Shinjuku's Kabukicho is commonly known as the seediest part of Tokyo, which is incredibly interesting to me as this same place is a legitimate tourist draw (although for various reasons that I won't get into.) Some of my students have warned me with this place, saying that Kabukicho is quite dangerous. Expats will know that no, Kabukicho is definitely not that dangerous, at least as long as you keep your wits about you.
There are dozens of adult things to do that I absolutely don't trust with my level of Japanese proficiency, and there are lots of men and women that just stand around watching for people that they could perhaps convince to enter their establishments. I've heard that the common thing that crooked establishments do is to keep patrons in by force until they pay an exorbitantly large sum of money.
I've heard tell of an Australian friend of a friend that once got too drunk at one such establishment. Apparently the poor guy went in and not only spent all of his money on drinks, but he was left out in the street with he credit cards taken from him. If the story is to be believed, he woke up in the middle of Shinjuku with nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his ID card in his wallet, nothing else.
As you can see from that anecdote, the place has potential for generating stories, true or not. A lot of Tokyo natives steer clear of the place if they can, and it's easy to see why with a closer look at the area. The people that work in and around the area do look a little more intimidating than the average Japanese person based on demeanour and clothing, especially at night.
I had a visiting friend one night who walked up to a group of men dressed in all black to ask them for a lighter. I remember watching the body language of the men, and I could see some of them evaluate my friend; there was some shifts in their stances. They looked at my friend up and down before letting him borrow one of their lighters, and watched my friend walk away for a good amount of time.
I don't think any of what I saw was supposed to be threatening in any way, but it's really easy to see how it could be intimidating. A group of mean-mugging men in a red-light district doesn't exactly stir up warm feelings, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't prepared for something to happen during my friend's interaction.
But, at least for me, the threat of Kabukicho's nightlife population is outshined by the wackiness that I've personally experienced there.
I remember one time as I was walking out of the infamous Robot Restaurant with some other friends, a man of African heritage wordlessly stepped in front of the four of us like a traffic office. He held out an outstretched arm towards a set of stairs that went to a basement floor of a building, trying to direct us in. We simply walked around him, and one of my friends audibly commented, "I like this guy's technique."
The guy simply smiled at us and replied, before walking away, "I try."
At another occasion, I had missed the last train home and decided to kill time before the first train with a co-worker by walking around the district. We walked by many streets with random people standing around, trying to get pedestrians into their bars. One of them standing two intersections down the road spotted my friend and I walking, and actually jogged over to us.
"Hey, wait!" he called out to us. We stopped, two men in suits at three in the morning in the middle of the red-light district. We had a feeling he was going to try to persuade us into an establishment, but we weren't prepared for how he was going to to it.
As soon as he stood face-to-face with us, he formed a circle with his left index finger and thumb, and thrusted his right hand index finger in and out of it. With a level of enthusiasm that shouldn't exist at that time of day, he asked us, "Want Japanese girl for sex?"
We declined and the man nodded, bowed, then casually walked away as if nothing had just happened. We watched him turn a corner before we started to walk in the opposite direction, then burst out laughing. It was a baffling experience to say the least.
Now that I've been in Tokyo for a while, not much else has happened to me there. It's a great place to see movies (when there isn't any form of epidemic going around) and there are some good places to have drinks with friends. Again, the place is quite safe if you're aware of your surroundings.
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