Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

Amazingly, Roppongi wasn’t always Nasty Town. Rick Kennedy, in his 1988 book Home Sweet Tokyo , describes Roppongi as “a quiet suburb.” Yes, Roppongi was once a pretty respectable neighborhood where the upper echelon of expatriates-many of them ambassadors working at one of the many embassies in the area-hung out to talk politics and capitalism and maybe receive the odd lap dance. One such meeting place was Nick’s Pizza, owned by Japan’s most infamous non-Japanese Japanese citizen, American flunky Nick Zappetti, who coincidentally is buried in my old neighborhood, Fujisawa.

Then the libidinous aliens landed, and now Roppongi looks more like a futuristic neon heap of horny humanity than a place where you go to see and be seen. One fun game to play while standing and waiting for your friends in front of the Almond Café at Roppongi Crossing (allegedly the most crowded meeting place in the world) and checking out the lovely ladies in your field of vision is to try and guess who is a) a prostitute, b) a hostess, c) just a girl out for a good time, and d) a dude. You’ll never determine the answer, but that’s half the fun!

Roppongi as the fun-for-the-whole-family neighborhood is a thing of the past, and a laughable concept in this day and age. The Yakuza seem to like it, but I’d sooner eat fungus than spend an evening there.

As it turns out, I will have the chance to do both, since Mr. Grant has some pretty potent magic mushrooms on him, and before you can say, “God, these taste like shit,” I am with Grant, Rachel, and Josephine (another teacher at Lane), and two of our party-loving students, Shunsuke and Tatsuya, in a pair of taxis heading towards Roppongi, ready to see funky colors and dance with them.

The club is tucked away on a back street, and we circle around for ages looking for it, weaving through the throngs of people, like the giant gaggle of high school girls edging out into the road, tapping away at their glowing cell phones; the skateboarding teenage hipsters with afros and basketball jerseys that appear to float on air; the wasted salarymen stumbling from their izakayas and getting a little too touchy-feely with their equally drunk and uncomfortable-looking female subordinates. We finally just decide to get out of the cab and try to find the stupid club on foot.

“That way there’s a chance we’ll run into someone selling mushrooms on the street, in case we need more,” Rachel rationalizes, and I remember why I love her. (She thinks of everything.)

Tokyo is an infuriating place to navigate if you only have an address. Japanese addresses typically involve three numbers separated by dashes (e.g., 3-35-31). The first of these is the sub-area where the house or building is located, the second is the block it is on, and the third is the building number. And when these numbers are added together, the sum equals the percentage chance that you are never going to find the building you’re looking for. Even Japanese people give directions by saying things like, “Yeah, OK, you see that Daily Yamazaki store up there on the left? You’re gonna want to turn right there and then head straight on until you hit the Shinto graveyard. Across from the graveyard there’s a post office, and next to the post office is an apartment building that looks like a giant Toblerone on its side-you know, the European chocolates? Anyway, between the two is an alley, and if you squint your eyes real tight you can see that a few yards up is a vending machine selling girls’ panties and batteries. Next to it is a staircase. Take the staircase to the second floor. The STD clinic is right there, you can’t miss it.” We have an address, but no one can figure out if we are even in the vicinity of the correct neighborhood. I start to think this club is just a myth dreamed up by Grant’s friend who is desperate for some street cred. We all twirl around and look high and low for any evidence of a club amongst all the anonymous-looking buildings.

The mushrooms are starting to work some magic on my brain, and I am very close to giving up and suggesting we all go to the Tower Records in Shibuya and ride up and down the glass elevator when a small pack of young Tokyo club-goers, intent on dancing the night away judging by their little backpacks, fanny packs, water bottles, and glow-in-the-dark bracelets, passes by and ducks into a building. We follow them into the elevator, and seven floors later we have found the mythical club of our dreams.

We join the queue as Grant manages to track down his friend, who is a tanned blonde Australian, and she magnanimously gives us five hundred yen off the regular entrance fee (about four dollars). I guess this is nice of her, but I’d hoped for more of a discount for being so well-connected. I can’t really say that I blame her, though. Our group is six people strong, yet we have among us no whistles, glow sticks, visors, pacifiers, giant barrettes, or lollipops. Who goes out on the town without that stuff?

I suppose it always helps to look deserving if you’re asking to get into a club for free. I look at my reflection in the glass: I’d chosen a semi-loose, comfortable-fitting thermal top, and now I wonder if maybe I should have put forth a little effort and opted for the painfully tight V-necked white T-shirt, the one that pits my pecs and stomach against each other in a fierce fight for people’s attention and usually has me sucking in everything all evening, unable to enjoy my cocktail. (It glows in the dark under black lights real nice, though.)

Grant chats with his friend, and Rachel, Shunsuke, and Tatsuya make a beeline for the dance floor, while Josephine and I lounge around looking at the graphics bursting onto the film screen behind the dance floor and think, “I wanna live there.” A cursory glance at the floor proves there are definitely some dancers here, weaving and bending and bouncing off each other like big Japanese rubber bands.

One dancing Japanese girl-Hello Kiddy?-makes me very happy I’d come out, because otherwise I would’ve missed the most preposterously dressed female in all the land. This being the city where I’d once seen a girl dressed in a skirt made of McDonald’s drinking straws, that’s saying a lot. Hello Kiddy has on a Snoopy backpack, pigtails tied back by giant barrettes with sparkling flowers encased in clear plastic globes, a pacifier and visor hanging around her neck, fifty-three glow-in-the-dark rubber bangles on each arm, oversized cargo pants, and a cut-off shirt with a clock face on it and the words “the stream of silent silky time makes you feel graceful” written under it. Yes, she was graceful. Like a student driver.

It definitely isn’t the most happening place in Roppongi tonight. The crowd is about half Japanese and half non, but there are only about forty people here so far. As usual, I start feeling like there’s something else far more exciting going on in the city and that’s where everyone is. Maybe Fuji TV is having its annual Russian Roulette Bungee-Jumping Challenge atop the building housing its main headquarters in Odaiba. Perhaps there’s a nude kendo tournament at Shibuya Crossing. Or an impromptu contest in Harajuku to see which girl can hold the most shopping bags while talking on her cell phone and hopping on one foot in platform boots. That kind of thing. Sure, I should just chill out and have fun where I am, but still, if there’s something better, shouldn’t we try and find it?

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long for folks to start rolling in, and I am able to kick back and relax. Even if there is something better going on, at least these people are missing it, too.

Jo and I stand to the side of the main dance floor as the lights and shadows swirl around us, cuddling our mushroomed heads. “Oh yes,” we think, “it has started.” We lock arms, close our eyes, and allow the ’shroom surge to wash over us, riding the wave together. We look closely at each other’s faces, decide that the human nose is just about the funniest thing we’ve ever seen, and collapse into tearful giggles.