Dance All Night.
May. 19th, 2007 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19When I was first planning my trip over here, I somehow thought that I would end up doing nothing to celebrate my birthday. That could not have been farther from the truth.
I met friends in Shibuya last night at about 7:30. (Originally we had plans to meet some of our Korean friends in Shinjuku, but I guess they went out the night before and were too hungover for Saturday's festivities.) The club we were interested in visiting wasn't in swing yet, and everyone had already eaten, so we started the evening off with an hour of Karaoke while we waited for the night to deepen and the stragglers to arrive. As the birthday girl, I began the festivities with a rendition of David Lee Roth's "Just a Gigolo" - a personal favorite. Later I sang Bowie's "Young Americans" because how could I not? Other titles came from Dir En Grey, Plastic Tree, the Beach Boys, and System of a Down - to name a few. We closed out our session with a group rendering of "My Way."
After karaoke, we began planning for the rest of the evening and the boys lobbied heavily for us girls to spend the night out with them. I guess they were out solo the previous night and hadn't had as much fun as they thought they would on the prowl. Thus began an amusing, and twisted, production of getting in touch with Liz and Amanda's dorm managers to let them know. (My family was already aware that I was going clubbing and didn't need to be told anything. We've had numerous conversations about the fact that I'm an adult and that they don't care when I come home as long as I let them know whether or not I want dinner.)
Liz and Amanda had forgotten the dorm number. So we suggested they call one of the program coordinators to ask for it. Attempts to reach Kunii-san were a round failure, so we called Tanaka-san and he provided the number (passing along wishes for a happy birthday in the process). But when they called the dorm, only the husband was available. I guess a husband-wife team manages the dorm. The wife speaks excellent English - the husband none. After a minute of failure to communicate they handed the phone off to me, saying "Take it away, level three." (I swear to god, I'm going to get a shirt made that says "Level Three GO!" Anytime anything happens, I get tapped to translate and negotiate. It's actually kind of cool.) I got on the phone and impressed the hell out of myself by being able to make a non-English speaker completely understand that I was Liz and Amanda's friend speaking for them, that they were not coming home, that they'd be at my house for the night (not true, but a necessary lie under the circumstances) and be home in the morning, and that my address and phone number were as follows.
With everyone's accommodations settled, and with the stragglers finally accounted for, we headed off for the club (by way of a cheap 24-hour curry joint, where I wolfed some curry-rice and cola to prepare for the rigors of the evening). The club had perked up by the time we got there at a little after ten. The proprietor remembered Rocky and the boys from the previous night, and was extremely happy to see nine people show up and pay cover. The fee was about $12 and included two drinks for women (one drink for men). I had a Manhattan and then contemplated the dance floor.
When we first arrived a disc jockey was lining up hip hop tracks, and it wasn't all that interesting. So we spent the first part of the stay shooting the breeze. But at about eleven, the bar transformed into a themed club and a real live dj showed up to play some house techno. At that point it was on. We hit the dance floor in force, single-handedly inspiring the other patrons to join in the fun. Before we got out there it was a basically dead joint, but from that point on it was a packed dance floor with Japanese and foreign patrons grooving together, laughing, singing, giving high-fives, and busting it out.
It was so much fun!
I remember at one point - after we'd been dancing for hours - I was bouncing up and down, singing along to some song. One of my class friends was dancing with me on one side, and some random Japanese guy was dancing with me on the other side. And I just thought, "I'm clubbing in Tokyo. I am the luckiest person on the face of the earth to be able to have this experience." I felt so free and delighted the whole time. My endorphins were definitely in high gear. Everyone partied - even those members of our group who at first claimed that they wouldn't be. Not a single person in our group failed to spend at least 80% of their time on that dance floor. It was a fucking blast.
Nearly every person at this club was cool, and I felt for most of the time like everyone was in a collective groove state. At one point, a kind of greasy, unpleasant guy showed up and started bothering me, but I surreptitiously signaled one of the guys (who's well over the six-foot mark) to come and bail me out - which he did with great aplomb.
A little after three, with around four hours of consecutive dancing under our belts, we left the club and hit an all-night ramen joint to replenish our depleted calories. (Rocky Choi and I estimated that we'd all probably burned about 1000 calories in the course of the night.) When we came out of the ramen place the sun was rising - as it does early here. We walked a few members of our party back to the club, because they wanted to keep it going a bit longer, and then headed out to find a manga cafe to chill in until the trains started running again. The manga cafe was full (unsurprising for a Saturday night) so we instead found a place to sit near the station and watched the sun coming up, the sky lightening by degrees, and the growing flux of all-night partygoers as they stirred from their hiding spots and made their way to the metro and JR trains.
At five we parted ways, with promises to do it all again sometime soon. I rode the Odakyu line home in the growing sunshine. Along the way, a random guy wrote me a note saying (in somewhat confused English) that I had beautiful eyes. I think he was trying to hook up, but - even though he looked nice - that kind of hook up is not my scene. Still, it was flattering, and I went home with a grin on my face to catch a few hours of sleep before facing the rest of the day.
