Roppongi

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Location: Tokyo, Japan

There's a district in Tokyo named Roppongi that's famous for Western-style nightlife. It's full of bars, clubs, restaurants, and foreigners.

I took the subway to Roppongi and started out at an Irish pub. I sat at the bar. Two younger men from Australia came in and sat next to me. They worked construction in Australia and were spending a long weekend in Tokyo. I suppose that, if you're Australian, a city that's "only" nine hours away by plane seems close enough for a weekend getaway.

I sipped a Guinness while they drank pitchers of beer. One of them had written down a nightclub recommendation. They asked me if I wanted to go with them. I said sure. I didn't have any other plans.

We left the bar. The Australians wanted to take a cab to the nightclub. I said we should try to figure out where it was first. I didn't want to pay for a cab ride that might be very long, nor did I want to pay for a cab to somewhere that we could easily walk to.

The Australians were drunk and unimpressed with my reasoning. They hailed a cab and we all got in. We showed the cab driver the slip of paper with the name of the nightclub. The driver looked annoyed, drove straight for exactly one block, charged us $8, and let us out at the nightclub.

I decided I was better off without the Australians.

I walked around a bit. Annoyingly, Roppongi is full of large Nigerian men who will approach you and "promote" shady bars and clubs. Some promote more forcefully than others. One man grabbed my arm and tried to pull me to a bar. I had had enough and took the subway back to my hostel.

The next day, the hostel posted a notice about an American tourist who had been drugged, beat up, robbed, and left in a gutter in Roppongi, with the advice to avoid Roppongi.

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