Walking Sapporo

I'm living in a new city! Actually that's not true, it just feels like that. Simply by moving from north to south, I'm literally coming at the city from another angle, and it feels completely different. Having the time to wander, and people-watch, and duck down interesting side-streets, is letting me be a tourist in the city I've lived in for 3 years. Yesterday I found all these cool shops I had never seen before, where I could leaf through old 1950s Japanese housewife filmstar mags, or buy bunches of old testtubes and beakers to do my own home science experiments. Afterwards, I wandered through the nightlife district of Susukino, our very own gaudy, glitzy fairground-for-adults. On the street corners are stalls selling candyfloss and baked squid on sticks, and all around you are the signs for the hostess clubs, with shiny signs showing the women who work inside, just their heads floating in cherry blossom-pink clouds, topped with bleached orange bouffy hairstyles and with pearls of mascara dripping from their eyelashes. Some of these places are called 'soaplands' although they have very little to do with getting clean and much more to do with getting dirty. There are signs for the host clubs, too, with photos of young lads with violet-lensed eyes and baby-soft skin. In among all these brightly lit and decidedly un-seedy feeling places, are sushi bars, noodle bars, drinking spots and fancy restaurants. Everything is all mixed in together. There's no particular red-light district, or restaurant district. It's all one and the same. Last night I saw three middle-aged women in kimonos standing outside the door of their very expensive restaurant waving goodbye to a cute little girl who was leaving with her family, in amongst the strip clubs. How does this work? I think it's because there is never any evidence of violence, drugs or crime, on the streets, anyway. It always feels incredibly safe. Japanese people are just so freaking well-behaved - when they're in public, that is. When it comes to sharing the soap, it might be a different story.
Which brings me to the last part of my walk home. I was walking through Nakajima Park, as I do every night, and it suddenly occurred to me how weird that was - here I was, walking through a park in the middle of a city, at about midnight, and almost everyone I passed was a woman by herself. I've been taking it for granted here in Japan, but it makes me angry that it is only here that I can do that. Why can't women walk through a city at night and feel safe, anywhere in the world?