Pining For The Past

2009 has been a fantastic year for me. I’ve gotten engaged, I’ve reunited with a lot of old friends from high school and college, I’ve made a dozen or two trips around China, not to mention a short trip to San Francisco and Vegas for my five year high school reunion. It’s just been a real blast all around, but as this decade is coming to a close, I’m getting this nostalgic feeling for the beginning of it. Where did all the years go? It’s like life has been on an accelerator since my high school graduation. And those high school days were so sweet I can’t help but pine for them to be back, despite life being good right now.

My family moved to Tokyo at the close of the 90’s, when the 2000’s as we known them were really starting to get in gear. Late-90’s pop culture remained with glam and stutter rap really starting to take off, shitty alternative rock/post-grunge/numetal hitting its peak, and the electronica/rave scene making dance floors move. Tokyo was a great place to be a teenager during this time. We got all of the pop culture coming out of the West in a big way, including Japan’s own version of it. The streets were safe to walk at night (still are I assume), the World Cup came, bars and clubs let us in, 9/11 was so far away, and public transport was immaculate.

I was going to the American School In Japan (ASIJ), starting in 8th grade during the 1999/2000 school year. All the political drama in the States was easy to ignore, the age of “terror” hadn’t started, there was Napster. That 1997-1999 period was a relatively depressing time where I was taken out of the Taipei American School and put in public middle school in Michigan. You can imagine that not being easy for a chubby geek with a bowl cut. I was apart of that whole geeky Japan/Anime obsession in the West, and was then taken out and put in Japan itself, where things drastically changed. My geekier side became much less apparent, I slimmed out and got a new haircut, started playing sports (albeit badly), girls weren’t so distant like they used to be, and Anime didn’t interest me half as much as it used to where then, that old geeky obsession felt like another’s fantasy.

I made friends immediately, many of which I’m still close-to from a long distance. I remember terrorizing the streets of Tokyo with fireworks and BB guns. It was insane what a 14-year-old boy could get his hands on and get away with. Having fierce BB gun warfare in public parks at night that most always ended in being chased off by the cops but never really facing the consequences. Setting off fireworks on the rooftops of Homat apartment buildings in Hiro-o. I remember just tossing those peony rolls off rooftops and shooting off bottle rockets in the middle of the night with good friends and cute girls. And no one ever got hurt.

I remember those crazy 8th grade dances. One friend bringing a cheap bottle of whiskey before the dance started and, although I didn’t drink at the time, passing it around behind a wall in one of ASIJ’s nearby parks. Slow dancing up close to girls I was crushing on. Crazy sleepovers that followed where boys would be boys watching skin flicks and pissing off of balconies. I even remember getting friends in student government to secretly stamp our hands in the locker room to get in the dance for free, even though it only cost 200 yen or so ($2 essentially).

And those 8th grade school trips were hard to forget if you went to ASIJ. Hitting up Lake Sai at the foot of Mt. Fuji, doing all sorts of lovely outdoor activities like rock climbing and mountain biking. And I can’t forget the group of students (which many of my friends belonged to) who couldn’t go rock climbing and instead had to run around the lake because there was a little rain. These guys still don’t let this go and that Lake Sai trip is unfortunately tainted in their mind. I remember making a bonfire, where those of us who were caught got crusty duty the next morning, cleaning up the latrines a hundred or two students had already been using for two days. Squat toilets too, and not everybody had the best aim. I remember my English teacher catching me walking out by the lake and away from camp with a lady friend one night, where she let us continue on without a problem and only a smirk. Then there was that first onsen experience (Japanese hot springs) where swimsuits are a no go. The whole naked in front of other guys stigma you get in the West disappeared and things got real. Then there was the various attempts to peak into the girls’ section and only catching glimpses of old ladies (though a few guys got lucky).

Then there was that trip to Hokkaido, where a couple of us skied in the backcountry around the proper skiing slopes, where that same friend sneaking whiskey to dances got caught trying to sneak beer in his luggage on the flight up. I remember getting naked for the onsen and rolling around in the snow before jumping in. Then there was that other trip I made to a small town in Hokkaido, Shinshinotsu, where I got to be an exchange student for a few days in a real Japanese middle school and stayed in a typical Japanese family household.

