It started in a sports bar meeting with some Canadian’s I’d met a few nights earlier, they had made two Aussie friends and had sourced some sniff on a trip to Osaka. If this was the recipe for disaster, the three Brits that walked in spouting Rugby talk were the gas we'd left on the night before. Here we go.
So. Four Canadian schoolmates, three Toronto, one from the sticks. Two Western Australians, one short'n'wide the other tall'n'skinny. A pair of real bogans. One Glasweigan, two Devoners (all "squaddies" aka Army types), boasting brothel experience and mysog-madness. And finally me. I felt it was my duty to observe this petri dish of the English-speaking world.
A control experiment in international hooliganism.
A safari of self-serving.
After a few beers and grape flavoured cigarettes, there was a vote on either the titty bar, or karaoke. The vote quickly swung the way of the sing. The Toronto-ites with the majority.
The karaoke was on a second floor, a bar the length of the room. The three Japanese drinkers hightailed out after hearing the babble of loud banter climbing the stairs. We sang, we screamed, we cried. I ordered two grapefruit cocktails, paid and tipped.
All ten of us (plus the German and a Kiwi that heard us from the street) filled the bar's length and height, curling around my drink on the further stool was all I could do, a position designed for the crooning drinker who's irritated in a loud bar, forced upon the lanky in Japan's scaled down diorama.
Somewhere between American Idiot and Wonderwall, the three Brits gave us the slip. No real loss, the fun was with the Canads, blushed red with beer and belting the lyrics till the end. Back out on the street, squinting in the artificial light and noise of Shinjuku, suddenly small again, Godzilla's mug resting on a billboard with a glazed stare, a million miles away from the line of girls selling girls below.
The British trio dodged the bill. All $80 worth of shots they had ordered. True class. The money was quickly covered by the all-too-polite Canadians. One even bought a round of icy 7% cans, where's next?
It was up in the air. The night was turning sour. The Canadians were drunk, the Australians were wild and the German we'd picked up was talking too much. Chris, the boss-eyed leader of the moose-pack took us, encouraged by a surly tout, up some stairs and through a door.
A bar, three not-so-Japanese, not-so-attractive ladies perch on stools and eye up our company. A long sofa ran along the opposite wall, two girls pawing a lonely Japanese drunk, lounging at an angle with a wide smile, wearing a glazed look, like a familiar face without glasses.
I'm out. I said.
I didn't even sit, turned right around and hit the lobby through the blast-door. The German followed, I think he was glad for my decision, I was glad for his company. But soon after, the rest poured out, the more level headed Canadian, Max, shaking it in disbelief. Then came the Aussies, loud and steaming. What happened in there?
As I'd left, I noticed the big black man who'd led us up the stairs, standing, arm across the door. He had blocked the others from leaving without a major tip, some sort of fight had followed, headed by the two from down undah.
That was it. The lanky Aus from the West was livid and charged.
We walked away, I hung around the extremities of the group, keeping a mental distance as the vibes curdled. Right on cue, the lanky shitcunt started hurling slurs down the road at the other Black touts, unprovoked and venomous. We shut him up. The Canadians playing diplomat and called a "team meeting", I resigned to a smoke on a low wall, observing, the Deutsch man continuing to flirt at my side. End of the line.
I walked away. Parting with the company, paying respects to the moose, while the kangaroo's stuck their heads behind a vending machine to jam coke in their flared nostrils.
The line was drawn and it led home, an ugly turn to the night, an expected outcome to the English experiment. Typical of drunk blokes abroad.
The soundest of the slim-pickings were the Toronto boys and the German. The rest can do-one.
For the record, I held my liquor the best (unanimous and concerning).