Toyoko kids

I was recently wandering around Kabukicho my brother and his girlfriend, early evening, and was surprised to see a lot of young men and women, who were quite grungily dressed and usually had brightly coloured hair, sitting in a group on the street. They looked very settled, as if they had been there for a while, and were not trying to interact with passers-by. It seems like they were 'Tokoyo kids' – teens who hang around city centres in groups because they feel they have nowhere else to go, often because of a problematic home life. Unfortunately, this makes them prey to drug pushers and pimps. There's a good podcast about this phenomenon, which isn't just in Tokyo, in the latest Japan Today podcast.


Edit: Thomas – I'm not sure that I like these auto-links that are now appearing. In this case, readers got sent to an article about kabuki! Now that I've edited the post again, it's disappeared though.

A while ago, we had this thread about Toyoko kids, with @Haruto Uzumaki 's interesting comment.


Sorry about the autolinks. They are all internal links to our cultural or historical content. In your case, it was triggered by "Kabuki." Changing it to "Kabukicho" solved the issue.

Thanks! I somehow missed that thread two years ago.

You mean they're teenagers behaving like teenagers. I used to hang around the Arndale, @Lothor or, if I was being adventurous, the Merseyway Shopping Centre in Stockport

Xenforo needs to upgrade their Similar threads logic. Even though you linked that thread, it still doesn't show up in the Similar Threads list.