Shibuya Anecdotes (or, Learning How to Mind my Own Business)

Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

Being a Westerner in his twenties who dances almost as a second job, clubs are a pretty big part of my life. Or at least, they should be. When I first moved to Japan, I made it sort of a goal to hit the clubs and try to get out of my shell a bit, and Shibuya was where some of the more popular clubs that my friends knew of were located. It's well known that Shibuya can get crazy, especially from the posts seen here on City Cost about the Halloween events and a particular Twitter account that readers may or may not know about. The place is one of the big three nightlife areas after all. Japan overall has an image of being clean and polite, but my time in Shibuya has given that statement a caveat. Let me give you a small glimpse of some of the things that could happen in Shibuya.

As I mentioned, I wanted to go out and do more clubbing when I was fresh in Japan. As it so happened, I had a friend from Okinawa visit Tokyo at the same time as another friend from Canada. The three of us knew each other through street dance, so naturally we wanted a place to jam out. We went to Atom in Shibuya, and like other clubs in Tokyo, this place had multiple levels. Each floor inside was playing different music, and we settled on one of the upper floors with a beat we all liked.

We came in early to avoid the raise in entry fee, so it was still relatively empty. We each grabbed a drink and decided to enjoy the music the way we knew best: by throwing down some moves. We went for a couple of minutes, and out of nowhere a man with an African accent pushed his way past the people already there. Sternly, he grabbed myself and another friend by the shoulder and wagged a finger at us. "No breakdancing," he commanded. "You dance, you leave." People have the impression that breakdancing involves the moves that go on the ground. All three of us knew that such moves were inappropriate for the setting, so we weren't dancing like that in the first place, so in our minds, we weren't 'breakdancing' at all.

It was kind of a mood-killer, and I wasn't confident enough to approach anyone in Japanese, so the rest of the night I spent nursing the same drink and watching the rest of the people at the venue. No one was actually dancing. People were either just bobbing their heads or standing completely still. At most, a few people were stepping side to side on the beat. There was no expression in their movements.

I found out later that Japan actually had a ban on dancing that was lifted only recently. On doing some light research, the ban was supposed to curb prostitution and drug use after World War II, but it wasn't really enforced until 2010. It was a weird, archaic law, but it seemed that Atom in particular had been taking care to cover their bases, just in case the police came knocking.

The encounter eliminated a big part of my list of reasons to go to Shibuya, but I still had occasions to go. Street dance events and performances are often held at around midnight in smaller clubs in Shibuya, so I used to go and watch or compete. It was one of these occasions that I witnessed something called nanpa for the first time, and I absolutely hated seeing it. Nanpa is the act of the pick-up. For expats, this usually involves talking someone up, flirting and making moves, but what I saw was extreme.

I was waiting for a Japanese friend at Shibuya station near the always-crowded Hachiko statue with some other Canadian friends. We were going to go to a dance showcase, which for some reason almost always starts at midnight. During this time, I watched as three guys tried to work their "magic." These three literally ran after girls as they left the train station. I saw multiple times where they actually grabbed a girl's arm as she tried to get away, and the girl had to wrest her arm away by force. There was one time where the girl was being pulled in one direction by one guy, and the other direction by her friend.

Eventually, one of the guys chased a girl as she passed behind me with her head down, walking at almost a jog. My lack of self-discipline allowed me to stick an arm out to stop the guy from following her. The guy was livid that I stopped him, and I just shook my head at him. "What!?" he repeated. It was all he could say to retaliate. He looked like he wanted to start something, but he saw that I was with friends, so he backed down. If I was alone, I would have been ready to take a few punches, so I was lucky my friends where there. It was a moment where I was pretty sure I would have lost my residency!

This wasn't the only time my nosiness almost got me in trouble. During another club night in Shibuya, I was sitting outside chatting with a friend. We had gotten tired of being inside a club that we didn't particularly enjoy the music of, and we had missed the last train, so we were waiting for the first train to start up. At some point some guy started stumbling around us, running into things and knocking stuff over.

Cue my nosiness.

I asked him in my limited Japanese if he was okay, and it made him confrontational. I didn't understand anything he was saying, but he was pointing fingers at me. At one point he grabbed my chin, and I had to swat his hand away multiple times. He balled up his and into a fist and pressed it against my face. In response, I moved his hand away and told him in English to not touch me, but he kept trying to provoke me. The guy baffled me at one point when he asked me in English, "How much?"

It was at that point where my friend and I got up to leave. I could take a scrap, especially against a guy that couldn't even stand, but once money gets involved, there is no telling what that could lead to. We walked towards the train station and he hit a traffic signpost as he tried to follow us, falling over to the ground. I had to try not to laugh in order to prevent escalation. He kept following until he fell over again, and he settled on giving us the middle finger as he watched us leave from the steps of a McDonald's.

These experiences has shown me that while Japan is a lot safer than any place I've ever been to, confrontations still do happen and I still need to keep my wits about me. If I was back in Canada, I would never have ended up in any of the situations I've mentioned, but I had the impression that Japan would be polite about everything, and those that were unruly were weak and easy to take care of. My experiences tempered my hubris, at least a little bit.

Thanks for reading.

I also keep a personal blog where I write about other experiences as well as mobile game reviews. Feel free to check them out!