Kabukicho is the largest entertainment district in Japan, a grid of about 3,000 bars, host and hostess clubs, love hotels, pachinko parlors and restaurants north of Yasukuni-dori. It is named after a kabuki theater that was planned and never built after the war; what was built instead became the setting for countless films and the Yakuza video games, whose fictional Kamurocho reproduces the Godzilla head and the red gate of its main street almost sign for sign.
It is loud, garish and far safer than it looks, as long as you do not follow anyone anywhere. Walk through at night for the lights, find the batting cages and the retro arcade on the back streets, and finish in Golden Gai or at the Hanazono Shrine on the eastern edge, where the quiet starts again.
- Ignore every tout; a bar you were walked into will have a bill you did not expect
- The Godzilla head on the Toho cinema roars and lights up on the hour from noon to 8 p.m.
- For a safe drink, the chain izakaya and the 12-story Don Quijote on Yasukuni-dori are open all night