Dancecapades, Part III; or And Then There Were Two

When I came down from the bar the Rock Factory became an entirely different place. Now everybody was dancing – my friends, the other people in the bar, and the band! The dj put on more dance music, and everyone became friends. The dj was so impressed with me and Amber that he bought us and all of our friends a round of shots (the New Zealanders were long gone). We were all having a ridiculously good time… and then we remembered last train. All of us except for Mark and Ben had to work early Sunday morning; Mark was staying out, but Ben definitely had to catch last train for other reasons. Mark convinced Sean to stay out, Sean encouraged Christian to do the same, Christian talked me into it, and then I got Amber to stay out too. Christian, Amber and I had bought our tickets and were on the train platform when we all somewhat collectively thought – we’re having so much fun (and those shots were kicking in), we can’t go home now!

After a couple of phone calls the 5 of us reconvened outside of the station and made our way to Vibration, another bar in Roppongi. As soon as we walked in I zipped straight to the bar to make my request. The dj didn’t have any Scissor Sisters, but he was really friendly and played some music he thought I would like. He came out and danced with us a number of times. At this bar we were also meeting and dancing with random, fun Japanese people. The dj played great music, and he honored a lot of my requests (Bhangra – twice!). Around 3am we were losing a bit of steam – we had been going for about 6 or 7 hours at this point! The dj – I wish I remembered his name – noticed our lagging spirits (and the fact that I was yawning) bought us all a round of shots. We stayed for a little while longer, but the guys wanted to go to a much larger club so we thanked the dj, said good-bye to our Japanese friends of the evening, and went to Vanilla.

The Rock Factory and Vibration are bars with dance floors carved out from the spaces between counter-tops, stools, dj booths and the like. Vanilla is a huge corporate behemoth of a club – multiple floors, roped off dj booths, and packed on a Saturday night! Whatever floor my friends and I found ourselves on I made a beeline for the dj booth to request ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’. It was huge – it completely lined the back wall, had something like 6 turntables, and small crowd milling about. After a few minutes of craning my neck and gesturing I managed to get someone to talk to me. After 20 minutes and 3 different people I finally took no for an answer. The 3^rd person to say no suggested that I come back on not a Saturday night, and maybe I could get my song.

Over the course of the night we lost Christian; he blacked out and wandered away and we couldn’t find him when the club closed at 5am. So the 4 of us, Amber, Sean, Mark and I, made our way to the station. We joined the crowd that had gathered to wait for the first trains to come and take everyone home. Sean was really out of it, and he walked away right as our train pulled up. So the 3 of us made our way back to Shinjuku together to catch our connecting trains. Mark lives on a different line so together Amber and I sleepily clambered onto the train for the last 40 minutes of our 10-hour night; and less than 3 hours later I woke up to get ready for work.