The end of that school year was like an explosive bang, with that rowdy trip to Showa park, where we rode around on mama-san bicycles like an outlaw motorcycle gang and kicked over rows and rows of parked bikes so they fell like dominoes, and just get riding on screaming arriba arriba. What horrible children we were. I remember seeing Romeo Must Die in theaters with a bunch of classmates and being blown away (and I still love Aaliyah). And there was that 8th grade school sleepover, where we got to party all night all over campus with little supervision. No sleep, we stayed up til dawn shooting the shit and busting gags. A lot of friends left after that school year as they do in international schools, and what better way to say goodbye.

We started that freshman year of high school with early football pre-training sessions, catching the 5am train to the suburbs of Tokyo out to ASIJ, and being so exhausted afterwards we’d crash on couches in furniture stores in Kichijoji. All the new faces, all the intimidating upper classmen, it was a trip. I remember taking the late bus home after football practice where the remnants of hazing and senior intimidation were practiced on us. “Hey freshman!” a senior in the back of the bus says to me as I sit in the front, “what kind of pie do you like!?!?” I hear mumbles of “poontang pie” from sophomores behind me, and I shout back “freshman pie!” for whatever reason, followed by the same question being posed to the other freshmen and the same answer.

That first away game at the Zama army base, the Friday night lights that we didn’t have on our own field back in Tokyo, the victorious bus ride back. Our first Homecoming dance some of us made a much bigger deal than needed, going all out with tuxes, and crashing in a friends closet at a sleepover that night. My first real girlfriend, though short-lived, taught me a thing or two about relationships. The BB gun fights continued to the point where the Japanese armored police came in, in hordes, busting up our battle because of reports of gang warfare by park neighbors who looked upon us with confusion and fear, and not even getting a slap on the wrist for it, but rather a good laugh with the cops when they discovered we were just kids with toy guns.

There was our first JUMP trip (Japan Understanding and Motivational Project), where we were to travel and learn more about Japan. The bus rides were rowdy, and one of my classmates kept blaring Who Let The Dogs Out on his boombox about every other song. I remember sneaking out of the hotel and our chaperone catching but ignoring us as we came back in later that night. I’m not even sure where we went that trip, but we ended it at Fujikyu Highlands, a big amusement park by Mt. Fuji, where the view of the mountain didn’t get better when you were at the 250 foot top of the big drop on the Fujiyama rollercoaster.

I remember lunch and free periods used to their maximum value, starting pickup football games with anyone who was around, full contact and no equipment. Football games became even more ridiculous when we started incorporating new rules to make it a sort of rugby hybrid, coined Hobbes Ball. Spring came around and we started playing baseball, with our own customized bats made from materials purchased at Tokyo Hands. And if weekends weren’t spent on sporting events, we’d take day trips out to Odaiba, Yokohama, or Kamakura and Enoshima.

I remember seeing Greenday in concert for their Warning tour, getting lousy seats, but still having the time of my life moshing with friends and strangers. I remember basement sleepovers at a friend’s place in Naka-Meguro and those early 2001 Tokyo snowstorms that covered the streets, so the steep roads were sledable. I remember a daring escape when exploring the rooftops of some Embassy housing apartments, where some Australians threatened to call the cops as we swung ourselves down from the roof to the 3rd floor, nearly falling to our deaths in fear of getting caught by unthreatening Tokyo cops.

And to think a lot of this hell raising came to an end that sophomore year as we moved on from mischief to drinking and clubbing. It was a new school year and football pre-training began. Azabu Juuban was popping during that August festival and people were packing the streets for the festivities and food. We snuck out of my place through the slide door and hit up the Lexington Queen nightclub in Roppongi for the first time. That aversion to alcohol I was programmed with growing up faded away that school year as our nights out on the town increasingly became popular.

Evergreen Park Homes in Daikanyama was my home, and unfortunately, no longer exists to make way for another Tokyo high-rise. It was a well-gardened housing complex of 25 Western style houses, only a ten-minute walk from Shibuya station. The Swedish folks that seemed to have dominated the complex during those first two years in Tokyo started moving away and things started getting quieter as their children were no longer running around in everyone’s yard. It was sad to see them all go, as was it sad to see off some good friends who left after that freshman year.

