Announcements at a JR Shibuya Station exit warn people to be on guard for strangers approaching them, and police outside are on constant watch to ensure pedestrians aren't accosted.
Both efforts apparently do little to prevent such encounters, which usually involve a young man soliciting a young female stranger to get involved in various "night entertainment" businesses, or in discouraging the woman from listening to the spiel.
"They are annoying. But it is one of the inevitable risks women walking in Shibuya face," said a 19-year-old vocational school student from Kawasaki, after being stopped for 15 minutes by one such "scout" clad in black suit. She said the man asked her to work in a sex parlor.