Our team from work went out last night to Roppongi. We ate at a yakitori restaurant (grilled stuff on skewers) and drank plenty of beer and sake. Then off to some downstairs bar where we settled in for a few hours - beers, spirits, Cocksucking Cowboys, cigars ……. At roughly $A10 a drink its an expensive exercise drinking yourself senseless in Tokyo, but nonetheless there’s no shortage of takers. Isn’t it funny how even if you’re normally a tightarse when it comes to money, when you get on the piss it doesn’t matter …$70 for a round of drinks, no worries, $25 cigar, sure!

Most of us actually got home to our hotels at a reasonable hour early this morning, but two of the guys excelled themselves, staying out till 6 am. One made it to work about 9.30 but looked like death. The other made it in about 12 ish, with a bit of help from his concerned colleagues who called his hotel room to wake him. Naturally we pressed for details of what they’d gotten up to after we left them to it and it seems that apart from trying out several bars, and keeping on going back to the one we were in originally, they tried honing their negotiation skills with 2 Russian prostitutes at about 5 this morning. They claimed (remember this is a recollection of events by 2 very pissed guys) to have gotten the deal of the century, both girls for $A80. Having negotiated the price, they then said no thanks and walked away. Fucking hell I thought, they’re lucky the girls didn’t get their pimp to punish the guys for wasting the girls’ valuable time - 20 mins, as one of us reckoned they could have gone through a couple of other clients each in that time.

Fortunately, we’d been working hard till yesterday …today was not too productive, with a number of seedy people sitting in a room trying to focus on the reason we were in Tokyo. Not very focused at all were we today - it was more fun mocking the drunks from last night (that is the worst ones, most of us were fairly impaired early this morning). We went to lunch at a curry restaurant and one of the guys (who is living in Tokyo rather than tripping back and forth from Australia) grossed us out by having what he claims to be “the best hangover cure” - get this - rice with 2 fried eggs on top, then a chowder comprising bacon, seafood, onions etc poured all over the top of it.

Something else I noticed today …the office toilets have something my hotel room one doesn’t - a button for “powerful deodoriser”. I didn’t test it out - my shit doesn’t stink that badly.

Tomorrow’s sightseeing and shopping for some of us who are staying on past today. I’ve had a change of plans - instead of flying home tomorrow night I now get to go to Seoul, Korea on Sunday for 3 days before coming back to Tokyo on Wednesday and then home.

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