Roppongi with Rem: Finale

Rem and I make our way to the downtown section of Roppongi looking for a bar and a club. Rem asks if I know the area, I say “No” so he turns to ask the first cute girl he sees where to party. The Rem’s victim giggles and suggests we continue straight ahead until we reach the main strip. As we cross the street, a large African man makes a beeline for us and starts into his spiel about how his club is the best place in the world and if we would only take a moment of our time to check it out, we will be pleasantly surprised. Guaranteed. Well, we decline and start making our way down the rest of the street, and Mr. Aggressive keeps following us, telling us how we “have to” visit his club. We tell him that because we have just arrived we’re going to look around the whole block before we jump into any random club. Finally after about a block and a half the guy turns away, and out of nowhere a different African guy comes from a different club and starts doing the same thing.

This happens for about half an hour, about 8 guys in all. And while we were trying to be polite at first, by the end of it, we were just stating things pretty bluntly. For example, this guy comes out and points to his sign that says “All drinks 600Y” and the guy goes “You can’t find a better price in town” to which I reply, “What about over there” and point to a 20 foot neon sign that glows “All drinks 500Y”. He was unphased and continued talking. Another guy we actually liked because his sales pitch made the most sense “How ‘bout you two fine looking gentlemen step into my club. Gentlemen shouldn’t be standing in the rain” because it was raining pretty hard at the time, I actually almost thought it was a good idea, if nothing else, then to just get out of the rain.

Alas, we didn’t realize it, but we came into close enough proximity of the first guy, Mr. Aggressive, and he swooped in to claim us—he yelled at another guy who approached us, “NO! THESE ARE MINE!” which Rem and I thought was pretty funny. I looked over his card once again, and realized how insanely over priced the club was. It was 7000 for all you can drink, and keep in mine I paid 3600 with Masa for all you can drink, and that included catered food.

The guy was giving us a really long talk about how much better our lives would be if we just went into his club, when Rem interrupted him and proclaimed, “We’re going to THAT club. I just saw, like, 5 girls walk in there.” Mr. Aggressive look so dejected that I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

We ducked into the club Rem wanted to go to, then realized it sucked, and decided to go to Shibuya, and get away from all the foreigners. Roppongi was packed with foreigners, and I didn’t really like that. There was no authentic Japanese anything there. So we headed off to Shibuya.

At Shibuya we walked all around with out committing to go to any one place until we found a 200Y per beer place. There we traded buying rounds, until we left to find a club. We found this club called “Gas-Panic” which made me laugh out loud, and insisted that we at least check it out. Once inside, there was no cover charge, a real plus, but you had to buy a drink. But the drinks weren’t over priced, we were each able to buy a beer for about 500Y, which is fine for a bar. Once inside, we met these two white guys—they insisted that they were from Europe, but I think they were Australian. Seriously, who else calls each other “Mate” every 5 seconds? I was just about to give them my condolences about the Crocodile Hunter, when they told me they we’re from Scotland. Now I know the difference between those accents, Willie from the Simpsons is has a Scottish accent, but I wasn’t about to split hairs.

Anyway, these guys were decent, and after a little while they said they heard of a bar with a live band, but they didn’t know how to get there, ie, will Rem please help them ask someone how to get there. We decided to just go with them, and once we found the place, Rem negotiated with the Japanese bouncer to cut our cover charge of 2000Y each down to 1500Y each because there were 4 of us. The rest of the night the guys were so happy about Rem saving them the equivalent of about 5 bucks that they kept buying us drinks at the second bar, which was a little more expensive than “gas-panic” at about 8 bucks each.

The music was absolute crap. Good lord, it was loud, terrible, and it didn’t stop. These were like Japanese Punk-rockers, or something, but they totally sucked. At least at this point we had a few drinks in us so it was endurable. Rem started talking to various people, and I had a little conversation with this one girl, but I couldn’t hear anything she was saying, not that I would have understood it, but it was a moderately enjoyable time. I think I’m enjoying writing about it a little more.

We leave the bar at some ungodly hour, like 3 am, so we take a taxi back to Rem’s aunt’s house. But instead of having the guy drop us off in front of her house, Rem tells him to stop at a Seven Eleven. We load up on pork-buns, ice cream and lots and lots of water, and stumble the remaining few blocks home.

We pass out around 4 in the morning and wake up at 10 the next day. We’re both still drunk, and I felt like there was a layer of bologna stuck between my brain and my skull. Rem walked me to the train station with his suitcase (he was leaving to go back to America that day) and I took what seems like the longest train ride ever to my dorm.

I got back and crash on my bed, but woke up an hour later with a strange feeling that I had forgotten something. I checked to see when college registration was in my folder, knowing that it was sometime that week, and scan until I find that it was. . . 9am that morning!

Is Japan awesome or what?