Sons of Loki

So somehow we went to this birthday party at this club called Lebaron de Paris thanks to a case of fraudulent posturing mistaken identity and it was quite a bizarre deal. This was genuinely the sort of thing guys like us don’t get invited to; it was full of hipsters and DJs and gaijin male models and art directors and I-shit-you-not supermodels and skateboarding hipster supermodel DJs, and everybody knew everybody and kissed on cheeks and drank Dom Perignon from flutes, and everybody was so incredibly fashionable that to my naive eyes it looked like they were just wearing anything at all, from spandex tights and heels on one guy to bizarre sparkly goggles on another.
Anyway, it was the birthday of four of these rare, transcendent beings. It was a pretty good night in all, despite the ridiculous drink prices (just had my free gin rickey and dodged the bar staff for the rest of the night). I actually didn’t really talk to many people. Part of my brain’s going “But these are the kind of multi-talented globe-trotting mixed-media photographer-dj-writer-musician-artist-hipsters you admire! You want to be these people someday!” and the other part’s going “yeah, but what would we talk about?” and the first part’s all “well fine, be that way.”

But the funny thing is, I had a chat with this famous actor and didn’t even know who he was. This art director introduced Dan and I to his old friend, this actor guy, the “Japanese Orlando Bloom”, and we chatted for a bit about nothing in particular. And you could tell he was a somebody by the way people kept stopping by to pay their respects, and the way he could wave a glass in the air and get it refilled instantly, and the way he was wearing a red tracksuit in the middle of a club and no one minded.

So we talk about the usual topics – where we’re from, have you been to the UK, where’s the cool clubs in Tokyo at, that sort of stuff. We head back at 5am, sleep like the dead through the train home, and I catch a few hours kip before having to prepare for a presentation on Friday. And then I find this guy on Wikipedia, the actor guy, and he’s genuinely big! (He was even in this drama series I downloaded (never watched, though)) He has legions of female fans across the world fawning over him on the j-drama sites.

And I sat next to him in a club and he asked me if I liked Japanese food. Bizarre.

(Allegedly she’s singing “smoking cigars”, but you can never be too sure with Bjork)

Last night was my planned birthday celebrations, and I was genuinely heartened by just how many people turned up: old friends, new friends, friends who were sort of in between. A group of us set out from Shinjuku station to the Shinjuku Park Tower and the Hotel Park Hyatt. Oh, the sumptuous wood panelling, the carpets, the soft lighting and the overwhelming sense of sheer class! It’s another world in there, of luxury and considerable wealth, and it’s exciting just to spend an hour there.

So, up to the 54th floor, home to the New York Bar: I had cocked up slightly, telling people we’d dodge the cover charge if we got there before 8pm, but (probably to combat people like me) it turns out that it’s only if you leave before 8pm. But there was a general consensus of “hey, when will we next be here”, and so we settled in at our table and I ordered a bourbon and soda and after coordinating plans with the people who would be coming later/were already there/were lost basked in the general atmosphere. A jazz band came on. The lights of Shinjuku twinkled. Bar staff hurried to and fro. People drank. The bar was being all marbley and mahogany-y and muted and sombre and classy and I wished I could have just bottled up the ambience because it was so ridiculously cool.

Entry, service charge and one drink? 5,000 yen – £33. Yeah. Obscene luxury comes at a price.

So we ditched the Hyatt and met up with the others at Shinjuku, and then got to Shibuya to meet yet more people, so that in total we had me, Ella, Fran, Dan, Hattie, Satomi, Rob, Miles, Katy, Chris, Jan, Yuta, Tom, Kat, and Ruben, and it was so awesome to have all my friends there and to have everyone turn up, and that was what made it such a good night.