Lots of new people came that sophomore year, and I can’t say my group of close friends was ever bigger. I got a digital camcorder and started making all sorts of silly home videos. Football season was back, and I got to be a captain, initiating those Quick Mustang Jumping Jacks with the other captains every practice. And after every home game, we’d take the train into Shinbashi and go to the Carne Station, an all-you-can-eat-and-drink Yakiniku joint that had an open bar. This became tradition after every home game henceforth, which would usually evolve into a stumbling mess of drunken dudes taking the subway into Shibuya for karaoke. Then there was that one victorious game we had at Zama, when terrible traffic held us up in the bus for several hours on our way back. One of the freshmen put his tunes on the bus loudspeakers and everybody got up dancing and reveling until we reached the city. The ring of Where the Party At by Jagged Edge will always bring me back to that night.

Seeing how much fun friends were having playing JV-B basketball who didn’t make JV freshman year prompted me to play that sophomore year, and my basketball skills still remain horrendous. The coach let us goof off and play, we won a few games, and fun was always put first. Free periods were spent getting to know people I hadn’t formerly associated with. 9/11 hits and it seems unreal being on the other side of the world, but the school still decides to build a giant fence around the school (where a shorter concrete wall had already been) in order to keep the terrorists out. The buses were repainted from our proud colors of black and gold to random colors and miscellaneous patterns warding off attention to the Westerners inside. And I got to start bus monitoring, or working on the bus as an attendant, making money I was always quick to spend on something fun or cool.

I remember the girlfriend I had during the beginning of that school year, who I spent nights leading up to Homecoming with on the streets and rooftops around Hiro-o, Ebisu, and Daikanyama and each other’s homes when our respective parents weren’t home, and feeling bad in a real good way because of it. And cuddling with her out on the football field during the Homecoming dance, I could hear I’m Real by Jennifer Lopez and Ja Rule blaring from the dance inside. I remember solitary meals at Yoshinoya that winter eating gyudon while Dragon Ash’s Life Goes On repeatedly played on the radio.

Then there was my sophomore year JUMP trip to Hakone, where it wasn’t a class trip like in 9th grade, but a 20-30 person mixed trip of sophomores, juniors, and seniors who I didn’t really know. There was an option of 20 or so trips, and the one I ended up getting had none of my friends on it. It all turned out good in the end when I got to know some people and had a great time exploring the outdoor art museum there and telling ghost stories at night. And I can’t forget the unsupervised camping trip I took out to Lake Sai with three other friends one long weekend, where we got stuck on the other side of the lake in a rowboat due to strong winds. After finally making it back, we spent the rest of the camping trip in the hot springs.

The nights out at Lexington Queen turned into nights out at the legendary Pylon nightclub in Roppongi, that was shut down later in 2002. We danced our asses off in its various rooms, be it to hip hop, house, or the especially popular trance music from the time. I remember long walks back from Pylon, going on foot all the way past Shibuya to my home by myself, where not a threatening character was met on the way. I remember the popular dance styles getting nastier with the growing popularity of glam rap, grinding with various girls from school at the clubs while the DJ spun Ja Rule or Jay-Z. The short but sweet fling I had that spring break spent in the city, going on a date to a funky Chinese restaurant in Shibuya and watching Black Hawk Down in the cinema afterwards, followed by another body shaking sweat covered night at Pylon.

I remember the cooking class and health class I had that school year, taught by a teacher who couldn’t be cooler. She let us play our music loud while we cooked and ate during the morning of an average school day. Upper classmen girls with attitude played all the hot jams from the time, blaring Eve’s Who’s That Girl or Bubba Sparxxx’s Ugly every class. I remember the time we caused a fire in the oven and having it explode as we opened it, where it was quickly subdued with a fire extinguisher by one of my buddies. And in health class when we made that naughty documentary about STD’s and got an A on it. And to think how lucky I feel compared to growing up in the Chinese educational system that I’m currently working in.

Just as more people came in that 2001/2002 school year, the recession that hit after 9/11 sent a bunch of them out that spring and summer. The World Cup came early that summer and provided the perfect climax to end the school year, with weekends spent at the Nike sponsored indoor soccer tournaments in Harajuku. I remember moving up in the tournament brackets, but becoming a sheepish defensive player after taking a shot to the testis during a practice session and losing before we could enter the finals. I remember nights spent watching the World Cup games at Outback Steakhouse, and heading into Shibuya afterwards to take part in the peaceful riots that would occur whenever Japan won a game.

