Tokyo: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter

I wrote the above just over a week ago, mid-way through my first whiskey of the journey. I didn’t get too much writing done from that point on. Ian Smith, better known as Harold from Neighbours, and I got locked into a conversation about the current state of the Williamstown VFL side that caused sudden angst on both sides.

I tried shaking a bet or two out of him but he’d have none of it. The whole situation wasn’t helped when I asked him if he missed Madge…and my constant referring to him as Harold. “The name is Ian you fool” he’d mutter under his breath. But that is the cost of B-grade celebrity and Harold Bishop should know that better than anyone.

Needless to say he wasn’t too upset when the call came over the PA system that flight CI108 was boarding. He wished me luck but I don’t think he meant it and if he did, there was a definite implication that I would need it.

Which, of course, I would. But there is no point in getting worked up about all that now. I’m too tired for all that.

A week in Tokyo has left me hollow, bruised, hazy and in desperate need of a liver transplant.

Tokyo is a city for the depraved and the degenerate, if you’re that way inclined. It is a town where you can cause all kinds of trouble then slink off into the morning sun, hit the hotel pool, swimming and sleeping off the alcohol and then do it all again, knowing all the while this scene of sleaze and depravity never ends and that you’ll forever be cloaked by anonymity and neon lights.

Burly Liberian hustlers hitting up all the gai-jin to “try out their club” and whispering Chinese princesses offering massages at 3000 yen a pop, cubby hole sake bars where the drunks are kings and Pachinko parlours where ball bearings pound and bells ring at a decibel rate of about twenty eight thousand times the Rooty Hill RSL.

It’s a scene that can kill a decent man and make fringe dwellers feel welcome. But everyone seems to enjoy themselves. Everyone except the Chinese “masseuse” who was a trifle confused when I turned to her and offered her a massage for 3000 yen. “I do a good job…very good…you have a good time”.

She wasn’t smiling and she didn’t seem to appreciate the jaded humour in my slurred voice. But it was all for a smile and if it’s all for a smile, well, it would take a goddamn wowser bastard to put the ice on that. A laugh was the nut and there seemed to be plenty smiling.

Well, all were smiling except the propositioned Chinese masseuse and the staff at the Prince Hotel. They were distinctly not happy. And it is seemingly the case that Japanese hotels have a slightly different way of dealing with journalists who arrive home at seven thirty with a number of well known local Iranian Yakuza heavies with the intention of drinking sake by the pool all morning until the afternoon ball game starts than say hotel staff in Australia would. In hindsight, discretion was probably the nut but when you’re cranked on Asahi and the thrill of neon, logic and common sense are most difficult to find, particularly when you’re not looking particularly hard.

And when I ranted vengeance at the small Japanese girl who broke in to clean the room whilst I was deep in a hangover sleep, well, that was the final straw as those with knowledge of camels often say. Credit cards were demanded and security called. Seemingly, the Prince were not prepared for what lay ahead…

Being the guts of Golden Week-where Japan has most of the week off in celebration of Burgundy knows what and where they all travel “home”, which is seemingly Tokyo for most of the goddamn population- there was nothing else to be found. With one more liver beating night on the agenda, I was left with no other option but to drink myself into a stupour, maintaining a state of cranked until that big jet liner flew out some forty hours later.

After drinking whiskey all day at the massive mid-table clash between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp in the local baseball league, my cohorts and I locked in for some Okonomiyaki and a whole heap of frosted beer. Bellies full with pork and cabbage and sautéed mushrooms, the crew of hipsters, expats and Beatles freaks moved from unadvertised bar to creaky fourth floor pub chasing down a good time and the Japanese dream.

Sometime around midnight, drunk as a mule and buzzing on genki, we piled into a couple of cabs and headed for Shibuya and more specifically, The Milky Way. It’s a cubby hole, no bigger than your average sized lounge room, that may just be the best goddamn bar in the entire Orient. It is near impossible to spot from the street and even if you could, it is highly doubtful that you would recognise it as the karaoke joint it is.

The barman, a jolly grey haired fellow with a taste for whiskey and known only as Master, greeted us with warm hugs and pats on the back. All you wanted to do was yell “Norm”. I had drank until dawn with him and his Russian hostess friend a few nights back and you tend to form a special bond with someone when you see the sun rise through a half full bottle of claret.

Within the hour, we had reached the indescribable peak that you always climb for when you lock yourself into a night out. Shots of tequila…”Twisting and Shouting” on the bar with a magazine model…swaying slowly, wrapped arm-in-arm with strange Japanese fishermen and blurry eyed local interpreters, to Billy Joel…kam-pai every three minutes…laughing and clapping and having a goddamn magical time looking out from the summit where nothing can go wrong and time and the world are yours.

But the plane was still a good eleven hours away when the sun hit my eye after our teary farewell. I knew it would be a long trip. The drinking had to end. Violent spasms of illness were preparing to engulf my body. I wasn’t set to even back myself to get through breakfast, let alone make a plane trek that would involve a lot of questions, menacing security guards and travel without the necessary amenities to deal with a journalist who has been drinking for the better part of sixteen hours. My luck was out. The cards had fallen and I wouldn’t have enough to make the nut.

But life has a funny way of throwing you a line if you dive in headfirst and worry about the consequences later. An old racing acquaintance, a form expert of the highest order, called through from Louisville. It was Derby weekend and he had the winner.

He had left the Australian racing scene a decade or so back, saying racing in America was easier to figure out. It was all times and less luck. If you can read a clock and keep a decent eye, you’ll make a zack in the States he has always said. And he has. So maybe the American racing game is the way to go…but we’ll get back onto this a little later.

Tips should be, on the whole, disregarded until they can be verified as genuine. If you find a reliable source that has a track record of winning and profit, well, they are like a goldmine and you treat them as such. But most can be thrown out like Ben Lee records and old wine bottles.

“Barbaro will win…get on wherever you can” he whispered.

“What…ah, the Derby…I need to call my bookmaker…we’ll drink in Baltimore…if this wins, I’m headed to the Preakness” I replied.

“You’re a drunk and a fool” he blabbered, before hanging up.

After tracking down my bookmaker-supposedly on holiday somewhere near Lightning Ridge-I managed to get set. And when he saluted at 6-1, I looked up and winked at the big man. When it looks like you won’t get out alive, you’re thrusted with a ray of hope that keeps the torch burning

Ah, the road less traveled, as Frost said. Or maybe it’s the more common path. I goddamn hope not because there isn’t much left for humanity if that is the case…and I can’t bear to think about that anymore right now.

That, lovers of rambling and rumbling, is that.