Roppongi Nights

Fast-forwarding into the future a bit, I'd like to pen my clubbing experience while it's still fresh in my head.

Friday was to be the last weekend that one of the fellas here at the dorm could have before returning to Europe for school. He had invited everyone around to go with him to Roppongi for drinking, eating, drinking, karaoke, drinking, and dancing. I was fortunate enough to have met up with him and his regular clubbing friend at a bar the day before and gotten to know them better, so I happily accepted his offer. It would be a chance to learn from the master, as he put it. Both he and his friend were very kind and funny in spite of being a little obnoxious as well - I'm sure they were aware, but not interested in sacrificing their amusement to fit in. The date was set for Friday night.

I met up with those two and a few others at the train station around 7:00pm (someone was kind enough to print me a map since I'm still stuck in the stone age - no bike, cell-phone, and surrounded by strange odors). The station still functions the same in that you've got a colorful map placed directly above the ticket vending machines. This way, when you are squinting really hard at the scatter-plot of station names, other people mistakenly assume that you are waiting in line to buy your ride. It's not too bad, though - many places are kind enough to subscript English beneath the kanji, and if all else fails (and this applies everywhere) you can simply ask someone to help you.

Unfortunately, Roppongi isn't just a stone-throw away from Atsugi. It took us at least an hour to get there, going by train to Shinjuku and then a transfer to the subway. Before going underground, I was able to get a rechargeable, hassle-free, and all-around badass Suica card. You buy it for 2,000 yen and it comes with 1,500 worth of train travel already on it. No more disposable (ie. wasteful) stubs that you have to feed into the gates - this guy can be swiped over a sensor (think security badge) and away you go. When you're done with the card, I understand that you can get the other 500 yen refunded. This is good for me since I can just keep the card in my wallet and swipe the whole thing, and not needing to buy tickets every time I wish to travel - I only need to put money on the card when it is low. It works for Suica, too, in that I'm giving them an interest-free loan and permission to track my travel habits. It's anonymous data, however.

We got to Roppongi to find a summer festival in-progress. The station was unusually full of yukata-wearing girls, and everyone seemed to be in high spirits. We walked out and immediately into the mob. The flow of people crawled along at a snail's pace, but with a lion's strength; it would have been foolish to try standing still, but instead of staring around, we were more interested in finding some squid-on-a-stick. The pedestrian streets were lined with vendors of all varieties: food such as noodles, chicken, octopus, and hamburgers; snacks such as chocolate bananas, candy-apples, and cotton candy; sellers of traditional clothing, hand-crafted earthenwares, rare pokemon cards - yes, everything was here.

I enjoyed my grilled squid with a beer, the choco-banana didn't taste as rich as it looked, but I was held hostage in a state of terror after I tried one of the candy-coated grapes offered to me. The coating was very thin and not strong enough to survive in a spherical form wrapped around the grape, but it soon shattered into many stronger, triangular, and razor-sharp pieces. I couldn't choke them down for fear of shredding my esophagus, but I wasn't too inclined to keep them scattered around my gums for fear that someone would bump into my jaw. In spite of their immediate threat to my ability to eat or drink for the coming week, their flavor was still something pleasant, so I kept my head as high as possible and let my saliva do its job.

To my surprise Auld Lang Syne started playing overhead, signaling the end of the event. Vendors began scrambling to get rid of their unsold perishables while cunning buyers began haggling them. We walked to a subway entrance to meet up with some friends-of-friends. While sitting, I had time to observe some natives holding out flyers to passer-bys. This is something you see in the vicinity of every train station. You will walk by and be offered a fan or a small pack of tissues with advertising printed on the exterior. At least it's useful stuff, I suppose. Most Japanese are jaded to this behavior, so to make their quota, they have to get fancy with their lines and presentation.

The over-dressed, over-compensating fellow was only interested in handing out to certain women walking around him. Conversely, his female friend tried to pass her wares along to any guy who came by. After asking one of the more knowledgeable people with us (living here 5 years and fluent), he confirmed that the first was trying to recruit the girls to work at some sort of men's club - this could be anything from dressing up nice to not dressing at all - it wasn't possible to tell from our vantage point. His female accomplice was hoping to get the guys to attend said club. What was most interesting to me was that the pair didn't come off as particularly seedy people. They would occasionally take breaks from pacing around, sit together and strike up conversation. I wouldn't say that they were friends or lovers, but co-workers just like those in an office building.