Just as we began clubbing in a major way, karaoke was also a hit, where two hour all you can drink sessions were spent singing classic songs like Wonderwall and Total Eclipse of the Heart. Our nightlife continued on into junior year where we kicked the year off returning to the former site of Pylon, where only a small hip hop club called Vertu Shka remained. I remember partying with a whole different group of girls than we usually went out with before, and grinding to current songs like Nelly & Kelly Rowland’s Dilemma. The nights were epic, meeting at Hachiko square in Shibuya and moving on to do some intense karaoke sessions at Yajima’s place (Big One III) at the Udagawa-cho crossroads. After, we’d hang with the seniors there at the crossroads drinking Coronitas bought at the nearby convenience store, and would move onto Roppongi to hit the bars and clubs.

That year, I remained on the JV football team with a couple other friends, instead of moving up to varsity (where the head coach behaved in an unnecessarily asshole-ish manner). We got to be the team captains and led a championship season, while keeping fun first just like if we were playing JV-B basketball. That spring, since a number of us didn’t play baseball or track & field, started the Gentleman’s Volleyball Club, in a tongue-in-cheek retaliation to the way the girls sports teams were run since girls were able to join the football team if they could cut it (but none ever lasted), yet boys weren’t allowed to join field-hockey even if they volunteered to wear the skirt and all. Our JV-B coach offered to coach us, and things got real silly with practice mostly consisting of dodge ball games. Yet when we challenged the girls JV and varsity volleyball teams, we annihilated them.

JUMP was pretty intense that year, where I went on an outward-bound adventure trip, this time with some good friends. Made some new friends, climbed some impressively tall cliffs opposite of Mt. Fuji, where we watched the sun set over the mountain after we reached the top. We biked up and down mountains, we built a raft from inner tubes and wooden planks and paddled across Lake Sai in the bitter cold, all while folks on the other trips were checking out temples and workshops.

As spring came, my family moved to South Africa, where I spent a short stint away from Tokyo, returning for my senior year and staying with some family friends in Roppongi. For my going away, we had a house party at a friend’s place, since his parents didn’t mind. This was a true rarity in the ASIJ experience, considering parties were spent out at the clubs since houses were usually too small and/or occupied by parents. During that time down in Africa, I was able to come back and visit for my first prom, where I went as a stag joker, having a riotous time at the dance and at the after party held at Vertu Shka. Drunk off our asses, we bumped and grinded on the floor and blissfully joked in the hallway outside the club. I made another trip back at the end of the year when the house party friend himself was moving to Singapore. We had an even more epic party, but held in Arisugawa park since his parents weren’t keen on another messy rager in their home. But fortunately, the liquor cabinet was full of already open bottles they weren’t planning on bringing down to Singapore, so the booze flowed plentifully. We set up in a pavilion in the middle of the park that summer night with bottles and a boom box blasting Southern Culture On The Skids. The crowds dispersed by midnight as the rain came in, but a few of us remained and burned the rest of the alcohol.

I remember finishing up the El Samurai trilogy that summer, a series of silly samurai movies I made with a friend filmed around Yoyogi-Uehara, Daikanyama, and Arisugawa park. I spent a few weeks away on a home-stay in central, mountainous Japan in a town called Takayama. I’ll never forget the family expecting me to be South African and being somewhat noticeably disappointed that I wasn’t. My stomach will never forget the time they fed me too many mayonnaise filled okunomiyaki that I was too polite to turn away, and in turn felt like vomiting with every bite (I hate mayonnaise).

I remember coming back to school that senior year with a case of mono, preventing me from playing football that season, in fear I’d burst some sort of swollen gland. I was also living at the residence of some family friends in Roppongi, and felt bored while at home in their place, so I’d finish all my homework immediately after school, monitor the elementary school late bus for the extra dough, and go to sleep really early when I’d get home after a delicious dinner cooked by the woman of the house.

