Another night in Roppongi


It’s a year and a week since my first visit to the fake casino in Tokyo, so tonight, rather than stay in my somewhat miserable hotel room all evening and wonder what I’d done with my life, I went out to see my friend at Backdoor, the worryingly named poker joint, and try to win some chips. I had a couple of big successes, more by luck than chance, as I’m still not sure what constitutes a high-scoring hand. After exhausting all the fun that worthless poker chips can provide, we went to a TGI Friday’s and had guacamole and deep fried mushrooms, a fitting culmination to a week where I avoided Japanese food pretty much all the time.

Well, I did manage a bowl of miso soup and some rice for dinner tonight, which was probably why I was hungry and desperate enough to go out drinking and eating terrible American food this evening.

On my way to the bar, the touts were out in force. A lot of them would tell me there was a great bar to go to – “hello sir, hello sir!” – at least they call me sir. One man told me I had a nice beard, but the last time that happened was some flamboyant clown in a bar in New York who tried to charge his bill to my room, so I paid him no heed and walked on.

The cloud of touts hadn’t evaporated after we left Backdoor to go to TGI Friday’s, although my friend cleared the way by yelling “we’re gay” at every tout from the alleyway to the crossroads. I wondered if he was going to keep shouting that at everyone we met for the entire night, but by the time we got inside TGI Friday’s he was no longer declaring our collective homosexuality, and instead we settled down to watch the Greatest Fights of Basketball on Youtube, and have the aforementioned guacamole. If not an appropriate end to my week in Tokyo, it has at least been an end.

I’ve not run since Sunday. I hope that I can get out and get some miles in my legs tomorrow morning, but I have to scarper and head to the airport fairly early, and it’s late late late now, so perhaps I’ll content myself with packing and listening to the drunks outside. Last year, perhaps those drunks could have been me. Perhaps I’m getting old.


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