TOKYO (AFP) — Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists.

Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district.

There is no official data but anecdotal evidence collected by Agence France-Presse (AFP) suggests that increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media.

One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real tourist attraction” and that around half her customers are foreigners.

“Since they can’t communicate in Japanese, they write ‘how much is it?’ on their phones,” using an automatic translator, said Ria, who did not use her real name.

The men going to Okubo Park are mostly from South Korea, China or Taiwan but also from North America and Europe.

Awareness abroad has grown partly because of videos on social media platforms such as TikTok or the Chinese Bilibili.

The videos are often shot without consent, sometimes live, and some of the clips have racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

‘Love hotels’

Ria and others say they are self-employed, with no involvement from pimps. They take their clients to nearby “love hotels.”

The average price is between 15,000 and 30,000 yen ($105 to $210) but the women are under pressure to charge less and less, said Ria, 26.

That was because “the cost of living and the decline in purchasing power” are making many Japanese men demand a lower price, she said.

“Foreigners tend not to negotiate the price and will usually give us more,” she said.

Nineteen-year-old Azu, who is sitting next to her at the Rescue Hub, a shelter set up by a non-profit group, agrees.

“In the best-case scenario, I can charge a client 20,000 yen per hour with a condom, sometimes a little more,” Azu said.

Money worries are among the issues pushing more and more women to become sex workers, said Rescue Hub head Arata Sakamoto.

It wasn’t very common for Japanese women to be sex workers on the street a decade ago, Sakamoto told AFP.

However, since the Covid-19 pandemic in particular, “young women have started selling sex at low prices.”

“I think this is one of the reasons why the number of foreign clients has increased,” he said.