Fifteen years ago, Shokuan-dori was a dark no man's land trapped in the vacuum between Kabukicho and Shin-Okubo. The latter, at that time, was an area buzzing with life as it gained momentum as headquarters for Tokyo's non-Japanese Asian foreigners. But it wasn't until several years later that a few Korean restaurants opened nearby each other along Shokuan-dori and it became known as Little Seoul. Even so, with the exception of the odd Thai or Filipino streetwalker patrolling her beat, the area was still dead at night.
Yoshie-san has witnessed it all. Her family has been running a liquor store on Shokuan-dori for the past 20 years. And now that all of the dots on Tokyo's night map are connecting, this once lonely stretch of road is suddenly booming at night.
"Our retail liquor license was up, but rather than going through the red tape and expense of renewing it, we decided to try operating as a bar instead," says Yoshie-san, a capable and attractive woman somewhere in her 40s.