Club Chaos, Tokyo, Japan (Feb 2006)

It is Saturday night in Tokyo and we are going out on the town. I planned this weeks before we got on the plane, laboriously poring over tourist attractions, maps, and train schedules, to route us here on a Saturday night while still being in Kyoto for the flea market and having time for our jaunts to Hiroshima and Mt. Fuji. I’m tired, we’ve been here a week and go go go, out like a light every night when my head hits the pillow, or the floor as the case may be here in Taito Ryokan, up before the sun and out the door to see what we can see, do what we can do. I may not have much gas left in the tank but I’m determined to hit the Tokyo club scene.

Carefully planned and timed, as always, we are headed out to the train station at 11:40pm. The trains will stop running at midnight and not begin again until 5am, and we are going to Roppongi which is all the way across the city so we are going to stay out until the trains go again. There’s a Canadian couple at our ryokan, they are going out too, we have both selected goth/industrial clubs to visit from fragmented internet information and word of mouth referrals. Different clubs, but in the same district, the nightlife is mostly in Roppongi and Shinjuku, so we are headed to the same station at the same time.

The five of us foreigners are the only people in the station, elaborately attired in crenellated shades of black. Two lines intersect at this station, the red and the mauve, a train pulls up and we get on. The Canadians question us briefly, are we sure this is the right train they don’t think so, Debi assures them that I am fantastic at this, Navigatrix Extraordinaire, I have not led us astray once in my untangling of the various transit systems.

They get on the train with us, we go one stop and it’s the end of the line, I have led us astray and it is nearing midnight, the witching hour or perhaps it should be called the taxi hour here in Tokyo. We got away with it, the last train of the night pulls up and off we go, a smooth ride across and around the sprawling, dense, alien city, picking up more passengers as we progress, everyone is headed to Roppongi on the last train of the night.

Disembarking, midnight. In our calibration of transit timing and disco napping, a few salient details got missed, like bathrooms and cigarettes, but we have time, lots of time, we will be out until 5am. The train station in Roppongi is surrounded by slick clubs and restaurants, seems to be mostly geared towards tourists but this is not for us, we are wending our way further out to the edges to a local club but first we need to find a bathroom. There’s a Starbucks here, there’s a Starbucks everywhere and I have thus far refused permission to Debi and Chris to stop in one despite their desire for familiar coffee, it’s bad coffee in Seattle and it’s still bad coffee in Tokyo, they are consistent that way. However, Starbucks does have a very lenient bathroom policy, so they are going to get their lattes this time as we visit what I have dubbed Bathrooms Around the World.

Caffeinated anew, we set forth again, we just need to find cigarettes on the way to the club. We walk, and walk, and the clubs and restaurants peter out, thinner on the ground, the stores are all closed and strangely not a cigarette vending machine in sight, surprising in this country of whiskey, beer, condoms, cigarettes, porn, and small plastic totems all available for a quantity of yen coins inserted in anonymous slots.

We are almost to the club when we see a convenience store, rush towards it only to determine after a great deal of pantomime that they do not sell cigarettes. It’s a nightlife district, and we are puzzled by the lack of readily available implements of sin, isn’t that kind of the point? There is more gesturing, there is a place further down, we will overshoot the club and go there and then retrace our steps.

A deserted block or two later and we see the sign for the club, discreet but present, and at least I was right about that, I have not led us astray twice in a row. We keep walking and there is nothing out here, past a small park, over a highway and I think we are no longer technically in Roppongi who knows where we are and this is taking a long, long time but we have time tonight. Victory, and we climb the steps and walk back through the rattling cage of the pedestrian overpass, this is not glamorous at all, there are no beautiful people here revelling but we will be there soon.

Now it’s after 1am, a perfectly appropriate time to arrive at a nightclub in Tokyo. Back to the Cube, and down the stairs below the discreet sign. We can hear the pounding music but it’s a wall of noise, not sure what’s playing but hoping it will be stompy and weird and crunchy industrial. We pay the admission fee and receive drink tickets in exchange, push through the curtain and then stop dead in our tracks, a clot in the flow of the club.

This is not goth/industrial.

It’s Japanese Pop.

But we are here, and we have drink tickets, and mostly we are here, dammit, we have committed to being out until 5am and so we shall, we can make this work but it is going to take a lot of booze so let’s get started on that as soon as possible and hopefully I can ignore the techno remix of Chumbawumba long enough to get so drunk I don’t care.

