How Not To Spend the Night in Tokyo...

It’s 7 PM., a week before Christmas, and I’m in a corner store on Plastic Food street in old Tokyo. I’ve managed to borrow a bowl of miso soup and I’m endlessly turning it upside-down in order to prove to my camera that it really is made of plastic. It’s been a slow day.

But that’s all about to change. Soon I’ll be on my way to Shinjuku, to film the last train leaving the station.

This had been described to me by various wild-eyed foreigners using large gestures and huge adjectives. Shinjuku is the busiest train station in the world –- every morning over a hundred thousand people get disgorged onto its platforms, filter through its underground tunnels like a great termite army and disappear into the steel gray skyscrapers nearby. Inevitably, some of these millions are still working or drinking or partying at midnight, when they all simultaneously look at their watches and realize that they are about to miss the last train home. For most Tokyo suburb-dwellers, that would put their household slippers and floor-level futon a $200 taxi ride away. What follows is a stampede to the station and, hopefully, a bloody battle to get on the train.

This is good. I could use a little more blood in my film.

Problem is, if I film the last train leaving, how am I going to get home? I check a map – it’s a bit far, but I can walk back to Tokyo station in a pinch. Or better yet, take a taxi and spend the remainder of the night at the nearby Press Club Library, buried in back issues of the Atlantic Monthly and People Magazine.

I arrive at Shinjuku just before midnight. I run up and down the stairs to every platform until I find one that’s packed. Standing off to one side is a tall, long-haired Australian who’s been in Japan for nine years. He tells me where to wait for the train and offers lurid stories about how terrible it will be. Apparently all the station staff stand outside the carriages like football players and shoulder the seething mass of humanity through the doors. I’m thrilled.

"You know why the trains stop running at 1 A.M., don’t you?" he asks. I don’t. "The taxi lobby is incredibly powerful in Tokyo. They should run one train per hour all night, like they do in New York, but the Taxi Association gives the politicians so much money that they voted to shut the stations down."

A train approaches. People crush forward. The Australian is actively fighting, like a sperm trying to swim upstream, while I am allowing myself to be passively jostled in classic Brownian motion. He gets in and I am shunted aside. Darwinism works.
I hang out through several more trains, waiting for the Big Moment. I notice that on the next track over there is still one train bound for Tokyo Station. I even go over to investigate it. I have some good footage… should I just hop on board and not worry about a taxi? No, I have to know what that Last Train is like. It should be spectacular.

More people trickle into the station. I’m watching the clock, urging those last-minute hoards to hurry. The last train pulls in. It’s virtually empty. Everyone gets on board in a leisurely fashion. There’s plenty of room. The doors close. It pulls away. I’m alone.

Like the great buffalo herds of yesteryear, they never came.

I leave the station. I find a taxi stand just outside the door. There are over a hundred people waiting in line and not a single taxi. The guy at the very front is holding a bunch of flowers. I go to the very back. Two very drunk businessman fall in behind me.

It’s cold. I’ve been running around with a heavy pack so once I stop my sweat immediately turns into Ben-Gay. I’m bored. I’d give two healthy molars for a trashy paperback. The businessman behind me keeps poking me in the ribs to ask me a question in Japanese. He’s so drunk that he sounds like he’s stuffed an entire Big Mac into his mouth and is trying to blow it out through a snorkel. I tell him, politely, that I don’t understand Japanese. He forgets this fact every three minutes and pokes me to make sure. "You doan’ unerstan?" he shouts. What I really want to say is, "My Japanese is fine. Yours needs a cup of black coffee. Now please stop poking me."

An hour later – 2:30 a.m. – I look to the front of the line and see a bunch of flowers. Our steady forward motion has been nothing but compression. Everyone is either too drunk or too tired or just plain resigned to the wait. I’m not. I decide to walk.

