Shinjuku Nights

Throughout this blog I have seriously neglected to mention a very important person, that being Rob. Rob is from Panama, a film producer, and has been on the JET scheme now for 2 years, living thank god in Shimonoseki. He lives in Chofu, the Samurai town in Shimonoseki, and spends most of his time outdoors making films, indoors editing films. He has the look of a rumpled professor according to some people. He makes me laugh. We are the best of friends, although you wouldn't think it from my neglect of him. Rob had another friend from Panama coming on Jet (there is only two of them), arriving in the same orientation as I was working, so we decided that Rob would come up with me and stay in the hotel with me. This took a bit of effort on our behalf; we decided to tell my hotel room mate, (a very sweet traditional English girl) that Rob was gay, in order to make a strange man staying in the apartment with us less threatening! Rob therefore brought all the accessories and clothes necessary to maintain the Gay image (personally i think it comes to him quite easily), whenever we entered the room Rob would remember to mince, and he would consciously remember to point out "cute guys" and say "He is just Gorgeous!", to which my friend would giggle and say something like "Oh you!". Well and truly convinced.

Having Rob to frollick around with in Tokyo made this trip to Tokyo the best yet. Rob is a conoisseur of Shinjuku, the pink-light area we stayed in, very famous, in Lost in Translation etc. He was the perfect guide.

First lesson to be learnt was that Tokyo is the city of instant gratification and hedonism. You spend money there. So we did. Books, shoes and to my delight I discovered a 9 FLOOR outdoors shop. We were in heaven. Well, I was anyway. Rob humoured me.

Next up were the smoking police. Tokyo is the complete opposite of New York; there the only place you can smoke is OUTSIDE, here in Tokyo, smoking outside is a BIG no no. They much prefer for you to smoke in small claustrophobic areas which subject everybody else to passive smoking. Rob got busted, so did everybody else with a cigerette in their hand. They were very thorough. Rob felt it was rather similar to Nazi Germany.

The verb namparu in Japanese means literally to "hook up". Around Shinjuku there are these established areas in which men (boys) who are known as nampa's hang around, usually in pairs, trying to hook up with women. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, however, it is the most unusual thing to see. The streets are crawling with them, it's like a culture of men who all look exactly the same. They approach women as early as 5pm, try asking them to Karaoke, print club (you all get in a photo booth, take crazy wacky photos which then get turned into stickers, Japanese girls LOVE this), or if they would like a drink or whatever else they offer to try and get these girls to go out with them.

The most interesting thing about these Nampa's is why they do it. They don't necessarily get laid at the end of it all, so it's not just for the sex. Nor do they necessarily want to see the girls again. Rob thinks they are most likely doing it in order to get "street cred", to build up their reputation as laydees men, with the gift of the gab and ability to charm a stranger on the street, so that eventually they can move up to the status of host and be employed by a club, to entertain lonely women who have to go to a Host Bar because ordinary nice Japanese boys are too afraid to have a conversation with the girls outside of a group context. (Again, another big problem here.) So the Host industry is HUGE. The frightening thing is, in Shinjuku, there are dozens of Host Bars, and they seem to outnumber Hostess bars! In no other culture would there be more business in men entertaining women than women men. Only in Japan. This is what the nampa's are aiming for:

I wanted to go in and have a chat with them, ask them about their beauty regime and such like, but they don't let forieigners in. Boo. Next level up are the agents which actually try and recruit women to be Hostesses. They crawl out of the woodwork somewhat later at night, and approach women dolled up to the nines and tell them how beautiful they are, and how they should definitely come and work for them as a Hostess. Dodgy mother fuckers. Dressed up in suits preying on innocent women all over Shinjuku. At least the nampa's actually try and show these girls a good time. These guys are just parasites, mosquitos.

Rob is writing a screenplay about nampa's. We're going to go back with our beautiful Japanese friends who will interview the nampa's and ask them all about what they do and why they do it.

Thankyou for making Tokyo so much fun Rob.

I am now exhausted. Inbetween the giggles I actually had to get up off my arse and give presentations, look after the newbies, be on duty at silly o'clock and all other manner of Orientation Assistant duties. I think I have had about 4 hours sleep every night for about a week now, so I feel slightly catatonic right now.