We had essentially taken over the Spirit Club junior year and had planned some fantastically ridiculous pep rallies from then until graduation. Professional Wrestling antics were acted out on our mock-rivals as the crowds cheered in blood lust. Sporting events in the city were always a favorite as well, like the X-League (Japan’s American football league), where our favorite team, the Fujitsu Frontiers made it to the Tokyo Superbowl that year, but failed to win the championship. We were lucky enough to see some Japan vs. America All-star baseball games. I remember being blinded by all the camera flashes whenever Ichiro took the plate.

Living in Roppongi made nights out on the weekends a lot easier. We’d start our evenings at 5pm for happy hour and dinner at Havana’s in Roppongi where you could get an Orange Buck for 100 Yen, following at Bar Milwaukee at 7pm until happy hour ended at 9pm, where you could get an ice cold Suntory Malt’s on draft for 400 Yen. We all assumed it was a gay bar judging by the flamboyant bar owner/bar tender, but the place always seemed to be lacking other clientele before the late-night. Our time following Milwaukee usually consisted of karaoke in either Roppongi or Shibuya, or more bar/club hopping around Roppongi. I’d stumble home drunk from the bars after midnight to my nearby apartment, where no curfew was put on me. And next weekend it’d be the same thing and just as much fun. Dance styles were getting progressively nasty with dirty south rap coming into the mainstream, especially Lil’ Jon’s Get Low. All the Dancehall Ragga coming out at the time too, gets me reliving some of those enervative nights at Lexington Queen dancing around stinky underage Russian models and expat sleaze, every time I hear No Letting Go by Wayne Wonder or Kevin Lytlle’s Turn Me On.

I remember my first strip club experience nearing the winter of that school year. No one was coming out since they were preparing for college entrance applications and essays, except me since I’d do it after school everyday, and a buddy who always came out. The Nigerian hustler on the street who brought us there convinced us with his smooth Nigerian-accented spiel about the place, having girls from around the world including Brazil, which he was quite proud of, and just about any Eastern European country you can name.

We got free drinks with our paid entry and enjoyed the view. The DJ spun typical club fare from 2003, as a new girl came up to the stage for every new song. And there were some fly honey’s at this place, literally from all around the world. There was that Japanese girl spinning on the pole, who was quite popular with the group of Japanese businessmen sitting across from us. The alpha-male of the group had this humble, yet playalistic swagger, and walked over to slide a 10,000 yen bill in her string.

There was that tall, tight, and slender Brazilian chick who had the best moves on the pole without a doubt. Spinning upside down with her legs flying every which way, all to the beat of the music. There was the voluptuous Slovakian charmer who joined us for a drink, and later a dance. And there was the Middle-Eastern dancer with those sexy smirks she’d throw at us when doing something special on the stage.

I remember bringing back some of the other guys after our new discovery, smoking clove cigarettes, drinking Black Russians or Hennessy on the rocks, and sitting back watching the show. The trend spread, and soon enough, the strip clubs became a regular thing to do on the weekend-out agenda. The best was that 3,000 yen all you can drink deal we could get hooked up at Seventh Heaven, supposedly the most premier strip joint in the city. The only catch was, we had to go from 7-9pm before the place was popping. But hell, the Hennessy flowed for free, and those drinks were made strong. There were always at least a few really fine girls there even that early, but there was also the lower tier girls, like the one who got her hair caught in something when doing a pole-spin, and a big wad of it ripped out and remained on the stage for several more dances by other girls.

Another new hit on the agenda that year was Bar Sheesha, a hookah place we started frequenting in Roppongi. They had that dark orientalist lounge vibe going on and a few flavors of shisha. A weekend rarely went by where we didn’t go for a smoke. I remember taking groups of girls there in the middle of a night out, and exchanging smoke mouth-to-mouth. We may have followed them to Gas Panic on one of these nights out from time to time, which I hated having to do. All the girls loved going to Gas Panic because they’d get a lot of attention when dancing on the bar from the hordes of sleazy dudes and drunk U.S. Marines that frequented the place. Drinks were overpriced and were pushed on you by the service people when you didn’t have one in your hand. Hence, a few of us would sneak Two Dogs alcoholic lemonade in from a local convenient store, which also happened to be a bottled beverage on the Gas Panic menu. Worked every time.

