"The Back of the Town That Breathes in the Dark: A Kabukicho Alleyway Tour, May 2025."

"The Back of the Town That Breathes in the Dark: A Kabukicho Alleyway Tour, May 2025."

This is a video of my visit to the back alleys of Kabukicho, where there are many women's halls and host clubs, not in the inner part of the town, in other words, not in the East Shinjuku area, but in the opposite direction, which I will not name specifically. I would say it is a relatively "shallow" or quiet area.

Back alleys are usually closed, but this one was passable, so I went through. Well, it was pitch black. I had the light on my phone, but even so I could hardly see anything. However, upon closer inspection, it seemed that garbage collection was taking place here, and there was some styrofoam on the ground. It may be a temporary storage area before being disposed of temporarily.

There was also a gas meter, and I guess someone from the gas company comes to check it periodically. The buildings in Kabukicho are quite dilapidated, and many of them are probably more than 40 years old. I am a little worried about the water pipes and what is going on.

The gas meter had an "inspected" tag on it, so I guess they are here to inspect it. Oh, by the way, I found a few rats. There is no soil around here, so I am not sure how they are nesting, but there were definitely signs that someone is using this place as a part of their daily life.

In the past, there used to be people smoking here, but now there are energy drink cans lying around, so I guess someone is drinking Red Bull or something here. It is pitch dark, but there is a sense of life in that form.

I've been down this alley before, and the trash changes daily. There was no Styrofoam before, but this time there was. Someone must definitely be passing through and temporarily placing trash there.

There is a sense of life, but it is still basically not clean. And no one cares whether you enter or leave this alley. I think the place itself, Kabukicho, has a certain "space where no one is looking".

There were manholes, and there seemed to be a drainage system. So they probably do firefighting, cleaning, and sewage inspection, but I don't know at what time of the day they do it.

But if you actually walk down these alleys, I think you can see a little bit of what life is like in Kabukicho - that's what I was talking about.