In the winter of 1999, I was working very hard during the day at the bank and living dangerously at night in the district of Roppongi.
To be completely accurate, I lived in a district that would become Roppongi Hills, one of the most exclusive places in the city. The apartment where I lived still exists, I found it recently on a pilgrimage with the Australian of my heart.
However, I don’t think that the current tenants are mistaken for high class prostitutes when they go to work in the morning.
Let me explain this to you.
Roppongi has always been one of the go-to places in Tokyo.
Having read a very serious historical study on the subject, I can tell you that Roppongi was chosen by the Americans as a hotspot in the aftermath of the Second World War. The soldiers who worked with MacArthur had decided that this area would become a red district as it was located not far from their military base. At the end of the 1990s, the neighborhood had kept its ambition to be the king of the party.
When I came home by foot to my tiny apartment, I was constantly harassed by bouncers to join the Lady’s Nights offered on every corner. What possessed them they imagine that the young woman they saw so rigid in her banker suit would ever be a starry night vamp’?
I ended up becoming acquainted to the bouncers. Now and then, some of them even made me a familiar nod of the head. The badly dressed gaijin, I was already part of their landscape.
These bouncers were full time Yakuza members and they sported impressive tattoos.
One evening, one of the bouncers I knew took refuge in the lobby of my apartment building during a police raid.
Talking to me in an extraordinary polite form of Japanese, he begged me to say nothing to the authorities if they came knocking on my door.
I replied in my best Japanese that my language level was not sophisticated enough to answer questions from the police.
The next morning, when I opened my door, I found a huge bunch of flowers with a handwritten thank you note.
Rightly or wrongly, I have never seen him again.