The Side of Japan Tourists Don’t Visit! 🇯🇵

The Side of Japan Tourists Don’t Visit! 🇯🇵

What is the first thing you think of when I say Japan? Pokemon, sushi, sumo wrestling, perhaps the usual stuff, right? Well, how about this? Yakuza, ghettos, slums, words you probably didn’t think of, right? Well, today I’m going to try show you some of that and not get in any trouble. Wish me luck. Let’s go. Nishinari, Japan’s most dangerous ghetto. However, does the reputation live up to reality? I linked up with my two mates from Australia, Michael and Jamie, who live here in Japan. To explore a side of the country most tourists never see, the roughest rurest neighborhood with a notorious reputation. Welcome to Nishinari. Campai, brother. I’m with the boys and Karina. Introduce yourself, guys. Hey guys, I’m Michael from Australia. Jamie from Brisbane. And they’re going to show me supposedly Japan’s most dangerous slum. Is that the word? It’s dangerousish. Japanese people are very scared of where we’re going. And what did you say to me yesterday? Like to sum it up where we’re going. Uh it’s an area where most Japanese people will be told by their parents their whole life to never cross that road, never go to that area under any circumstances. full of the, you know, uh, I guess homeless population, uh, fighting, you know, violence, all that sort of stuff. So, that’s where we’re going to go. We are going to go there indeed. We’re on a beers. We had about four. So, I’m a bit tipsy. Join the club, mate. And, uh, yeah, let’s go to supposedly most dangerous part here in Japan. Wish us luck. Wait, what’s that? What happened here? The dude stopped the car. I stopped a truck on the road, jumped up on the bumper, took his clothes off, and then he jumped back down, took his pants off. I don’t have the picture with his pants off. But then he started in the front of the truck. He started shagging the truck. Yeah. In in Nishinar. Yeah. In Nishar. Where is this man? I want to meet him and interview him. Yeah. Honestly. Hello. Hello. Are you vlogging? YouTube. YouTube. YouTube. YouTube. Yeah. Really? Yeah. YouTube. YouTube. [Music] England. England. England. Yeah. England, Australia, Portugal. Yeah. So, Portugal, Australia, England. Cristiano Ronaldo. Why have you come to Yishari? Why have they come to Yishari? Why the food? It’s got famous. He say cherry boy. Cherry boy means he’s a virgin. He’s a virgin. Oh, poor guy. Cherry. Oh god. I’ve come to Yishari cuz apparently it’s dangerous. So I’ve come to see what it’s really like. How many days? But I asked him, um, I’ve come to Nishinari cuz apparently it’s dangerous. Does he think it’s dangerous or no? Hey, can I buy these guys two beers? I bought them two beers. Thank you. Thank you. No, no. Thank you. You’re welcome. Don’t worry. Bye-bye. Nice to meet you. $20,000 watch on. Wait, who? The fat dude in the white t-shirt had like a $20,000 watch on. That’s some mafia [ __ ] Jesus. Good evening. Thank you so much. Enjoy. Enjoy. Alato. England. England. England. England. England. Beckham. There we go. YouTube kicky five. I don’t know what that says. When there’s a guy passed out next to some vending machines. Now, there used to be a [ __ ] uh a shanty town here because the expo’s on. They knocked it down and built a park. Actually had streets in it with like cardboard box houses. 5 years ago, this was a shanty town. And it’s right behind the police station. Bloody hell. There’s a dude there. Look, having a little snooze underneath the slide. There’s another guy in the distance drinking. Then another guy and then another guy. Then another guy. Okay, I need another slash. So, let’s check out the public toilet here in the ghetto. I guarantee you it’s better than any London train station toilet. You ready for this? You ready? Yep. I was right. I mean, it’s a bit griby, bit gritty, but look at that. And it smells fine. So, now what you’ll see here, you see piles of rubbish here. Yeah. Loads of it. And and it looks like it’s like this is how Japanese people did their rubbish. They have rubbish collection on different days. So this isn’t unheard of. So this looks like plastic rubbish. There’s a robot down there. Wait, where is that? Rice cooker. It’s a rice cooker. Oh yeah. Now different days in Japan has different types of rubbish. They actually recycle properly here. So this looks like a mess, but in the morning this will all be gone when the trucks come. Do you know Birmingham in the UK, right? Yeah. I mean Birmingham in the UK, it looks like this every single day. But here in a slum of Japan, I mean, this will be gone by tomorrow morning, you say, right? Yeah. So, the truck will come through and clean. This will be from all the businesses and the locals in the area. This is the rubbish collection point. You don’t have bins here for for the rubbish. The rubbish guys will