Almost 50% of orangutans have broken bones from falling out of trees.
Last Thursday, we set the scene for the adventure of the week. The wombat and Larrythecanadian are preparing to set out on a trip to a nightclub - Gas Panic in Roppongi. Roppongi is famous in Tokyo, Gas Panic is famous in Roppongi. Many things have been said about Gas Panic, many people have visited. Tonights excursion will seek to find out the truth behind the legend.
See you tomorrow!
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Leaving RAYs at eleven pm, we caught the train at Urawa into Shinjuku, where Gregtheamerican had instructed us to change to the subway for Roppongi. (I figured it would be better to go a different route, but we followed Gregtheamerican's advice).
Found the subway station, but the roller door was pulled down and locked, so we spent another fifteen minutes blundering around Shinjuku in the rain to find another entrance. Eventually got on, and arrived in Roppongi.
Larrythecanadian knew where to go next, having been there before, so I let him lead, and sure enough we arrived promptly at Gas Panic, about seventy minutes after leaving RAY.
Well, having heard so much about the place (Jack, was that where you went that time?) from so many people, I must admit I was expecting something a little bigger. The club was on the third and fourth floor of a building (and I hope that the other floors were used as offices or something, not residential), each floor being about ten metres square. Take about a fifth of this as bar space on the fourth floor, and take over half as bar space on the third floor, and you start to get very crowded very soon. That, and there would have been about 80 to a hundred people at any one time.
There was a sign on the wall that I tried to take a photo of a few times, but it was too dark (and I didnt have my camera with me, so all the photos I did get are courtesy of my phone), reading " Everybody must be drinking to remain in Gas Panic ", and sure enough there were roving staff members checking everyone all the time to make sure we did in fact have a drink in our hands, else they would ask us to leave. It was an exercise in holding onto drinks for as long as possible - especially as they flatly refuse to serve water. Being Japan, everything was hideously expensive, but it could have been much worse - the reason Larrythecanadian wanted to go when he did was it was Thursday, and everything is 400 yen all night, at least half price and then a fair bit more as compared to their normal prices. I guess nowhere in the world could compete with Shooters, though... oh, Canberra....
Quite possibly this was the single largest concentration of foreigners I had ever seen in Japan in the one place (though I expect to see more in the International House in Sendai). About half the population looked definitely unJapanese, although as the night wore on that figure dropped and more Japanese people seemed to come to replace them. Larrythecanadian was having fun, though personally I dont believe that a nightclub is the place to try looking for the love of one's life. One suspects though, that he wasnt looking for anything long term. We did almost get into a situation that had potential to be difficult to extract himself from; he was enjoying talking to three rather attractive girls, might have been in line for more than just a conversation, when it was revealed to him (courtesy, i think, of one of the staff members who was aware of these three) that the three girls were not, in fact, girls...
After calming down, and an hour or so later, Larrythecanadian was once again charming his way into a group of more girls, just two this time, and seemed to be having a great time. (I sincerely hope he didnt ask them their gender, but maybe he did, because he was calm enough this time.) All is not so normal though, for it turns out that this pair were a mother and daughter who go out to places like this together... riight.
What was the wombat doing during all this, you may ask? Well, apart from providing Larrythecanadian with the occasional bit of Japanese language help, not much really. Trying to conserve money and retain the ability to hear took most of my concentration all night.
We left Gas Panic at 5am when the noise stopped, the fluroescent lights came on, and everyone left. Larrythecanadian knew a little curry place around the corner that was open 24 hours, so we called in there at ten past five in the morning for a breakfast of curry rice, replenished fluids by drinking almost a litre of iced water each, then navigated the trains to get back to RAYs.
Thanks to following MY nose instead this time, we made it back in just under an hour, almost fifteen minutes quicker than Gregtheamerican's route (though this may have something to do with the ten minutes we spend blundering Shinjuku in the rain on the way), and crawled back into RAYs at seven in the morning. Tomtheamerican had just woken up, and wanted to hear all the details of the night, but Larrythecanadian curled up in the shower cubicle and slept, while I stretched out on the couch, decided it was uncomfortable, so had another couple of glasses of water and crawled into bed, not to emerge until well after dark.
The verdict? Yeah, it was an interesting experience. Would I go there again? No. Do I ever plan to spend that amount of money in a single day and not have anything to show for it in this country again? Not unless its involving buying a plane ticket or something similar to get me away from here.
Oh well...
I guess I'll go back to sleep now...
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