1st Night in Tokyo

My trip got off to a bad start with the plane delayed for over 1hr.



But the plane ride was awesome. Singapore Airlines has dope customer service and a great business class. The food was definitely no microwave stuff and the seats actually recline all the way like a bed.





After I arrived in Tokyo, customs was a breeze and I took the bus over to Hotel Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku. The city is amazing. A lot like downtown LA, but more dense. The hotel is clean and modern.



View from my hotel room.


I got settled in and then met up with my guide/translator, Hitomi. We took the subway over to Shibuya and grabbed a few drinks before hitting up some hip hop venues. The subway here is intense (more on that later) and there are a gazillion people on the streets.




After getting some alcohol in my system, we started our trek thru some of Tokyo's hip hop night spots. First we went to Vuenos, a pretty well-known hip hop club. The club owner wouldn't see us and said to make an appointment, so I just dropped off a CD and biz card. The club was jam packed and there were some live performances going on. I made the rounds and passed some CDs out to the DJs. The DJs were spinning all American hip hop, so they definitely follow the US scene pretty closely. The main live performer was an emcee called "Simon" (I think). I had no idea what they were rapping about, but it sounded not half bad. We left the club and went across the street to Club Asia. Unfortunately, the club was closed due to some artist no-shows. We were talking to a gentlemen standing outside and he happened to be the manager of the club. We exchanged biz cards and I gave him some music. Very nice guy.







Then we took a taxi to Roppongi. It's amazing how there's so many people out in Tokyo late at night. It was like past 3AM when we got to Roppongi, but there were still traffic and people everywhere. I guess that's what you'd expect when you consider that the legal drinking age is 20 and alcohol is served 24/7 with no last calls ever. This street in Roppongi is lined with bars and clubs, with a lot of foreigners roaming around and trying to get you inside their bar/club. It kind of reminded me of Tijuana. We dropped in on a few places playing hip hop music and passed out more CDs to the local DJs.


This was taken at 3:30am... Tokyolites are night owls...


Finally went back to the hotel around 4:30am. Not a bad first night in Tokyo... just need to learn the language =P