The evening: a drunken karaoke collaboration
Lastly, we go to
Shinjuku for a night out. Many Westerners have seen footage of Tokyoites getting pushed onto subway trains by uniformed attendants; this actually happens at very few stations and at rush hour only, but this is Shinjuku, the busiest station in the world, and it’s 6pm. We tumble out of the sardine-packed train with everyone else, then turn to watch the
oshiya pushing waiting customers on. There’s just enough time to catch the best sunset views in the city by racing up to the observatory atop the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building – as usual, mist and pollution obscure distant
Mount Fuji, but it’s still a joy to see this gigantic city switching on its lights. Back on the ground, it’s pure cliché: a mad neon jungle, with staggered signboards flashing away into the distance.
It’s now 8pm, and time for a performance at the wild and wonderful Robot Restaurant. The place has almost nothing to do with food: it’s all about the various performing robots – and, I’ll admit, the dozens of scantily-clad dancing girls. My own favourite is Disco Stu (possibly not his real name), a rollerblading, robot-costumed dancing dude with a rainbow afro-wig. After the show, a robot butler serves us cocktails in the upstairs bar.
Laughing my head off at the crazy robot show has made me even more tired – at this point, alcohol is the only remedy. Luckily, we’re just a short walk from Golden Gai, a nightlife district crammed with what must be hundreds of shoebox-sized bars. You have to get lucky, since these places are only as enjoyable as the few other people who can fit inside them, but we’ve struck gold with a few hilarious local businessmen – the Japanese are hugely conservative up to a point, but that point seems to be around four tumblers of sake. We end up drinking most of the bottle I’d intended to leave behind the bar for another day, and the garrulous businessmen encourage me to down the remainder before leaving. Finally, we stagger over to a nearby karaoke bar, to make use of their wonderfully affordable drink-and-sing-all-you-can specials. After belting out Barbie Girl (a long-ingrained habit), and Yatta! (the best Japanese song ever made), it’s finally time to hit the hay, more convinced than ever that Tokyo is my favourite city on earth.
Top image: Shinjuku, Golden Gai, Tokyo, Japan © Shutterstock