Once the desired people appeared, we walked to the restaurant we had thankfully reserved a day before. It was all-you-can-drink with a few courses of food that would be periodically brought out. The event was structured for 8 people and we were allotted 2 hours to do our damage. The place was filled with small, wooden gazebos that had cloth draped around for a bit of privacy in a densely-packed area. Wondering how we were going to pile into one of those, we were escorted to a surprisingly large, dark room in the back with exact seating. Expecting to be gassed, we were all happy to find that the vents were for air conditioning and our room was equipped with a TV for karaoke! Sitting in our climate-controlled paradise, we ate and drank merrily. We sang, too.. I just don't think it would have been merry for those who loved the song prior to our interpretation.

Food offered: shrimp appetizer with melon and avocado, veggie salad, thin-crust mushroom pizza, seared tuna sashimi, pork fried rice. It was filling! My share of alcohol was varied (many types of umeshuu to try), but Japan continues to leave me unimpressed with its selection of beer. The only good one I've found that didn't come from another country has been Yebisu black beer, and even here it's expensive and hard to find. The meal was 3,000 yen per person and certainly worth every.. penny. Two hours flew by and we soon left for a club.

Carefully following the leader (my experience around Roppongi is minimal), we stopped inside and found ourselves drowning in a wall-to-wall sea of people. The place had no cover charge, so it didn't cost us anything to find out it was overflowing with gutter trash (ourselves included). We quickly moved along to a less obvious club that charged 2,500 yen to enter. This came with a free drink in addition to us being greeted (or assailed, as my tastebuds were) at the base of the steps with champagne handouts. This place was much roomier - to the extent of being able to dance - and the Japanese/gaijin ratio was pleasingly high: our group was the only one.

We were all enjoying ourselves in cycles of talking, drinking, and dancing. I was happy to already be back into the groove of things, thinking about how much fun I was going to have this year. I'm sure that my friend was equally pleased to end his stay with a night like this. It would seem like meeting new people could get tiresome or boring, but I would have no regrets in telling my story over and over again provided that I have the opportunity to listen to the stories of others in turn. [I spent an hour typing and deleting here, and ended up deciding I would just leave it at that. You will be spared my inner philosophical struggles and musings.. for now.]

Of course, the more people you have in your party, the probability of one of them getting into trouble increases (one of the reasons why I normally avoid groups such as this night's). I noticed one of my acquaintances sitting out of the way on the floor - not a good sight since there were plenty of chairs around. His responses to verbal stimulus were not encouraging. Thankfully, if you've attended a university for any length of time, you have experience in treatment. (Perhaps they should provide additional certification along with your major on the diploma they hand you.) Thinking it good to get him out of the loud, hot environment and into the cool air (and afraid of having him donate to the dance floor), I pulled him up enough to get his arm over me, and we slowly ascended.

We sat down outside and the host out front asked us to move away from the entrance. I could understand his concern, and having him hostage to my deciding to move or not, asked him to have some water brought up (the only kind available in the club was in a 10oz bottle for 500 yen a pop). He obliged, we went away a bit further, and kept going back and forth between me sitting him up to him laying down. It is unique when you don't really know the guy whose head you're figuratively holding over the toilet. (Being in this situation is one way to tell who your true friends are, though.) You want to be their friend - their advisor - but finding the balance of it all is tricky.. especially if you know that you will see them again, worse yet if you will be working with them!

Now normally I wouldn't be opposed to babysitting a fresh coma - certainly not one with the prospect of vomiting up half-digested rice (looks like maggots kawaii ^_^). Unfortunately, I had abandoned my more responsible friends and also had to get rid of the water I had been drinking. So I did what any upstanding citizen would do and left him on the street (I at least made sure he was on his side and facing the sewer grating - what do you take me for, a barbarian?). It was OK, though; after telling our party about the situation we organized to periodically check on him. What, it's not like he was going to get robbed.

This would be a good time to mention that when abroad, I consider myself a cultural ambassador. I will be many people's sole impression of what an American is and how they conduct themselves. I don't like to play the "gaijin card" (compare with the "race card") here, I pay close attention in order to not be "that American" (compare with "that guy"), and - especially since our country has fallen out of favor with many - I try extra hard to point out to people that Americans can be good people. I feel as though in the previous few days all of my prior work has been undermined. From subtle cultural things such as talking in elevators to seeing a fellow American roll around in his own chunky stew and wear it home on his shirt, I feel overwhelmed at the task of trying to represent Americans. I will just act for myself, and if others want to positively correlate that with something else such as race or nationality, fine, but I won't be cashing in on it later.

We took the first subway train in the morning to Shinjuku around 5:00am, and after a long, sleepy ride (first pick on seats, woohoo) back to Atsugi, we all made it home alive.