking them for help. Sometimes they leave the street together. Mizuki says, &#8220;My friend was originally from around here.
A friend of mine is a vendor here, and we started here last fall. Today we couldn&#8217;t get any customers at all, and we were desperate (laughs).”
The streets surrounding Okubo Park and the area around the health facility Hygeia at the back of the park have long been known as a &#8220;stand-up job spot,&#8221; and before entering the Corona pandemic, there were white and Chinese women in the area.
Recently, however, a term coined &#8220;kouen&#8221; has been coined to describe the area, and the number of young Japanese women standing around has been increasing. Some men are very familiar with the concept of kouen, while others lean against the wooden fence in Okubo Park, seemingly unable to make up their minds.
“I&#8217;m going to have sex in Okubo Park, so I&#8217;ll call it &#8216;koen&#8217; for short.” Mizuki explains the origin of the coined word, but it is not clear when the name came into circulation.
 
Nevertheless, a search for &#8220;kouen&#8221; on Twitter turned up tweets such as &#8220;hobetsu 1.5NS→2NN&#8221; and &#8220;kurohair kiyotaku G1.5 with photo shoot,&#8221; reporting information and prices of aid dating. Some of them claimed that the person they hired was underaged.
“NS&#8221; is a term for &#8220;no-skin going out,&#8221; &#8220;NN&#8221; for &#8220;no-skin inside out,&#8221; and &#8220;G&#8221; for &#8220;wearing rubber,&#8221; with the numbers next to them indicating the negotiated price. Some of them, as in the tweet above, seem to negotiate &#8220;options&#8221; such as photographing the girl or adding more money to the initial offer.
 
“We are being paid 1.5 (ten thousand yen) per hour for the last hour (with penetration), with a rubber on, and without a hotel (hotel fee not included). When I first negotiate on the street, I tell them &#8216;G, 1.5 yen per hour, excluding hotel,&#8217; and when I get to the hotel, I tell them &#8216;I still want a little more.&#8217; Then, I either tell them to go without a rubber, or I extend the time to an hour and a half and raise the price to 20,000 yen.
Some girls go for NS1. I guess the strategy is to lower the price and shorten the time to increase the turnover rate, but I can&#8217;t go that far because I get tired (laughs).”
The average price in this area is 15,000 to 20,000 yen and includes a sexual intercourse, as is the case with Mizuki, although the price varies from girl to girl. The market is made up of girls who want to earn money efficiently by taking customers directly, and clients who can negotiate after seeing each other at a relatively low price.
“We are there on average two to four days a week, from 6:00 p.m. to just before midnight, and we make an average of 60,000 to 70,000 yen a day. In terms of monthly earnings, I make about 500,000 to 700,000 yen, and in my heyday, I once made 1 million yen a month. In addition to those who approach me on the street, I also sell my services to those I have been communicating with individually, saying, &#8220;I&#8217;ll be here today,&#8221; so at most I meet about five people a day.
Before I started working at a dating agency, I worked at a delicatessen and a Konkafé in Kabukicho, but this is the most cost-effective way for me to earn money. At the delicatessen, I had to wait on standby, and miscellaneous expenses were deducted, so I earned about 60,000 yen a day for nine hours.”
 
Seeking better earnings, Mizuki uses Konkafé as her base of operations. Living at home, Mizuki was satisfied with the 200,000 to 300,000 yen per month she was making when she first started working the streets last fall. She says that the reason she has been standing on the street more frequently since then is because she has been &#8220;paying tribute&#8221; to &#8220;men&#8217;s underground idols&#8221; at an accelerated rate.
She says, &#8220;I used to set a goal of contributing 500,000 yen a month, but now that&#8217;s the lowest I can go. For 1,000 yen, you can take one picture with your idol and talk for a minute during that time, but apart from that, if you spend 500,000 yen a month, you can go on a one-hour date, and with 1,000,000 yen you have the privilege of taking them out for a longer time. Yesterday, I spent 50,000 yen.
I keep my living expenses to the bare minimum, such as food and cosmetics, and all the rest goes to my idols. Sometimes I feel foolish and despairing, but once I&#8217;ve reached the limit, I can&#8217;t lower it, and my idols are cute, so I can&#8217;t help it. I think most of the young girls standing around here are also paying tribute to hosts or something.&#8221;
However, while the amount of money they are contributing is growing, recently they have been unable to earn as much money as they would like.
 
“Since the end of GW, I&#8217;ve only been able to pull an average of three clients a day, and my earnings have dropped to about 50,000 yen. Recently, the number of men in my area has been increasing, but most of them are just playing with their phones and don&#8217;t talk to me.
Also, there are a lot of men who are regulars, but those people are rare, so they go to the girls who don&#8217;t usually come here much or to the newcomers. The longer I stand here, the less fresh I feel and the harder it is for me to attract customers.”
As the number of pedestrians in the area increases, competition for both men and women becomes more intense. The people who frequent the koryu are often negotiating on social networking sites, and if their mug shots and personal information are exposed on the Internet, they run the risk of losing their place not only in Kabukicho but in society as a whole. And, needless to say, there is also the possibility of being involved in some kind of crime. It is only a matter of time before the police and government come to their senses.
On the other hand, it is a fact of life in Kabukicho that dangerous places are weeded out and new forms are born. The neighborhood may change its appearance again, changing locations and coined words.

 Writer, born in Tokyo in 1995. He covers a wide range of topics including nonfiction, money, and entertainment, mainly for online media.

 Hideo Hayashi

 I want to write an article about this neighborhood, so you want me to tell you about it? No, I don't have time. Well, I'll buy you dinner and give you money as an added bonus? A 20-year-old woman who calls herself Mizuki told me, "I'll buy you dinner plus 5,000 yen.

Why Are Young Women Standing in a “Prostitution Park” in Kabukicho, Shinjuku?

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