Fruity cocktails in hand, and we are hovering in a corner of the smoky, foggy dance floor, there’s a projection screen and a disco ball and some flashing lasers illuminating the giddy teenage girls in candy-colored clothes. Finish our drinks and even dance a little bit, or try to, not finding my groove here, float to the other side of the dance floor and look who’s here, our Canadian friends. It seems their club selection has also gone awry, not even open anymore, so they followed us here and I have led them astray again, the next song sounds so familiar and for a moment a brief bubble of hope rises through me, perhaps this is something I know, something I want to dance to, something to get my party started for real, this the night that we experience Tokyo nightlife dammit.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I recognize it, allright; oh, it’s familiar. It’s a dance remix of “Under the Sea,” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”

Time to go.

I collect Debi and Chris, we leave our Canadian friends behind they are going to make the best of it and we are off to prospect for new frontiers, it’s a nightclub district after all there has to be something else, somewhere else to be, somewhere that we are not dancing to Disney in our stompy boots and short skirts and elaborate eyeliner. It is a little after 2am, three hours to go and I am sure we can find something.

We start walking.

Pass through a more populated area, but the patrons heaving in and out of these clubs are certainly not our target demographic so we keep going and eventually the crowds subside. We stop after a few deserted blocks, do we really want to keep going this way? Well, we know there’s nothing back the way we came, nothing we want closer to the train station, so we will walk along the train line underneath the tracks to the next stop and see if there’s anything there, it’s on the way to Shinjuku, the other club district, there’s got to be something between the two.

There’s not.

We have been walking long enough to sober up and are still far from Shinjuku. We could hop a cab, but we haven’t seen a cab in a while and who knows what we would find in Shinjuku anyway, Roppongi was supposed to be a foolproof night out and has failed us despite detailed research. It is right about then that we see a small neon sign: Chaos.

It’s not the dance club we’re seeking, but it’s somewhere and it probably has booze. We beeline for it.

Inside the unassuming door and it’s a lush lounge, red banquettes and velvet everywhere, a long, immaculately polished bar. There are a few Brits at the far end and a smiling Japanese bartender. He speaks English, thank god, and we settle onto barstools and order Manhattans. I am peering about after we order, fortunately Debi is keeping an eye on the bartender and nearly shouts, lunging across the bar to prevent whatever sin he is about to commit on our innocent drinks. There follows a brief multilingual lesson on how to make a Manhattan, as Debi mentors the eager to please bartender.

They don’t turn out so bad, and it’s nice to sit here, so tired after days of touristing, it’s comfortable and warm and welcoming. We chat with the Brits a little bit, have another round. It’s after 3am now, we’ll get going again soon, there’s still a chance for tonight although it’s narrowing quickly, we are approaching 5am and I am starting to lose the equilibrium between being tipsy enough to keep going and being too drunk and exhausted to stay awake, I need the adrenaline of the dance floor to moderate that delicate chemistry and let’s have another round. The bartender can’t hide his shock that the gaijin want yet more, bad bartender your job is to pour not to judge and we have to keep going until 5am the trains won’t run again until then so more Manhattans and make it snappy.

Sitting on the stool and slumping into it, I spill my drink on the bar. I am still chatting lazily with Chris and Debi but my eyes are closed, I am resting my eyes I am not sleeping, just leaning my head on my hand a little because its so heavy and I’ve been holding it up all day and its not 5am yet and I am so tired, go go go for a week and always alert, always navigating and taking charge and determining vectors and leading the charge and its nice to rest my eyes for a moment, still awake, game on, see I’m still sipping my drink just resting my head a little bit in between sips. The rests are lasting longer but its still to early for the trains so maybe I will just close my eyes for a few minutes more and lean my forehead down on my arm on the bar, just a few minutes.

I am vaguely aware of voices above my head, Debi saying “Kate do you want to go,” I mumble back something like “No trains yet, just gotta make it another 20 minutes” but I think it probably comes out as “shtrains….shoon…” More voices over my head, and then clearly I hear “I think it’s time we got her home,” they are in charge now I have ceded all tour leader responsibility, they don’t know what they’re doing, they are not Navigatrices but they are going to have to work it out.

Apparently they do, because a few minutes later I am being led out the door, Debi’s arm around my side, and poured into the back of a cab. I give up all pretense of being awake and sleep instantly, missing our late night ride across the entire city. They shake me awake when we reach the ryokan, I start up and plunge towards the door, towards the pillow or the floor as it may be here, must be horizontal, but I pull up sharply in the vestibule. After a week of culturally insensitive stomping into various temples and museums and forgetting to remove my shoes, it has finally sunk in here, now, at 5am, drunky drunk and wearing boots that lace up to my knees. I sway as I lean over, clawing the laces out and ripping the boots from my poor tired feet, toss them on the pile of shoes. Stagger forward, fingers trailing on the walls but can’t lean on them as I’d like to, they’re made mostly of rice paper, end of the hall and fumble with the tiny lock, Chris takes it from me and opens the door I nearly fall onto the thin mat that passes for a bed and I am probably asleep already while falling.