J in Japan: ♪ Take me down to sleaze town city, where the drinks ain't cheap and the massage girls ain't pretty ♪
The second my mates and I got out of our taxi, we had women asking us if we wanted "massages", people getting up in our faces, club flyers shoved into our mugs and guys literally dragging us into clubs. Welcome to Roppongi! The place were Japan's customs, good manners and clean living gets flushed down into a cesspool of ill manners, drunkeness, sleaze and people wanting to get it on with anybody drunk to enough to either open their legs or bend over.
Our night in Roppongi was an extremely long one. We hit up a club in Shibuya, and it was shit. So after 2 hours of watching people Para Para in front of screen-savers and 30 minutes of listening to a DJ play what had to be the most out-dated and boring selection of R&B ever; we decided to hop in a Taxi and head down to Roppongi to check out the infamous Gas panic. T'was a mistake. And what a mistake it was.
Clubs in Roppongi will make you broke. Because every club you go in comes with an annoying little man who will bully you into buying a drink. You could say no and ignore him. Only thing is: if you don't buy a drink, you gotta hit the door. So our hopes of hoping to plummet to the depths of Roppongi's clubs ended prematurely. With this, we holed ourselves up in the 24 hour McDonald's and waited for the first train home; occasionally wandering the street to check out the spectacles. Spectacles which included: conversing and joking around with a couple of the masseurs on the street (who caressed one of my mates, and then said I was cheap when I offered her a massage for 5 yen), watching a massuer who looked old enough to aplly for a state pension bully some all too willing gaijin into taking a massage, and a drunk homeless man standing at a pedestrian crossing with his willy out and swearing at every person that walked past.
Roppongi is nasty, and a bit of a dump. But you gotta check it out at least once. And if you're in on it all and are willing to exploit it, you can actually have a good time. Just make sure you have lots of money (an eye kept on said money), your wits about you, some hand sanitizer, breath mints and some condoms. Along with a hat and a scarf to cover your face in case you end up doing the walk of shame along the streets in the early morning.
Our night in Roppongi was an extremely long one. We hit up a club in Shibuya, and it was shit. So after 2 hours of watching people Para Para in front of screen-savers and 30 minutes of listening to a DJ play what had to be the most out-dated and boring selection of R&B ever; we decided to hop in a Taxi and head down to Roppongi to check out the infamous Gas panic. T'was a mistake. And what a mistake it was.
Clubs in Roppongi will make you broke. Because every club you go in comes with an annoying little man who will bully you into buying a drink. You could say no and ignore him. Only thing is: if you don't buy a drink, you gotta hit the door. So our hopes of hoping to plummet to the depths of Roppongi's clubs ended prematurely. With this, we holed ourselves up in the 24 hour McDonald's and waited for the first train home; occasionally wandering the street to check out the spectacles. Spectacles which included: conversing and joking around with a couple of the masseurs on the street (who caressed one of my mates, and then said I was cheap when I offered her a massage for 5 yen), watching a massuer who looked old enough to aplly for a state pension bully some all too willing gaijin into taking a massage, and a drunk homeless man standing at a pedestrian crossing with his willy out and swearing at every person that walked past.
Roppongi is nasty, and a bit of a dump. But you gotta check it out at least once. And if you're in on it all and are willing to exploit it, you can actually have a good time. Just make sure you have lots of money (an eye kept on said money), your wits about you, some hand sanitizer, breath mints and some condoms. Along with a hat and a scarf to cover your face in case you end up doing the walk of shame along the streets in the early morning.