Day 2 Night: Roppongi, don’t hassle me.

Hey Julian back again this time with the aftermath post for Day 2.

Day 2, Tokyo, Nightfall.
Well after the travels we went through in the morning, we slept the afternoon away. Literally. We got home from our “trip” at around 1 pm local time, and I “napped” until about 7 pm that night. Yes, naps are awesome.

Fast forward 6 hours. I awake from my awesome nap (I could have slept longer, it was that awesome) and head for the shower to get ready for a night in Roppongi. And with our growing confidence we head for the nearest subway station and board the Oedo Line heading towards Roppongi, which is surprisingly only 5 stops away.

Once we got off there’s only one thing on our minds: search for GasPanic, which is apparently club that is predominated by youth, has no cover charge and since it was Thursday night (GasPanic Happy Day) drinks were ¥400 – ¥500 all night. That comes to about $4 – $5 cdn a drink. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Well if you’ve read the previous posts you would have assumed that of course we would have gone through some ordeal before actually getting to where we wanted, and of course this night was no different.

To start things off, we head off in a direction the moves directly away from where all the clubs actually were. So by the time we realize that we pretty much left the club district we decide to head back, but not in the same way we took, we vote to go around the block in hopes of stumbling upon it from the other side. Well as you could imagine we were wrong. As we try to somehow “circle” the block we come to a dead end, and instead of heading backwards and getting back to the main street we opt for an alley-way. Yeah we pretty much were expecting to either get stabbed or murdered, or like fall in a man-hole or something. We speedily walked through the alley and got back to the main road. But we still had no clue where GasPanic was.

Fast forward 10 minutes. We arrive at the same exit we came from when got off from the metro. Now with a general idea of where not to go, we opt for the street with the most lights. Well not such a good idea when you roll with Anthony. Apparently rolling with him is like rolling with a magnet for hustlers and lost locals.

Rewind to the morning before. I don’t know what it is but apparently Anthony looks enough like a local to be asked (or “hassled”) for information. When we were heading for Shibuya and coming into Harujuku, Anthony was approached for directions while we were waiting at a cross-walk. Mind you I was standing right beside him wearing shades so I could have been approached but oddly enough he looks more of a local than I do. Not that I’m complaining, because I would much rather not be approached at all in the first place. And you’ll see why in a minute.

Anyways back to Roppongi that night. When we finally head in the direction we want, but before we do so a Nigerian fellow (a hustler by all means) approaches Anthony. Now this dude was hassling him trying to get him into a gentlemen’s club. This is why I don’t mind so much not getting approached. But Anthony is more of a magnet, and when I say that I mean it. After getting rid of the first one, another dude approached him. Maybe it’s the way I look, Anthony and I have different fashion styles or its my young look. I figured we switched roles where I looked more like a local and Anthony was the foreigner. Because they just kept approaching him. And even when I tried to act like buffer to Anthony they would go through me to get to him. Quite hilarious if you ask me.

To carry on, Anthony now was walking at a hurried pace trying to lose the Nigerians, and I was just trying to keep up. When he finally did stop it was in front of GasPanic. We head inside, and it was nothing we expected. It was pretty small, barely full and to be honest there was nothing great about it. Granted it was only 9 pm….

But anyways I was happy to see they had Corona on there alcohol list. We got those right off the bat.
Well Anthony went into social mode, while me on the other hand not so much. He was talking to everyone while I was just drinking. Yeah, soft on my part, but in my defense my morale had been crushed from the day before. And besides I’m weaksauce. Continuing on, at the pace we were both drinking we would have been broke by night’s end. On my count it was about 3 beers in less than an hour. So Anthony said to slow the pace which we did. The catch for GasPanic is that you always need a drink in your hand, so suffice to say we milked our drinks soon afterward. The club got pretty packed for the size, but it was a sausage-fest. And we couldn’t really do much with the Japanese girls seeing how they didn’t speak a lick of English. The club was jammed by midnight. For what it was GasPanic was a pretty ok club.

Well we ended our stay at GasPanic at around 3 am, and head for a 24 hr McDonald’s across the street. And stayed there until the Subway re-opened. This city never sleeps, heading for the subway I saw that the streets were still full of life. Pretty cool. An awesome way to end Day 2 and start Day 3.

*Note after doing research apparently those Nigerians, were in fact hustlers but of a more different kind you would be normally accustomed to. They apparently try to lure Gaijin into their clubs in hopes of intoxicating their marks by alcohol and drugs and ring up the bill as they see fit. It’s sometimes a good thing to look like a local from Harujuku or Shibuya.

- Julian, never the target of flagrant3