I remember taking a lazy JUMP trip that year to a Hawaiin themed hot springs resort up in northern Japan. We wandered the halls with the hotel provided Hawaiin attire, which included cheap, oversized Hawaiin shirts and some light green pants you’d imagine an old helpless man wearing in a retirement home. We’d chill in the variously flavored hot springs with our hotel themed towels wrapped around our heads like Japanese construction workers. And then there was that karaoke joint in the hotel we went to, drinks and escorts included. Definitely the kind of place businessmen with money go to, so we ducked out of there early.

I remember doing a DJ set at the Winterball that school year, with the dance ending in good feelings, followed by another epic night out on the town. There was also that Kanto Plain dance around the same time of year at one of the U.S. military base high schools, where we grinded with cute half-Filipina girls from the Naval base, while these young thug looking dudes just sat there lounging on the bleachers in the latest hip hop attire. There was this ridiculous white kid also decked out in the hip hop wear, who must have been only 11 years old, who was shaking his body and grinding on some well willing big booty girls left and right. Security came in and escorted the boy out after he got a few dances in, and we all booed as he was walked out of the dancehall.

Prom that year was off the chain. We all had pretty dates, we were all decked out in all black, dudes were sneaking Jack Daniels in the bathroom for some shenanigans. But the main event was after-prom. A friend organized a party at Piper’s Lounge, another Roppongi favorite, where the whole first floor V.I.P. lounge, plushly carpeted, was reserved for us. Champagne flowed and I was on an empty stomach. We had already downed a couple bottles of wine at a friend’s place while the ladies got ready for the club. Folks were crowding in and we were partying hard. It was jolly times and good drunken laughs, wandering around the lounge talking to all my people. Freshmen girls started coming in and getting really drunk. As soon as one of them started puking on the carpet, the bouncers started throwing our underage asses out. I had a Cuban cigar saved for that night, which I shared with a few people. It got soggy from the passing lips and drizzle coming down from above. Then came the worst hangover of my life.

I remember all that excessive free time I had that senior year, where free periods were spent making the rounds around campus and pulling gags on people who were in class. There were a number of times where a simple prank set off my friend and student-body president off in a heated rage. Petty crimes, they were called. And they rarely ended in any sort of punishment, petty or otherwise. Hell, teachers would even play along sometimes. School barbecues were always fun, and our mothers threw us the best one yet, just for the seniors. Then there was the time our mothers threw us that ice-cream social. Everyone was lovely, from the students to the parents to the teachers.

Lazy Saturday afternoons were spent lounging in hotel lobbies in Mark City or the Cerulean Tower in Shibuya drinking liters of cold barely tea you could get at 7-11. It provided a free social space that beat the hell out of spending a pretty penny at some café or restaurant, where we’d chat as usual and coordinate the upcoming night out.

As fun as clubbing and bar hopping was, I was always itching for a more intimate party that could be held at someone’s house. We reverted to the Arisugawa Park party thing a couple times that spring, setting up in the pavilion in the middle of the park with music and drinks. Classmates flocked to, where we shared warm revelry and Smirnoff Ice. Beer bongs and wiffle balls games, loud music and hookups, all ending with the police chasing us out by midnight, keeping us from cleaning up our mess like we would have done if they let us be.

The utopian time we were having in high school was coming to an end. We got to go to Okinawa for our honors Japanese history class at the end of the school year. Time on the beach was well balanced with history tours. We played capture the flag on the moonlit beach. We led girls into caves along the beach, where more classmates hid inside for a jump out scare. And of course, the night before we left for Okinawa, we went out to the St. Mary’s/Sacred Heart/Seisen (Tokyo’s Catholic school league) after-prom party at the Cube club in Roppongi near the Russian Embassy. Usher’s Yeah was the biggest hit at the time, and I remember seeing dudes dancing in circles singing along like middle school girls. There was dancing through the night as we got well drunk, then we rushed off to Haneda airport for our flight, looking beat and washed out.

My hopes for a grand house party had come true towards the end of that spring, when a Sacred Heart student had the house to herself one weekend, and invited one too many ASIJ-ers. We mixed in well with the Sacred Heart and Seisen girls, the St. Mary’s boys seemed to have turned down their unceasing testosterone overloads, so the aggression was at a minimum, and good times were shared. Things went sour for the hostess when our freshman started coming in. We had felt the need for some sort of initiation, and drinking contests seemed only logical, and shortly thereafter, the carpets had vomit stains wherever you looked. She and her friends chased most everyone out at this point except a few of us who helped clean up and take care of sicklings. She even managed to get the house spotless so her parents never had a clue when they came back, until they found their video camera someone had carelessly used at the party.

