Yep, that area just plain hates me. When I first crashed there, I was lvl 4 and was in the middle of the clearing, heading towards the Rest Area, for the evacuation quest. I crashed, and was unable to get back in, as it kept crashing.
I couldn't do anything else, so I deleted my character, and remade him, and got back to where I was. I turned all the graphics down to the lowest setting, turned off shadows and effects, and faced the wall furthest to the right when making my way to the portal. This seemed to work, as I didn't crash, so I assumed that my computer couldn't handle the large area.
After completing the evac quest, I accepted the merchant quest, and left the rest area. I made my way to the forest, and made sure to keep the camera away from the majority of the area. However I crashed shortly afterwards, having ran only a few paces away from the gate to the rest area.
It's not my computer, sadly. If it was, I could easily remedy the issue by buying a better computer, but mine is already very fast, and Onigiri works very well on it.
That's about all I can give regarding this bug. It happens in the Kikaigahara area, nowhere else for me.