Once I’ve left the taxi line I pull out my map. My, that’s a long way. Looks to be eight or ten miles. I remember that my good friend Roberto will be in a restaurant in nearby Harajuku all night listening to Brazilian music. Restaurants are warm. He told me to call him if I wanted to come by.
I call. I get his cell-phone message machine. I stand there in a quandary. Should I walk to the restaurant? It’s not on the way to Tokyo Station. And Roberto’s a sweetheart but he’s not exactly… reliable. He doesn’t reliably have toilet paper in his bathroom, for example. He could be anywhere by now, or the restaurant could be closed and impervious to knocking. I decide to head for Tokyo Station. I’ll flag down a taxi along the way.

Everyone knows that taxi drivers don’t like Gaijins. I’ve heard bitter diatribes from the Tokyo party crowd on the subject. Until this moment I’ve never felt much sympathy. What are they doing out in the city after 1 A.M., anyway? Isn’t six hours in an expensive, crowded, smoky bar enough for one night? Secretly I’ve even sided with the taxi drivers – Gaijins rarely speak Japanese, usually can’t give directions to where they want to go, and have notoriously short tempers. If I were a Japanese taxi driver I’d probably avoid them too.

But then, I never expected to be out on the streets of Tokyo at 2:30 in the morning trying to flag down one of the unfriendly beasts. I hike about a mile down the road until I start seeing empty taxis with their "vacant" lights on. I wave. They speed by, their faces as cold and impassive as samurai warriors. I walk to the next stoplight and waylay them there. One pulls up. I tap on his window. No response. His hands have the steering wheel in a death grip. As soon as the light changes he nearly blows me over as he accelerates away. Green-yellow-red light. I manage to get the next guy’s attention. Infinitely slowly he reaches down to pull the back-door opener. The door opens. Hooray! I scoot around the back of the taxi to get in. The light changes. The door slams shut and he takes off.

The next wave of traffic has three empty taxis in it. They see me signaling and their "vacant" signs blink off like Xmas lights, then blink on again as soon as they’re past the intersection. Merry Christmas.

I give up, hike about a half mile back up the road, and find a hotel lobby. Would they, I ask, be willing to call for a taxi? I’d be happy to pay for the favor. "Absolutely not," the receptionist -- another samurai warrior -- says. "We only offer that service for our guests." "If a guest were standing in you lobby then they wouldn’t need a taxi home," I point out, but I know it’s futile. Back out into the cold.
By now it’s 330 A.M.. I’m freezing. My feet ache from the weight of my pack. Death To All Taxi Drivers, I think, I’m walking.

It takes three hours to cross the city. I follow the silent train tracks and skirt the stations. Halfway there I spot a soda machine. Its blinking sign advertises hot corn soup. As I’m popping the top off the can I hear a sound behind me. A homeless woman sits cross-legged on a piece of cardboard, sound asleep. She’s bent over forward, her head nearly touching the concrete. I sit down beside her and drink my soup, surprisingly comforted by the way her head bobs slowly up and down in time with her rumbling snores. My body wicks up the icy cold from the floor until I’m shivering under layers of fleece and down. I climb stiffly to my feet, feeling a great deal more respect for homeless people and cardboard insulation, and even less for taxi drivers. I leave 120 yen – the price of a can of soup – beside her bags.

The first train bound for home departs Tokyo Station at 6AM. I’m on board. So are two dozen other people in an assortment of wrinkled eveningwear. One woman is wearing a long slinky dress and sparkling high heels. Everyone stares vacantly into the distance with guttered eyes and sallow skin. I bet they hate taxi drivers too.

I get off the train at my station and hike past the taxi stand. Business is slow and a dozen cabs are lined up. I catch the eye of one driver. I nod. He opens the back door. I march right past. Boy that felt good.

Of course, my little apartment isn’t equipped with heat. I have, however, discovered several ways to warm up – a cup of hot tea, my hair dryer, my sleeping bag, or calisthenics. I make the tea, shove my hair dryer into my sleeping bag, and climb in after it. Stuff the calisthenics. Three minutes later I’m asleep

Excerpted from Japanland © 2005 Rodale Press. To purchase, please visit japanlandonline.com