|
Well I think what you experienced is a combination of two characteristics of Japanese culture and society:
First is the prevalence of person to person advertising (which is by no means a technical term, just something I made up). How many times do you get greeted by workers to check out a store that sells "normal things" like clothes, food, books, etc. It's just something that I think is very widely used in Japanese stores.
Second is the lack of zoning. I don't know much about Tokyo, but in Kyoto, there were a bunch of shady looking love hotels next to the center I studied at (by no means a large school, less than 50 people there, so don't tell me it's catering to all the hormone-filled college students). These love hotels were also in a really nice residental neighborhood. Also, in the more downtown area, there were car dealerships, bookstores, family restaurants, specialty stores, love hotels, strip clubs, tourist shops, buddhist temples, people's houses all mixed in. No such thing as an auto-row, a China town, anything like that
Strip clubs are all over the place in American cities, but they're usually concentrated in an area, so unless you go there looking for strip clubs, you won't come across it while looking for a bookstore like you did in Japan. Couple that with the active advertising, and you become much more aware of a strip-club/prostitution "culture" that is probably pretty active in most American cities
|