Epilogue, or How the Monday Night Social Club Was Born

I missed last train last night. I met up with a couple of friends (Sean and Christian) in Shinjuku last night after working a late shift. Add the dizzying labyrinth of the Shinjuku station and it was well past 10 when we finally met up. After hanging out for a while in a little restaurant in one of Shinjuku’s back-alley mazes it was time to start thinking about last train. My roommate (Amber) actually missed it last night in Kokubunji, but was able to catch the first train at 4:30, got home by 5, and had a good bit of sleep before waking up in time for work at 1:20. That tempted me to defy the last train; plus, just as I was checking it on my cell phone, the battery died! Sean has Tuesdays off, Christian didn't have work until 5, and I didn't have work until 1:20, so we decided to make a night of it!

We walked around for a while trying to locate English friends of Sean in one of Tokyo’s most dizzying neighborhoods. The mission was to find them at a karaoke bar on the 10^th floor of a building near to the Hub, a chain of English pubs in Tokyo. After realizing that there is more than one Hub in Shinjuku, we set out to find our own karaoke bar. At 1:00 in the morning central Tokyo was still pretty vibrant, thanks in part to the karaoke agents. Every karaoke bar has a cadre of people that circulate outside and try to woo you in. The Japanese pursue other Japanese, and the Africans take care of Gajin. While looking for Sean's friends we kept running into the same African karaoke guy. He wanted us to come to his bar, but it was too expensive for us and he wouldn't make a deal. Finally, for some reason he asked Christian if he spoke French. He does not. So I said ‘vous parlez français?’ I chatted with him in French for a couple of minutes, and then he went and found a Japanese karaoke agent who cut us a really good deal. Some people in Shinjuku charged 3000 yen for an hour. Our guy let us in for 1450 yen for two hours, all-you-can-drink. The 3 of us sang karaoke for 3 hours. It was glorious!

(Japanese karaoke is hardcore! You get your own little room with a small couch lining the wall on 3 sides of the room, and a flat panel TV on the 4^th wall. The technology of the karaoke is of course, advanced; and there was an impressive selection of very ‘now’ songs, but they were a bit lacking in some favorite American one-hit wonders.)

We left around 4:30, ambling around, considering our options and being silly in the pre-dawn streets of Tokyo. We got to the train station a little after 5, and I was hoping there might be a train at the ready. Unfortunately, at this station the earliest train on the Keio line (the line Sean and I live on) left at 6am. So Sean and I joined a handful of other Japanese sleeping in the station until the first train arrived. But before the three of us parted ways, we agreed that after such a grand escapade we should regularly tap the awesome potential of Monday night. And that is how the Monday Night Social Club was born.