just come and collect all this stuff. But you’re saying this is like the homeless area, right? You saying? So, the word we use in Japan is unhoused because uh homeless in English is homu in Japanese. So, we don’t want to upset anyone who’s around. But, uh in Japan, we have these people called Johhatu. Johhatu are roughly about 80 to 100,000 people a year that just go missing. And a lot of the reason people end up homeless in Japan is not because there’s like no government support, there’s no programs, there’s not enough housing. Like there’s millions of abandoned houses here, more than the homeless population. However, a lot of people due to debt, shame, divorce, losing their job, that sort of stuff, choose to just pay companies to come to their house in the middle of the night. Get rid of all their IDs, everything that you know, like SIM cards, all that sort of stuff. And I see ads for this sometimes on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, whatever. And you pay this company, I don’t know what, couple hundred bucks or whatever. They come to your house, they help you disappear. You come to an area like this where no one knows your name, they don’t know how old you are, what you used to do, anything like that. You go up to these BS over here, you ask them their name, they will not tell you a single thing about this past, but they might share a beer with you. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They’ll share a beer with you. And so, so it’s mainly shame based. So they’ll like if a guy lost his job, that’s like massive shame for their family. For them, it’s better to disappear than to bring the shame to their family that they lost their job. Wait, so they become homeless and just accept it and then completely change the whole everything. Oh, watch out here. here. It’s just mostly people that have chosen to live a peaceful life, whether it’s due to shame or they just want to disassoci public toilets are [ __ ] [ __ ] So, public toilets everywhere in the world, we have little barriers between us so no one can look at your willie. If you just turn around 180°, you can see the urinal. Oh, you can literally see it? Yeah. No way. Yeah. I actually need to use the toilet. So, let me get a bit closer and show you guys. Wait, is this male or male and female? Oh, you Here we go. I mean, it’s still clean. Look at it. It’s It’s spotless. It’s honestly spotless. Look at that. Look at that. That is spotless. See, you got the little room over there. See little lockers in there? Yeah. They’re a dollar for a locker. So if you’re unhoused and you’re working, you can leave all your goods in the locker for the day, go and work, and then come back and get all your stuff back. Really? Yeah. So here in the Sloan, they still have safety. You can put your stuff in. Yeah. All right. Let me quickly show you the lockers here in the ghetto. In the ghetto. In the ghetto. They look good. There’s loads of them. 100 yen. 100 yen. Wait, you said for an 1 hour? 100? For 24 hours? 100 yen? Yeah. For How much is that? Like a quid? Uh, it’s 50p. 50p. 50p. Yeah, they’re all being used to be fair. There’s loads of them here. And there’s a washing machine down there as well. Yeah, you can do your washing. Bloody hell, cat. We need to do a washing. My underpants stink. So, you should have cover here. Well, don’t [ __ ] your pants. I can’t open your quickly show you down here. There’s loads of lockers. Look. Quit a day to store your rubbish. It’s not your rubbish. Sorry. Your bloody your belongings. This park here, what they do is they actually put on concerts for the homeless people on this stage over here. Content. Concert. Concerts. Concert. Come down and play stuff and and you get like all the homeless people here singing and dancing. They come down to here have drinks and stuff like that. No way. And one of the other things, one of the other things they do is they put televisions in there so they can watch TV. Holy [ __ ] Yeah, I can see a TV. Can we go closer? Yeah. Yeah, you can go closer. No way. And see these guys like um collect cans. There’s a bit of a homeless encampment here. Wow. Literally got a TV here. Is that a news? Yeah, they can watch Japanese TV. It’s set to one channel. They don’t get a choice. But there you go. Look at that. The greeting for night time. Australia. Australia. Portugal. Portugal. Portugal. I like journal. Journal. Jello. Liverpool. Liverpool. John. I know the name. John John. No, I’m thinking of the dude from Newcastle. [Music] John Lennon. John Lennon. Oh, John Lennon. John Lennon. The Beatles. Yesterday. Oh, okay. Yes. But uh reality is a lot of these guys are probably Japan’s disappeared people. Johhatu people that have gotten rid of their IDs. They have no identity. They do little day jobs for money. They don’t register for government support. They can go