We split up: half of us went to get some drinks in, the other half went to get some food, and I hadn’t eaten so I went with them. Round about 11:30pm it was last trains, so most people headed home, leaving the Mancunians (Tom/Ruben/Kat), Jan, Rob, Dan, Satomi and Verity to PARTY HARD UNTIL DAWN. In theory. We couldn’t quite work out where we wanted to go, and Shinichi Osawa was playing in Roppongi but that was kinda expensive and then we missed the last train, and we could have gone to WOMB, but then I thought hey, Club Air is only 3,500 yen and I’d like to see what that’s like, so we marched through the backstreets of Shibuya and eventually stumbled across Air, a house/techno club hidden underneath a bohemian restaurant in a residential area. They were IDing, which meant Satomi and Verity couldn’t get in, unfortunately, so they went their separate ways with Rob while the six of us left headed down the flights of stairs into Air. And it was pretty good. Drinks weren’t too pricey (although anything isn’t too pricey after the Hyatt), and after a year at Leeds of Halo and Oceana I’d forgotten how much I enjoy house music. Some bald British chaps called Shapeshifters were DJing, which Tom was excited about. And so we partied into the wee hours, some Japanese girls we’d just met spontaneously erupted into singing “Happy Birthday” for me, Dan had his smuggled-in bottle of scotch plucked from his hand by one of the staff, some Spirytus was downed (96% – I was not touching that stuff), we exited merrily at 4:30am or so and got back to the station largely without incident (he says, glossing).

Funny thing on the way back: a trio of homebound musicians (judging by their instruments) on the train were talking in Japanese about De La Soul and Marvin Gaye, and I caught Tom’s eye, and he was like “Are you hearing this?” and suddenly the musicians went silent and the girl said “聞いた?” (“They heard?”) and an awkward moment was avoided when quick as a flash Tom launches into a conversation with them about Marvin Gaye, which lasts a merry serendipitous ten seconds before it’s our stop and we have to get off. Ah, those little connections you make with complete strangers, sometimes. It’s really rather wonderful.

Popped down to the local combini to buy Shonen Jump for to practice my reading, and it took me back to the heady summers of buying thick Ranma paperbacks for a whopping £12 from Abstract Sprocket, only Shonen Jump has far more content for friggin’ 240 yen (£1.50). What a country.

Yet a country where beer costs £6 a pint, as evidenced by our trip last night to joy-of-joys Roppongi, which was fun in the bizarre dumb way that only Roppongi can be.

Last night started off with the TUFS international welcome party, which had free sushi and beer – always a good combination. Unfortunately, with the heady enthusiasm of freshers’ week long, long behind me, I totally failed to meet many new people and forgot all the names, but this Leeds alumni who was at TUFS three years ago turned up and we had a very reassuring chat. It is fine. You can be put in level 200 and wind up in 500. Just study and read manga and you too can wind up graduating with a cushy teaching job, which is what he was doing.

So then I headed on down to Musashi-koganei to meet Miles, Rob and Katy, it being round about where they live, and we proceeded from McDonalds to Hub to the hour-long two-transfer journey to distant Roppongi. It was getting late. The trains would be stopping soon. There was no way back.

We picked up two highly excitable Australians, but managed to lose them by declining a taxi ride, and Rob rediscovered this club he’d been to last year. Typical Roppongi joint – ridiculously small and overpriced, with two or three confused looking tourists and misplaced salarymen – and yet with a heady enthusiasm that was strangely endearing, from the MJ-loving DJ to the gorgeous Michelle Yeoh lookalike behind the bar knocking back bottles of Corona and juggling limes (probably).

And so we partied until the early morn, left, found a Johnsons, ate some breakfast at 4am, got back to the station, and began the loong unpleasant train ride with the rest of the early birds back to the suburbs. A night out in Tokyo. Needed that, but I don’t think I’ll be doing it again any time soon.

Rob and I were so ridiculously sleep-deprived by the end that we spent about ten minutes laughing at a poster with illustrations of the stuff you shouldn’t do on escalators – don’t run, hold the handrail, don’t be an old man who falls over on the escalator and drops his cane and gets kicked in the head oh god it was not funny in the slightest and yet it was the funniest thing I have ever seen.

Oh, and Obama’s been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Good for him, and I do like Obama, but … uh … what has he really achieved so far? I have no doubt that by the end of his term he’ll have brought about some worthy changes but he’s not even been in office a year!