Graduation was upon us before we knew it, and we were planning the after party. We got a hook-up at club The Nature, a predominantly African hangout. We basically got a discounted entrance with a free drink, but many students didn’t want to come in due to the high proportion of grown African men. It was a combination of dull racist fear and that ASIJ clique mentality that kept people out. The after party was deemed a failure by many, but I had a blast, partying until dawn until we finished with a sloppy McDonald’s feast. There were some unforgettable moments, like when that guy saw an African man grinding on his little sister, so he cuts in and starts grinding on her, which went on for several songs.

The school year had ended, and I was planning on being in Tokyo all summer to savor my last moments in that city. But first, I had to go on a senior trip with my closest friends to Shanghai. We knew maybe a handful of words in Chinese at the time, but managed to navigate the town from bars to clubs to markets and so on. It was a gritty fun time where we drank many a cheap beer and bought suitcases full of cheap knock-off clothing and designer goods. Illicit DVD’s were packed in with everything, which led to a 24-hour-straight viewing of the 24 TV series back in Tokyo that summer. Kamikaze shots will always bring me back to that night we spent in Mural’s by Hengshan Lu, during one of their all-you-can-drink parties. Then hearing Usher’s Yeah for the umpteenth time in a cab later, as the driver turned up the volume.

I spent that summer living at two different friends’ houses in the Hiro-o, Azabu Juuban, Roppongi area. Parties were thrown, lots of hung over lazing around watching Chappell Show and Seinfeld. I remember even eating some Snickers bars with a knife and fork with one of my friends just like that Seinfeld episode. His mother, who was in the room, took no notice of it to our disappointment.

I was broke as a joke that summer living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. My habit of late nights out and afternoon feasts was in danger of being compromised. I got a job babysitting for a freelance journalist in Kamiyacho, a single mother with a young boy. She was investigating maltreatment and cover-ups at Tokyo’s insane asylums all while I was showing Shrek to her little boy on her TV in her tiny studio apartment.

The money was decent enough to allow me out a few times a week. The newly coined “summer style” was how we partied, buying a cheap bottle of Gilbey’s Gin and orange juice at the Popura konbini and mixing it in glasses purchased at the 100 Yen store, sipping Gin & Juice in the Cat’s Cradle, a dirty back alley of stairs behind Lexington Queen in Roppongi. We’d move on to Club Vanilla, where there was a cover and drink tickets. Drunk off that summer style Gin & Juice, we’d party all night in Vanilla, bouncing on the floor in the hip hop room, or going nuts with office workers who were holding hands in circles and shouting to every beat progression in the electronica room.

That summer seemed to last forever, but it passed by all too quickly. One of the hottest summers in Tokyo’s history, I loved the hot humid air making me sweat as I walked out the door on the way to babysitting, or to Matsuya in Yoyogi-Uehara, the workplace of another friend. This of course was during the great imported American beef quandary, when Yoshinoya stopped serving gyudon (beef bowl), their signature dish. Matsuya held in there with the beef, wherever they got it from, so all my business went their way.

With financial constraints, we were fortunate enough to have Shibuya’s Club Pure Thursday night parties, the short-lived 1000-Yen cover, all you can drink all night. Good booze with a specialty every week like Coconut Malibu Rum with pineapple juice. I still have the free plastic cups they were giving out every Thursday. Soon enough, we were practically spending entire weekends at Pure, for their Friday and Saturday night parties. All the dirty dancing, crazy hookups, the phony-machismo conflicts, the serene walks home away from Shibuya afterwards feel like a distant memory from another life.

The summer came to an end and college life was about to begin. The happy-go-lucky life a foreign teenager could live in Tokyo came to a jolting halt, with my entrance into Hampshire College, the most negative and judgmental place I have ever been to on Earth. A good education was at my disposal and I took complete advantage, but the wounds from living in a place like that have only just healed. The next decade is beginning, and I’m seeing a bright future for the world, but to have those days back… It’s like it was all a dream.

Happy Thanksgiving!