here, chuck a bit of money in the machine, buy drinks, and no one knows who they are. No one’s able to transport and and they can stay in a hotel here for 1,400 yen a night. Some of them are cheap as 800 yen a night. Um, which is it’s literally the tatami mats. Four quid. Yeah. Uh, communal toilet. Um, it’s cheap as buggery, but you probably wouldn’t want to stay there. There you go. If you want to stay here, you can pay 800 yen. You don’t even need any ID to check in. But if you try to go there to the reception as a foreigner to check in, uh they’ll look at you, laugh, and say, “Sorry, we’re full.” Even if they’ve got 100 rooms available, right? Because they’re supporting these guys and they’re normally owned by the interesting gentlemen. We haven’t spoke about yet. They keep their network uh they they try to keep this area ghetto so they can have staff right with you. England. England. Welcome to Japan. What’s your name? Uh, May. So, so I am so so it’s name May. May I I’m May. May. My name’s Benjamin. No, because why I always wear uniform. May. Oh god. Police. Let’s go. [ __ ] It’s kicking off. Police. What’s going on? So, are you leaving Japan a long time? No, I’m tourist right now. At this moment, camera has to put it away. Cannot [ __ ] like No, right now. Right now. Like, Ben, in your pocket. In your pocket. In your pocket. Right now. Right now. In In your pocket. In your So, why did I have to put my camera in the pocket? What’s going on? Because you almost walked into an area called Tobit Shini with your camera in your hand. In which case, you could be in a little bit of trouble. We’ve arrived at a place called Tobi Dashi, which if I was to guess is probably about eight streets and about five different blocks of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of restaurants. Now, when you walk out the front of all of these restaurants, you’ll see two different people. One of them is like an obachan, which is like a grandma in Japan. She’s the manager of the restaurant holding up the menu. And there’ll be she’ll be wearing an apron. She’ll be wearing an apron. She has to prepare food, which is legal in Japan to prepare food. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and she’ll be sitting next to a girl who’s a bit more scantily clad, a little bit on show, sort of in a kimono or despic. Yes, this is taken about 15 takes by the way. Very immature banter between the Aussies and the Brits. Carry on. Can I say Pokémon? So, this is called Toby Dashini. And you walk down the grandma holding the menu. We’ll invite you Ben into the restaurant and say, “Ben, come on in. Come on in. Come on in.” You look at the menu and the minimum price you’ll see is 16,000 yen for 20 minutes of snacks or meal or tea and biscuit. 16,000 yen. 16 Sorry, sorry, Michael. Michael, they actually have now they have a god in menu which is more expensive. It’s 20,000 yen. So, some interesting gentlemen run the area and the last time I saw someone film down that area, um all the ladies in aprons went, “What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?” And a car turned up and two big burly dudes threw the guy in the back of the car and uh it peeled out and um I don’t know what happened to the guy. Really? Yeah. [ __ ] Yeah, cuz it might be controlled by the interesting gentleman. I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure it might be. So, once we cross this white line over here, we are absolutely not allowed to record, but you can do a quick sweep past here just to get a scope of the uh five blocks and however many streets of the area. Quick sweep. Okay, I’d recommend actually recording this. Yeah. What is it? This is actually a thing from the local mafia like doing a religious thing. This is the historic area here. We’re here. This is the historic area of Tibbit from about 1867, but that’s a 1921 map of the place. And this around the corner here is the actual gate that you used to have to go through to come into the red light district. It’s actual gate. Still the same one. Yeah. Beautiful. Look at that. Now, now it’s used for bicycle parking. No way. Look at it. But I can record. Like look, look at this [ __ ] Look, look at this [ __ ] Yeah. Amazing. It’s like craftsmanship. So nice. H it’s beautiful but never used and now it’s used as bicycle park and look at that and but I can’t record anything from here once we cross that line mate absolutely not no well I’ve been Bangkok I’ve been where else is like this around the world Vietnam Philippines but come on um yeah say what you want to say what we just seen well I want to know what uh good old backpacker Ben feels about what he’s just seen mate like I said I’ve seen seen this around Europe. I’ve seen this around Asia. Yeah. I didn’t know anything about Japan. I knew about the love hotels for what they are made for. I personally think