Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I live fairly close to Roppongi, probably about a 10 minute walk to the Almond bakery.  Also, I live just behind the Tokyo Midtown Project.  By all accounts, I should be quite happy in living in such a killer location.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I truly hate having to travel through Roppongi at night, especially Fridays and Saturdays after 9 pm.  The place becomes an ocean of vomit and the streets are filled with idiots stumbling around trying to get to the next bar or cab.  There are tons of hot women here, but I think only the sleaziest skanks attach themselves to this part of the town.  These women try to appear high class with their little princess gowns, but in truth I think there's an inverse relationship between their appearance and their actual station in life.  From about 8 pm on a given day, foreigners and half of the Japanese are legally allowed to become stupid.  In particular, foreigners are encouraged to dismiss all notions of reason, sensibility, good taste,dignity and class when they enter these grounds.  If you're a foreign retard, you'd be highly valued here because you would be the paragon of what this section of the city represents.  Posters of your mangled face after a night of debauchery would adorn the street lamps to symbolize your value to this part of the city.

Doctors prize this part of the city because they can increase their funds for organ transplant surgery, most notably liver transplants and in advance stages, lungs.  Vegas faces a rival for the name "Sin City"; heck, if I was the MGM Hotel management or Mr Wynn, I'd put some serious investments into Roppongi.  You already have debauchery and prostitution; add legalized gambling and you'd kill Vegas in a day!

The best part is probably walking to the station the next day in the morning and stepping through the previous night's carnage.  It literally becomes a vessel for the crows/ravens or whatever ugly oversized birds flock here with all the garbage litering the streets for the Stinky Trucks (i.e. garbage disposal) to pick up at the last possible second.  I even was mistaken for crow's mate one day when I meekly and earnestly traveled to work and the damn thing tried using my head as a parking garage.

Then you have the two biggest pillars of tripe around the city: Roppongi Hills and the Midtown.  At first, I was quite happy about the Midtown as I thought it would add a bit of class, compared to Roppongi Hills which was an architectural masturbatory mindfuck.  And indeed the Midtown is architecturally more pleasant, allowing easier access and being very posh and swank.  However, as with everything most of my initial impression was just an impression.  The reality of the zone is that it's an overpriced haven for Paris Hilton wannabes (which says a horrible thing about society) in their desire to exude elegance.  The park really is shitty during the summer with all the bugs and crap crawling around.  The restaurants are beyond a normal pieces means of anything sensible in their pocket book, save the bottom floor places which are still outrageously priced and only cater to people wishing they could brag to their friends that they've "eaten at the Midtown."  Come on.  All the "real" restaurants are on the 2nd floor and higher and require a reservation.  Only places that require a fist up your ass means that you've ever eaten at some place "real!" Probably the only thing I really like at Midtown is the 24 hour supermarket which has some international goods.  But at the late hour, I can't even find English muffins, hot dogs, waffles, or corned beef hash, so I might as well wait for National Azabu to open in Hiroo which has most of what I want (minus the corned beef hash since Japan seems to no longer import that :( ).

That leads to Hills.  I think Hill's restaurants are a little more affordable, but the access points are horrible.  Trying to get through one point to another in Hills is just a nightmare.  I think Mori wanted the place to resemble a Vegas hotel, but ended up getting an HR Giger painting instead.  Forget ever going shopping in this place because nothing is affordable here (nor Midtown for that matter).  I'm surprised shops manage to stay open.  Maybe they're the type that just require one sale a month to operate.  Either way, the place just sucks.

I think the only two positive aspects of living here are the proximity to the subway stations and some of the restaurants around me.  I've got a Cold Stone Creamery near Hills which I can take advantage of almost anytime.  Also, there's numerous decent restaurants that I can hit.  Unfortunately, most of these places turn out to be bar food and I get sick of it easily.

The last positive is that Hard Rock is around my corner.  Naturally, my affinity for heavy metal makes Hard Rock a great place for a person like me to go to, especially when I'm alone and hungry late at night.  But I have to admit that the two cute waitresses there have kept me coming back, especially lately since I started conversing with one, discovering that she even lived for a short period in my hometown of Torrance!

But these few positives don't make a right in my book.  I miss Kitasenju despite the fact that it's far out and overly crowded.  But the affordability and fact that the area caters more towards families rather than being some skank town move its ranking far ahead of Roppongi for me in terms of places I prefer living in Tokyo.