Bar-Hopping and Clubbing All-Night-Long, Japanese Style

Western-style partying often involves drinking and partying it up with complete strangers, allowing people to enlarge their friendship circles in rather random ways. The Japanese, on the other hand, generally tend to be rather private on these matters, preferring to drink and go crazy in the comfort of their own separate spaces. So, those who do party Western-style in Japan has to be very, eh, different and not conforming with the social norms...must be an interesting crowd just by that. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to find out for myself this weekend.

This Saturday, as I was lounging around at home, slowly finishing up some company tasks, a friend from San Diego suddenly called and said he is in Tokyo and wants to hang out. Sure, why not, especially since God knows when I will be in San Diego again. So we met up and headed for Shibuya. As we were discussing what to do over a dinner, the guy started talking about his clubbing experience in Roppongi. And here I was, been longing to go clubbing in Japan for quite awhile. The precondition has been set: this will be partying all-nighter, with both of us ready to dole out every penny we got in the wallet for the experience.

But before the clubs open up, a bit of time has to be killed. So, walking around Shibuya searching for every Western-style (and cheap) bar somehow became the consensus for a "good idea." In a neighborhood dominated by countless Japanese-style izakayas (居酒屋), there were surprisingly quite a few Western-themed places. What could be taken as British pubs and Spanish bar-cafes emerged out of nowhere in the winding back streets, drawing the pedestrians with their stereotypical decorations of foreign flags and brand names.

The insides weren't bad either. Wooden tables, soccer matches on TV, and the bar stands. The physical images seem to be imitated well. But something was still amiss. The rowdiness of the drunken white people (quite often loudly instigating bar fights) so commonly seen back in the States and Australia are replaced by polite Japanese couples sampling the various bar foods on offer. And the "friendliness" of the bar staff is defined as screaming on top of their lungs 「いらっしゃいませ！」(Welcome!) and 「ありがとうございました！」(Thanks!) to every person entering or leaving the bar's front door.

So much for giving the bar a Western atmosphere. In fact, its probably more apt to describe these places as "Western-style izakaya" rather than "Japanese-style bars." There seem to be much more emphasis on the eating than the drinking (e.g. we saw a group of high-school-looking girls drinking milkshakes in one of the "bars" we went to), and the Japanese people there tend to come to these bars out of curiosity ("let's try to be foreign today!") in their everyday routine of going to another izakaya to do the drinking.

And the price certainly justify the attitude. There were so many bars we skipped because the cheapest drink on sale was 500 Yen (whereas most izakayas do all-you-can-drink for around 1500 Yen/hour). Too much time was spending walking to look for cheap bars and not enough time actually drinking...the alcohol-induced buzz was still not there when the clock hit 10pm. No matter, clubbing time, and we headed over to the biggest one we can find, hoping we can actually get in...

Why? Neither of us had passports and both of us were in T-shirts and regular walking shoes. Yet, somehow, with our coats zipped up high and a couple of foreign ID cards, we managed to get in (and only paying 1000 Yen each with two free drinks!). "Its cuz we are foreign," we kept telling ourselves, reminding ourselves that we aren't some Japanese pretenders doing this out of curiosity (like those in the "foreign-looking" bars we were in before...oh there goes that "we" against "them" mentality again).

"A dance club is foreign" seems to be well-understood and the presence of foreigners to confirm that seems to be highly welcomed. Every sign in the club is bilingual in Japanese/English and often only in English (and when we left the club many many hours later, we got discount tickets for the place....clearly marked "Foreigners and Women Only")...foreigners must be more popular here? We better somehow prove it. So, I, the non-foreign-looking foreigner, decided that I am going to pretend that I don't speak a single word of Japanese for the rest of the night.

I began to regret the move really fast. The fact is that most (all) Japanese guys there weren't really into talking to random girls they find on the dance floor. The girls were certainly happy to say hi to the foreign guy who approach them in English (cuz they are the only strangers approaching them), but conversations go absolutely nowhere, thanks to loud background noise + low English levels. I probably had a better shot playing the wingman/translator for my foreign-looking friend.

And frankly, I would think that most Japanese girls there had no expectation that the solicitations of the foreigners can be so aggressive. In a place with no personal space and random guys touching you from all over, most girls must be quite scared even with the availability of girls only dancing and sitting spaces. (It's the morning commute on public transport, only crazier...so much my admiration of Japanese trains). Even I, who were very polite with how I approached the girls, was elbowed a few times in the stomach....

Well, not a problem alcohol cannot resolve. The two of us must have spent 10000 Yen just on alcohol in that damned pace (like I said, we were prepared to spend big, but the emptiness of the wallet the morning after was still shocking nonetheless). But the girls here are smart. They chain-smoke, but do not chain-drink. Keeping a clear mind for constant observation, they just make us guys look like total idiots "dancing" on the floor...But then, all of the sudden, the buzz from the alcohol goes away and cannot be recovered with more drinks.

So sleepy, so tipsy, yet at the same time so cleared in the mind. The joy of dancing was suddenly replaced with a thought of "why am I still here"...yet every girl that stumbled with us onto that first train of the morning at 5am looked incredibly pretty and familiar from the dance floor. stumbled back to my bedroom and onto my bed, passed out, and woke up in the afternoon bewildered, "what just happened?!"...yet, a partying portion remained...would I do that again? "Hell yeah."