it’s better like this than in how is done in Europe because I think it’s safe, it’s cleaner, and they probably are protected against like bad customers. Okay. There there is security, there is safety here for the ladies. Like I always say to people, if you’re going to have an industry like this, rather than being in a dingy little basement in an apartment building somewhere where it’s like under the table, no work protection, no nothing, you may as well have it like this where it’s safe for everybody. There’s security riding past right now who are there basically as police to make sure that you’re not recording. You know what? If down here something bad happens and they call the police, they will come here. They don’t want to come here. They will come here. And that’s kind of the whole idea. It’s safe for the women. It’s safe for the customers. It’s safe for everybody. But you come here knowing and respecting the rules. And it’s better than places where it might be a little bit like something could go horribly wrong and there’s no one to help out the people who are here. Cheers, mate. Cheers, Kobe. Campai. Cheers, lads. All right. Cheers, guys. Cheers, Katarina. All right. It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. The ganga. You don’t say that much here in Japan. It’s frowned upon. Why you don’t talk about it? We we normally say interesting gentleman because the M word is commonly known in Japan and so is the Y word. Why don’t you talk about it? Well, we just don’t say the word cuz then they know we’re talking about that and they listen. Okay. But if you say interesting gentleman, they just like what? And this area is predominantly run by them, right? Yeah. Okay. These are um with the interesting gentleman there’s tiers of interesting gentlemen like there’s chimpos and then it goes up and then goes up and up up and um um two levels up you get a maid man and then you get up like to the crazy bosses and stuff like that. So the thugs that everybody knows from the video games they’re normally chimp but they predominately run this whole area where we just been walking through and they’ve got a tattoos and stuff like that. Um, some of them have tattoos. Um, since the 80s and the early 90s, the tattoos haven’t become as prominent. Mhm. Um, it’s more the lower ranks get the tattoos than the higher ranks now. But when you say the word Yeah. Everyone’s like, “Oh, no, no, don’t talk about no. It’s like a taboo.” Yeah. It’s a taboo. You don’t talk about it. Everyone knows about it, but you don’t really talk about it. These are all mafia dudes. These guys? Yeah, they’re all mafia dudes. Why are they on posters on the garage door? Because they’re revered here cuz they look after the community. They come down like the shops. Some of the shops will like on a Sunday feed the homeless and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. Cuz they want to be perceived as being good people. Like when a natural disaster happens here, we’ll go, “Oh, there’s a disaster. What do we do?” The mafia will go in and they’ll bring food and they’ll bring blankets for the people and they’ll bring stuff cuz they want to be perceived as being helpful for the community. They’ll be there before the defense force, before the government giving out blankets and food, but people do not want to accept things from them once they know who they are. They have to wear hoods, keep a low profile, hide who they are, and that’s them there. Look, so you got Yeah, these will be mafia guys and a lady as well. Uh, no, maybe not. But some of these guys will be mafia. He looks mafia. He looks like a hard man. I would actually I would actually say that’s the hard man. Really? Yeah. The most dangerous part of Japan. All these houses are abandoned. These are abandoned. Yeah. Bloody hell. Yeah. You used to be able to see in the There’s like um dishes in the sink. Wait, so when would this person have left? 20 30 years ago. They probably died and no one just moved in. They didn’t sort it out. No. No. So like what happens in Japan with inheritance and stuff like that, your parents die. Um cuz you don’t want to live in this area. So you do your parents do your best. So you go to a good school and you move away to Tokyo and you live and your parents die and you inherit a house, but you don’t want the house. So you pretend not to know about the house. And the actual governments don’t talk to each other. So they can’t chase down the owner of the house for the property taxes, but they can’t confiscate the house. So they just leave abandoned. Leave it. There’s like 10 million abandoned houses in Japan. And then this obviously has been abandoned looks like 40 years. There’s an old shop. Yeah. No way. Someone owns it, but they don’t want to come. They don’t want to be associated with Nishinari. Like to the point where people are lie that