[cont...]
So we walked off to the station and waited on the moderately busy platform. As two random girls walked past, Steve said "You're nice" (in English) which made them stop. I don't know what happened here but we all ended up talking on the train. They were called Nana and Noriko (who I kept on wanting to tell had the same name as the girl in Battle Royale) and Nana was studying English at Nova whilst Noriko had studied there before. Steve and Andy worked their charms but I took a step back (or maybe I was pushed?) and joined in every so often. Unfortunately, my joining in was usually just laughing at what I saw which is always going to make people uncomfortable. Anyway, they said Roppongi was a bit cack and told us not to go (as had Allan and Walid yesterday) but we got them to go to Roppongi. They were going to "show us" the way but we ended up on a train in a different direction. I thought we were going to get shafted but I should have had more faith in Japanese people and we did end up there via another station and a short cab ride.
Roppongi is very busy and there is loads of neon all over the place. There are a lot of foreigners too (or gaijin as they are known here) - far more than I have seen elsewhere so far. We end up at this place called Gas Panic - a club that Andy had heard of. I only knew it as an Oasis song but the place was nothing like that. In fact it was just the kind of place that I don't like. The style was like a rubbish, cheesy, small club back home with crap music to match. It was also full of American guys - apparently navy or other armed forces. There were a few Japanese girls there too but it felt quite far from Japan to me. Roppongi attracts a lot of gaijin[A] apparently, which also attracts a certain type of Japanese woman - those that want foreign boyfriends. Supposedly, there are loads of girls in Japan that want foreign boyfriends for whatever reason. Anyway, this place was gash and pretty expensive. I bought three drinks (one of which was soft) for JPY 2100, which seemed quite steep to me. Maybe the worst thing about it though, even worse than the music (which was now "pretty fly for a white guy" - with navy, shouty accompaniment), was that there was a massive sign that said that you must be drinking to stay in the club. And they had a load of bar staff that went around and checked that you had a drink! It was not the kind of atmosphere that I wanted to be in but I stayed for a while until I could hack it no more - about 1130. I was tired from the whole week to be honest and we were moving into our actual flats the next day and check out time was 10am. But this was just the start.
Everyone looked a bit pissed off in there so we all left but Andy and Steve wanted to stay out but only decided this at the station exit so I went in without them for my journey to Akabane. I had missed the last train. Even though Tokyo runs on trains and everywhere is open late, the trains stop running at a ridiculously early time - and run no later on a Saturday! So I was stuck. Totally stuck. I legged it outside on the off chance that Steve and Andy were outside but obviously not. And I had no chance at all of finding them in Roppongi either. Slightly panicked, I called Allan (the only Tokyoite I know) at about 1215 and asked him what the deal was. He said that there was no option back other than a taxi[B], which would be madly expensive. The only other suggestion was find somewhere to drink or eat and stay there for a while! Six hours! Hmmmm.
I really wanted to get out of Roppongi so I just walked. I walked from the station east (at a guess) and thought that I would get to another station soon and then work it out from there. I just wanted to get out of Roppongi as it was doing my head in. It reminded me a lot of that bit at the beginning of "The Beach" (film version obviously)[C] where he looks around at all the western tourists around Bangkok and feels very out of place. It's a flawed film but the start is decent.
[tbc]
---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---
A. Gaijin means, literally "outsider" and I came to saw it less as a term for foreigners and more as a term for unwanted foreigners. There is a more polite version which was printed on my ID card "gaikokujin" - the extra character refers to country and so is closer to "foreign person". Over time, I realised the difference in the contextual meaning of these words - at the time, I knew but the one word. Interestingly, the word gaijin was used much more regularly by those foreign people that spoke little or no Japanese themselves.↩
B. The lack of public transport at night was genuinely surprising and I have heard it be said that this was due to effective lobbying by the taxi trade. I don't know if this is true - but they do gain quite massively by it.↩
C. I do not read very often so the film version of The Beach is what I referred to. The relevant scene is about how Richard wants to escape the beaten track and I felt a bit like that at the time. I realise now that escaping the heavily beaten path is also the beaten path but this was also a little about wanting to escape the identikit nature, sometimes, of nightlife in these areas.↩
So we walked off to the station and waited on the moderately busy platform. As two random girls walked past, Steve said "You're nice" (in English) which made them stop. I don't know what happened here but we all ended up talking on the train. They were called Nana and Noriko (who I kept on wanting to tell had the same name as the girl in Battle Royale) and Nana was studying English at Nova whilst Noriko had studied there before. Steve and Andy worked their charms but I took a step back (or maybe I was pushed?) and joined in every so often. Unfortunately, my joining in was usually just laughing at what I saw which is always going to make people uncomfortable. Anyway, they said Roppongi was a bit cack and told us not to go (as had Allan and Walid yesterday) but we got them to go to Roppongi. They were going to "show us" the way but we ended up on a train in a different direction. I thought we were going to get shafted but I should have had more faith in Japanese people and we did end up there via another station and a short cab ride.