I met friends in Shibuya last night at about 7:30. (Originally we had plans to meet some of our Korean friends in Shinjuku, but I guess they went out the night before and were too hungover for Saturday's festivities.) The club we were interested in visiting wasn't in swing yet, and everyone had already eaten, so we started the evening off with an hour of Karaoke while we waited for the night to deepen and the stragglers to arrive. As the birthday girl, I began the festivities with a rendition of David Lee Roth's "Just a Gigolo" - a personal favorite. Later I sang Bowie's "Young Americans" because how could I not? Other titles came from Dir En Grey, Plastic Tree, the Beach Boys, and System of a Down - to name a few. We closed out our session with a group rendering of "My Way."
After karaoke, we began planning for the rest of the evening and the boys lobbied heavily for us girls to spend the night out with them. I guess they were out solo the previous night and hadn't had as much fun as they thought they would on the prowl. Thus began an amusing, and twisted, production of getting in touch with Liz and Amanda's dorm managers to let them know. (My family was already aware that I was going clubbing and didn't need to be told anything. We've had numerous conversations about the fact that I'm an adult and that they don't care when I come home as long as I let them know whether or not I want dinner.)
Liz and Amanda had forgotten the dorm number. So we suggested they call one of the program coordinators to ask for it. Attempts to reach Kunii-san were a round failure, so we called Tanaka-san and he provided the number (passing along wishes for a happy birthday in the process). But when they called the dorm, only the husband was available. I guess a husband-wife team manages the dorm. The wife speaks excellent English - the husband none. After a minute of failure to communicate they handed the phone off to me, saying "Take it away, level three." (I swear to god, I'm going to get a shirt made that says "Level Three GO!" Anytime anything happens, I get tapped to translate and negotiate. It's actually kind of cool.) I got on the phone and impressed the hell out of myself by being able to make a non-English speaker completely understand that I was Liz and Amanda's friend speaking for them, that they were not coming home, that they'd be at my house for the night (not true, but a necessary lie under the circumstances) and be home in the morning, and that my address and phone number were as follows.
With everyone's accommodations settled, and with the stragglers finally accounted for, we headed off for the club (by way of a cheap 24-hour curry joint, where I wolfed some curry-rice and cola to prepare for the rigors of the evening). The club had perked up by the time we got there at a little after ten. The proprietor remembered Rocky and the boys from the previous night, and was extremely happy to see nine people show up and pay cover. The fee was about $12 and included two drinks for women (one drink for men). I had a Manhattan and then contemplated the dance floor.
When we first arrived a disc jockey was lining up hip hop tracks, and it wasn't all that interesting. So we spent the first part of the stay shooting the breeze. But at about eleven, the bar transformed into a themed club and a real live dj showed up to play some house techno. At that point it was on. We hit the dance floor in force, single-handedly inspiring the other patrons to join in the fun. Before we got out there it was a basically dead joint, but from that point on it was a packed dance floor with Japanese and foreign patrons grooving together, laughing, singing, giving high-fives, and busting it out.
It was so much fun!
I remember at one point - after we'd been dancing for hours - I was bouncing up and down, singing along to some song. One of my class friends was dancing with me on one side, and some random Japanese guy was dancing with me on the other side. And I just thought, "I'm clubbing in Tokyo. I am the luckiest person on the face of the earth to be able to have this experience." I felt so free and delighted the whole time. My endorphins were definitely in high gear. Everyone partied - even those members of our group who at first claimed that they wouldn't be. Not a single person in our group failed to spend at least 80% of their time on that dance floor. It was a fucking blast.
Nearly every person at this club was cool, and I felt for most of the time like everyone was in a collective groove state. At one point, a kind of greasy, unpleasant guy showed up and started bothering me, but I surreptitiously signaled one of the guys (who's well over the six-foot mark) to come and bail me out - which he did with great aplomb.
A little after three, with around four hours of consecutive dancing under our belts, we left the club and hit an all-night ramen joint to replenish our depleted calories. (Rocky Choi and I estimated that we'd all probably burned about 1000 calories in the course of the night.) When we came out of the ramen place the sun was rising - as it does early here. We walked a few members of our party back to the club, because they wanted to keep it going a bit longer, and then headed out to find a manga cafe to chill in until the trains started running again. The manga cafe was full (unsurprising for a Saturday night) so we instead found a place to sit near the station and watched the sun coming up, the sky lightening by degrees, and the growing flux of all-night partygoers as they stirred from their hiding spots and made their way to the metro and JR trains.
At five we parted ways, with promises to do it all again sometime soon. I rode the Odakyu line home in the growing sunshine. Along the way, a random guy wrote me a note saying (in somewhat confused English) that I had beautiful eyes. I think he was trying to hook up, but - even though he looked nice - that kind of hook up is not my scene. Still, it was flattering, and I went home with a grin on my face to catch a few hours of sleep before facing the rest of the day.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 08:56 pm (UTC)While I'm sure it would be no where as cool as clubbing all night in Tokyo with what sounds like an awesome group of people, at some point we should go out clubbing together... I don't think I've been since Fetish Nights stopped.