Alright so I had the bright idea after a solid 24-36 hours of traveling to go out and skate with a few friends at the Tokyo Dome Roller Skate Arena. I discovered this place shortly after a class field trip to that area to watch children (trust me, its not as weird as it sounds I promise, lol). With the help of Alix, Charlotte, Ren, Tina, and Holger I got us to the spot to enjoy a fun night out on the town. It was a bit different from roller skating in America where you can be there pretty much all day and not pay any extra for time. Here, we had a set two hours to skate and would have had to pay about $3 more per ever extra half hour. But the cool thing is they had a freaking skate park nestled in the corner of the building. In the end, we had a ball and I could not have been happier to be with the people I invited along.
#6 - CLUBBING!!!
It took us a while but after some prudent planning and a little patience Kyri, Jasmine and I made our way to a club in Tokyo. I did a whole lot of research on these places to make sure that we would have adequate time to catch trains, enjoy ourselves and not get lost or kidnapped. Which is good to know when you are in a relatively unfamiliar place you know. Our club of choice: Club Diana. Location: Hibiya. This very well liked club is in the heart of Tokyo and was quite literally outside of and attached to the train station (which made for amazing easy access). We started off our night like most people do, preparing our wardrobe and having a few pre-club drinks (hey, we were all legal so this is acceptable!). It's always nice getting ready with good girl friends, listening to music, doing hair, etc.
Following the train route is never a problem, we've ridden the Tozai Line so many times we know it like the backs of our hands. Waiting, however, is another issue and we always have to find ways to divert ourselves during that time.
Our next little obstacle was finding the entrance to the club. I had the directions on my trusty American phone but despite our best efforts we could not find it at first. After a few moments of retracing our steps we turned the corner of the building it was in and found the entrance to be on the side. It was pretty empty in the beginning but still had an awesome atmosphere.
It was a two-storied layout, viewers and VIP seating on the top and dance floor all over the bottom. The music was pretty decent, it varied from 80s to present styles and the DJs were very much on point with their selections. We chose to go on this particular Saturday night because it was Ladies Night which means we all got in for about $10 and would receive two free drinks during the course of the night. They used this clever little coin to take the place of actual money to purchase the free drinks, all of which were about $5 a pop.
My first drink was a China Blue from the liqueur-based drink list. As the night moved on the music definitely improved and we gradually danced more and more. The vast majority of the people there could not really dance, whatever that means, but they were genuinely having fun regardless of that fact. As people say nowadays they were "turnt up" (don't I sound old). While we were dancing the night away I spotted another coin on the floor and quickly snatched it up to save for later. One interesting thing we saw that night was this one man who appeared to be the Asian Pitbull. From the bald head to the way he dressed he was spot on for a Pitbull look-alike.
I think the most fun we had was when we would dance on the many platforms they had sprinkled around the building. Getting up on one of the those things, if you are brave enough or just crave attention, is one of the most freeing things in the whole world. You don't really have to think you just get up there, feel the music and move. There was this one crazy lady who kept screaming like a scary wild banshee being murdered during the course of the night. Freaky but it didn't bother anyone else so I suppose she was either a regular or easy to drown out with the music. Nearly every time we got on the platforms a group of guys and girls would run up to stand in front of us and cheer us on (most of the guys would bother Kyri which was hilarious).
We eventually took a break and had our second drinks. Mine was a screw driver which was also lovely. We did some more platform dancing and faced more female and male groupies and loved every second of it. I honestly believe that we had better acceptance here as foreigners than I did in that club in Korea (why that is, I don't know but it happened). At some point there was one DJ who absolutely could not mix the music well at all which kind of killed the mood but we got back into the swing of things eventually. At one point I got really sweaty and went to deal with that in the restroom when Kyri came in and found me. Funny thing is when she started talking to me it sounded like she was loosing her voice. But it wasn't a bad sound, in fact, it sounded like a raspy phone sex voice. I also found this while I was in the bathroom. Funny how you can't find it anywhere else . . .
Shortly after we got a third drink to share called Reggae Punch and decided it was about time for us to leave. Based on the way the flyer put it I thought that the place would shut down at 11 pm because most people take the trains everywhere and would need to get out at a reasonable time in order to make it home. But I was wrong. Like pretty much every club on the face of this earth, Club Diana would probably stay open until the wee hours of the morning but we still had to go home early so it didn't really matter. We said goodbye to Jasmine as she got off at her stop (one before ours) but even before then I noticed a guy sitting a few feet away from us with his phone tilted in our direction. Any person with half a brain knows that people are real careful about how they orient their phones on trains in Japan for fear of being deemed a pervert [痴漢｜ちかん]. But this guy was not discreet at all and it made me very mad. I wanted to take his phone once we arrived at our stop and dash it against the train floor then run out the door never to be seen again. But Kyri stopped me so no injustice was done. That guy better count himself lucky though. It could have been worse and I was ready to do what I had to do at that moment. That being said, we went home hot, sweaty and tired but happy campers. We each had our own lovely showers and fell graciously into our nice comfy beds. And THAT my friends was a good a** night. :]
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