Ripping it up in Roppongi
With the Coca Cola King
It’s always the people I remember best from my travels, rather than the landscapes or monuments. In the case of Tokyo, given the reluctance of the Japanese to answer in English, however great their grasp of the language, this means the other expatriates and visitors I run into while on the lash.
Roppongi is the district of Tokyo where gaijin gravitate as if by magnetic attraction. The all-night bars and karaoke joints are so densely packed that you can spend a whole night hopping between them without travelling more than a few hundred yards.
It’s possible to emerge, blinking like a mole, into the bright morning sunshine and head straight to work. In fact it is almost encouraged. There are vending machines on the streets dispensing crisply ironed shirts, and the fridges in the office have ten different varieties of concentrated Red Bull to keep you going until the next session starts.
Eddie is a short, barrel-chested New Yorker. Not the only suit in the place, but sporting the only tie still around a neck. The crowd is made up of a third each of Japanese teenagers, tourists and Western investment bankers on the prowl. All equally appreciative of his baritone renditions of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin classics. When he starts belting out “Start spreading the news…” the crowd largely stops talking and ordering drinks and pays some attention.
— Congratulations. Not many people can tackle those old standards — Thanks a lot. They don’t write them like that any more.
Eddie is at peace with himself. No family, either here or in the States, and no reason to change a thing in his life. He spends his days sorting out 401K investments for expatriate businessmen and his nights working appreciative crowds up and down Roppongi. He ain’t never going back to Brooklyn.
In between venues I spot a group of ridiculously glamorous Western girls handing out flyers, and approach the nearest one to see what’s on offer.
“This isn’t really for you”, she explains apologetically after a brief chat.
I’m momentarily nonplussed. It’s not yet that time of evening where I am a sweaty mess, with my shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Reasonably presentable, a mid-level executive on a mid-level expense account. What can be the problem?
Then I see one of her colleagues approach a group of silver-haired Japanese captains of industry, with razor-eyed muscle in tow, and the penny drops. I could drop a month’s salary just by walking through the door of the place they are touting.
— Why don’t you go to the Square Building? — I never heard of that one — It has a different disco on every floor, just 10 minutes walk away
I manage to get there by Japanifying the name when asking directions
— Sukuweya Beeruding?
Astrid reminds me of Scarlett Johanssen in Lost in Translation, and isn’t much older than the actress was then. Not so well acclimated as Eddie the singer, and it’s not entirely clear why she came or why she stays. Working in a Swedish vegetarian restaurant during the day, she also does a little modelling work to make ends meet. Not glamour modelling, she is at pains to point out. No, it seems that the Japanese have a strange affection for using Westerners in their print and TV advertising. Remember Bill Murray’s painful whisky ads in the movie?
Astrid doesn’t like Japanese men, nor the boisterous Western brokers, nor the tourists. It seems as though Roppongi might be the wrong place for her to be hanging out. She whispers away inaudibly, given the pounding techno soundtrack, and I catch maybe one in every five words. Nonetheless I nod and smile at appropriate intervals, and she seems content to carry on.
I’m more than happy to have the exclusive attention of a beautiful Scandinavian model for hours on end. Instagram, where were you when I needed you most?
The last stop of the night, a weird cocktail bar with no seats and high tables, arranged in lines like a school science lab. I’m having what I assure myself will be the last caipirinha of the evening when, with amazing synchronicity, I hear Brazilian Portugese voices being raised in mock argument behind me. But behind me is a group of young Japanese men and women in their twenties.
Toshio, the leader of the group, clues me in. Born in Brazil to Japanese parents on an extended work assignment, these unfortunate offspring are struggling to adapt now that they have been brought back to Japan. They still want to party and dance all day and night, as they assure me they did in Brazil. They hate the deferential and highly structured society in which they now find themselves. Living examples of the precedence of nurture over nature.
Nonetheless, Toshio seems to have picked up some business sense along the way. He insists that he is the personal franchisee for all distribution of Coca Cola products in Japan. I don’t question this, but he feels the need to prove it, whipping out an early smartphone and showing me his online bank account with impressively long lines of zeroes on all of the entries. This is Japan, of course, and all financial numbers have many zeroes at the end, but it can’t be denied that he goes on to spend like a Coca Cola magnate.
His largesse keeps me in caipirinhas until the sun is high in the sky again, at which point email addresses are exchanged and we stumble our separate ways back to our responsibilities.
There is no point in trying to relive the experiences of a night on the tiles in Tokyo, however deep the bonds which appear to have been formed.
My emails to Toshio’s crew go unanswered and I never run into Astrid again.
I just hope that Eddie is still belting out his Frank Sinatra classics.
Thanks for reading!
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