they’re not from Nishinari. Currently, as Jamie was saying, there’s about 10 million abandoned houses in all of Japan. And one of the main reasons people don’t want them is due to superstition. used housing, even if it’s used for three, four, five, 10 years, whatever it is, people don’t want to buy those houses or live in them because you inherit all of the memories, the ghosts, the spirits, the demons, you’ve got like a huge culture of like superstition and effectively not wanting haunted houses. As a result, you end up with properties like this that will probably be eventually demolished, eventually taken over. Hello. Hello. Good night. Good night. Have a great night. Bye-bye. See you later. [Music] Listen, we’ve said goodbye to Jamie. Absolute legend. Michael introduced me to Jamie. Great stories. Absolute legend. Honestly, we’re now going Where are we going? Namba, the city center of Osaka, where there’s actually a little bit of night life. Okay, so we’re going to get a train to Namba and yeah, get a couple more drinks and see where every night goes. But that’s not a good thing. This is lethal. Honestly, it is lethal. You see your wire smile on the um Karen Laga. There you go. Anyway, let’s get a train and go to number. He was one straight away from where he needed to be to find the guy who knocked him in his house. Yes. How are you? All right. Thank you so much. Have a good time. You too. So, we’re in the heart of Osaka. This is where a lot of tourists come for a night out. There’s a lot of clubs around here, a lot of bars, and a lot of host. If you know what a host is, basically there’s two different types of hosts. So, you got a female host and a male host. But what Michael explains to me blew my mind. You see this here? Look, these are male hosts here in Japan. Michael, explain the male hosts. So these BS with the blonde hair, the blue hair, the contact lenses, the lipstick and the tattoos and whatever. Think of these guys like the Brad Pitts and the Angelina Jolie of Hollywood, that is what this is in Japan. The boy band, J-pop, K-pop kind of looking dudes who have a lot of makeup, lipstick, hair dye, whatever. And this guy probably makes about uh, if I was to guess, between $1,000 to $5,000 a night. 5,000 a night if I was to guess. Years ago, I watched a YouTube video about the top host in Tokyo in all of Japan. He made about 10 grand a night USD. So I thought originally that it’s just males that come here for female attention obviously, but you’re saying a lot of females come here for male attention. Oh yeah, big time. There might be people who are time poor, who are lonely, who are in relationships, who are married, who just want companionship services. This is your multi-billion dollar industry in Japan. Multi-billion dollars. Thank you. Thank you. Yay. What are you doing today? What are you doing tonight? Wa. What are you doing now? But I was working. Where are you going? I finished working. What does it say? Keep alive. Oh, I like it. Am I willing? Am I willing to tr Am I willing to truce? Nice. Nice. Nice to meet you. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Hey, how you doing? Who are these guys? Are they on a screen? Who are these people? Who are they? Me? Me? That’s you. That’s you. This is me. That’s you. No. Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton. Wow. Louis. That’s a present for backpack. Nice to meet you. Bye-bye. Thank you. We just met this guy apparently. See you later, guys. Bye-bye, mate. We met We just met some celebrities, mate. He looks like he was like, “That is me.” I don’t think it’s him. That’s him with blonde hair. That’s him with brown hair. No, I don’t think it’s him. Oh my god. Yeah. Showy, show. Let’s go. [Music] Nice. Nice. Nice. Japanese. Beautiful girls. Beautiful girls. Very beautiful girls. Very beautiful. Small face. Big face. Big face. Okay. Bye-bye. Byebye. Byebye. So, Kpai, backpacker Cat and Bashack. Kai. And how do you say cheers in Portuguese again? Ching ching. Ching ching. But get this. What does ching ching mean in Japanese? Chin chin in Japanese means penis. So please don’t y come here and yell that out loud. Cheers to well tonight to Jamie to backpacker Ben to backpacker cat to backpacker Michael and just regular Jamie. Hope you guys enjoyed seeing the ghetto at the dark side of Japan which is like the nicest place in London. So I hope you guys had a good time. So true. Chin chin. Well, yeah. Cheers to you guys watching back home. And by catch you in the morning. See you tomorrow.

I came to Osaka to visit the most dangerous place in Japan, Nishinari! The roughest ghetto in the country and home to the Yakuza. I was invited here by a subscriber who has lived here for a few years and offered to tour me round the ghetto to see how life really was…let’s go!

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