We wanted to see Tsukiji Fish Market,

the Tokyo market that provides nearly all of the fish for Honshu. Unfortunately, as we are living in the proverbial boondocks of Tokyo, this type of trip involves getting up extremely early to catch the first train into town in order to catch the action that hits its peak around 6:30 a.m. Not gonna happen. Fortunately for us, there was an alternative -- staying out all night in Tokyo proper. That's how we ended up in Roppongi.

For the uninitiated, Roppongi is legendary -- the gaijin paradise that has an equal amount of worshippers and detractors. This is where the all-night parties happen, where folks don't close up shop until 9 a.m. Trevor and I had done the all-night Roppongi thing 6 years ago when we were here last, but Alex, our roomie from Germany, had never seen Roppongi. We knew he would not be disappointed in its sheer freakshow quality. For this reason, this is where we decided to set up camp.

I'm one of the gaijin that falls into the "love it and hate it" camp of Roppongi people. It's entertaining to grab a beer from the convini (200 yen, rather than the minimum 800 yen you'll pay at a nasty loser-infested bar), snag a spot on the sidewalk, and watch the circus sideshow that passes you by -- hawkers trying to get you to go into their "gentlemen" clubs, hookers/hostesses/strippers of all shapes, size, and nationalities (but Eastern European and Russian seems to rule), mobs of sararimen with said women draped all over them, Japanese trannies, pimps, madames, and gaijin from around the world. But this entertainment is also really nasty and sleazy, and the gaijin who frequent Roppongi tend to be what our roomie Stephen so aptly calls "LBH" -- losers back home.

Men rule in Japan, and Western men are arguably the supreme rulers when it comes to some Japanese women. For as many foreign girls there are stripping for drunken Japanese men and (very often) men from their own countries, there are just as many Japanese women out to bag a Western boyfriend or, frankly, a Western john. And while Japanese men who are pigs disgust me, there's still an element of difference in culture to give them a teeny-weeny crutch. But I can just never get used to Western LBH and gaijin pigs -- who should know better -- who are regulars in Roppongi simply because women will throw themselves at them and they can grope to their hearts' content. It's like a power that they never knew existed, and they are drunk on it. Eeew.

So, anyway, rather than drink bad Japanese beer for $8 a pop in a smoky, LBH-infested shithole, we struck up a conversation with one of the hawkers, sat on the sidewalk, and drank bad Netherland beer at $2 pop. Sam, our hawker friend from Ghana, has been in Japan for three years, speaks 7 languages, and wants to open his own bar (a nice one).

Dawn comes early in Japan in the summer, and by 4:30 the natural light cancelled out the artificial and the heat was already coming on. After an amusing encounter with a Japanese guy who, after hearing Alex was from Germany, gave him the Nazi salute and said "Seig Heil," we grabbed the Hibiya subway line to Tsukiji and wobbled our way to the gigantic hanger that serves as the biggest fish market in the world. Boats from Africa, Australia, and even the Americas make their way here around 3 a.m. to sell their catch. We arrived around 6 a.m. and were greeted by the buzzing of saws used to cut monster chunks of frozen tuna, the flashing of samurai-sword sized knives, and the smell of gasoline from the hundreds of motorized vegetable carts used to haul everything from trumpetfish to eel to giant tuna.

The market is a buzz of activity, and you have to be really careful, especially when sleep-deprived and tipsy, so as not to get run over by the speeding vegetable carts or get a bucket of guts dumped on your shoes. Great fun!

Afterward, we went to Tsukiji Sushi to have a fresh sushi breakfast. Nothing cures the "been up for 24 hours" blues better than thick slices of raw tuna, squid, and raw shrimp, washed down with hot miso soup. The couple next to us at the sushi counter bought the freshest of the fresh sushi though -- fish, caught from the tank at the sushi counter, filleted alive, and made into nigiri sushi. The remaining body was skewered onto a stick, and said nigiri was placed in it's body cavity. Delicious, I'm sure, but cruel, and it was creeping me out that the remaining body continued to spasm and the mouth gasp for air as they ate.

Slipped in and out of consciousness on the train ride home, but woke up in time to not miss our stop.