Though it's one of Tokyo's busiest school districts, the area around JR Yoyogi Station lacks the lively atmosphere that marks other teenage haunts.
The hundreds of students who crowd the station's exits around 5 p.m. each day look gloomy and serious, having spent the first half of the day at their respective high schools and facing hours more of study at one of the area's cram schools.
Fukio Matsuda, a founding member of Yoyogi Seminar, the country's largest cram facility, said the area has since the 1950s focused on its development as an academic district. Its convenient location and relatively cheap real estate prices are the prime reasons cram and other special schools are attracted to the area, though these haven't done much for the area's economy or character, he said.