Roppongi is very busy and there is loads of neon all over the place. There are a lot of foreigners too (or gaijin as they are known here) - far more than I have seen elsewhere so far. We end up at this place called Gas Panic - a club that Andy had heard of. I only knew it as an Oasis song but the place was nothing like that. In fact it was just the kind of place that I don't like. The style was like a rubbish, cheesy, small club back home with crap music to match. It was also full of American guys - apparently navy or other armed forces. There were a few Japanese girls there too but it felt quite far from Japan to me. Roppongi attracts a lot of gaijin[A] apparently, which also attracts a certain type of Japanese woman - those that want foreign boyfriends. Supposedly, there are loads of girls in Japan that want foreign boyfriends for whatever reason. Anyway, this place was gash and pretty expensive. I bought three drinks (one of which was soft) for JPY 2100, which seemed quite steep to me. Maybe the worst thing about it though, even worse than the music (which was now "pretty fly for a white guy" - with navy, shouty accompaniment), was that there was a massive sign that said that you must be drinking to stay in the club. And they had a load of bar staff that went around and checked that you had a drink! It was not the kind of atmosphere that I wanted to be in but I stayed for a while until I could hack it no more - about 1130. I was tired from the whole week to be honest and we were moving into our actual flats the next day and check out time was 10am. But this was just the start.
Everyone looked a bit pissed off in there so we all left but Andy and Steve wanted to stay out but only decided this at the station exit so I went in without them for my journey to Akabane. I had missed the last train. Even though Tokyo runs on trains and everywhere is open late, the trains stop running at a ridiculously early time - and run no later on a Saturday! So I was stuck. Totally stuck. I legged it outside on the off chance that Steve and Andy were outside but obviously not. And I had no chance at all of finding them in Roppongi either. Slightly panicked, I called Allan (the only Tokyoite I know) at about 1215 and asked him what the deal was. He said that there was no option back other than a taxi[B], which would be madly expensive. The only other suggestion was find somewhere to drink or eat and stay there for a while! Six hours! Hmmmm.
I really wanted to get out of Roppongi so I just walked. I walked from the station east (at a guess) and thought that I would get to another station soon and then work it out from there. I just wanted to get out of Roppongi as it was doing my head in. It reminded me a lot of that bit at the beginning of "The Beach" (film version obviously)[C] where he looks around at all the western tourists around Bangkok and feels very out of place. It's a flawed film but the start is decent.
[tbc]
---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---
A. Gaijin means, literally "outsider" and I came to saw it less as a term for foreigners and more as a term for unwanted foreigners. There is a more polite version which was printed on my ID card "gaikokujin" - the extra character refers to country and so is closer to "foreign person". Over time, I realised the difference in the contextual meaning of these words - at the time, I knew but the one word. Interestingly, the word gaijin was used much more regularly by those foreign people that spoke little or no Japanese themselves.↩
B. The lack of public transport at night was genuinely surprising and I have heard it be said that this was due to effective lobbying by the taxi trade. I don't know if this is true - but they do gain quite massively by it.↩
C. I do not read very often so the film version of The Beach is what I referred to. The relevant scene is about how Richard wants to escape the beaten track and I felt a bit like that at the time. I realise now that escaping the heavily beaten path is also the beaten path but this was also a little about wanting to escape the identikit nature, sometimes, of nightlife in these areas.↩
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