Japan Is Doomed

The last train is very, very important. Without it you are stuck doing one of two things; either spending one hell of a lot for a taxi, or staying out until the trains start again. Faced with this choice, we chose the second option. It turned out to be the right choice.

We decided to go out with our new friends to an Izakaya (another one…) in Shimokitazawa, just a few stops away from Shinjuku. However, we did not keep an eye on the time and ended up missing our last train back to Oji (00:15). Disheartened, we enquired to our native friends about the taxi service, and they gave us this simple sum to do to calculate the fare;

Miles to Destination x INFINITY = Price of Taxi Fare.

In other words, the taxis in Japan are so expensive it’s not even funny. It’s especially not funny at 1am. So we decided to head to Shibuya, always the centre of fun, to find something to do.

Whilst all the wholesome family fun of Japan ends at 6pm sharp, and we had to stay out until 5.30am, there were still a few options left to us which would make our parents proud. We could go to an all night internet cafe and send emails to all our friends, relatives and, as 4am drew near, just send them to random email addresses hoping we’d get something back. Incidentally, theguysittingnextome@shibuya.com why do you never write back?!

Our other option was to get stupid blind drunk. Let me inform new visitors to the site that I’m 18 so it wasn’t so much a choice as our duty. This left us with yet more options;

1. All Night Karaoke
   Singing for around six hours may sound fun to you, but after three hours or so what are you going to sing? I don’t even know why they put “I will always love you” by Whitney Houston on the machines anyway as nobody wants to hear it. Is that clear people in the Karaoke room next door.
2. Clubbing
   Hell Yes.

Clubbing isn’t as big in Japan as you might expect it to be, so we had to trapse around Shibuya for some time until we found a club called Atom. Atom offered a delightful mix of music you’d expect to find on a pregnant 13 year old chain smoker’s iPod - trance, hard house, soft house, soft trance and soft mints or something. But it was nearly 1am and the selection wasn’t great. We were IDed on the door, and handed over our Gaijin Cards (Foreigner Cards) that clearly state we are underage. However the security guys were Japanese and automatically assume we are 25 year old buisnessmen. So we were ushered in.

Imagine if a truck full of neon bracelets, steam and hair gel crashed into a truck full of subwoofers and strobe lights at 300mph. Then an awful lot of Japanese people covered in bronzer came and poured overpriced drinks over the steaming wreckage. That’s club Atom.

Although to be fair to Atom, it’s probably the safest nightclub in the entire world. Gone were the hooded drug dealers and heroin needles, replaced with people having a pretty harmless time. The only thing that let it down was the group of Japanese girls throwing themselves at every foreigner in the room. Classy.

Overall I can’t say I’ve developed a new fondness for The Black Eyed Peas, despite having heard three of their songs at least 6 times. But I did have a damn good time. There’s a few clubs in England that need to take a tip from the Japanese. Hell, there’s a few cities in England that could do with some advice.

We got the 5:45 train from Shibuya to Nagatacho, and got back to Oji for about 6am. Then we slept until 2am, about 8,000 yen out of pocket. Between us we could have got the taxi. But this was much more fun. I guess we did learn that missing the last train costs a lot of money though.

Sorry there’s no pictures in this update. There is in the next one. We went to Atami and it was the best thing I’ve done so far this gap year. Trust me.