You are with Savage at a ramen stall amongst a dozen other foodcarts that dot the river on both sides, the pink and lavender lights of the love hotels and soapy brothels of the red light district smear across impossibly radioactive waters, the Hamanomachi district, known for the densest foot traffic in the city, thousands of wandering husbands off for a night with Russian strippers, hostesses who charge sixty-five an hour to pour them cheap whiskey, straighten their ties for them and hold false conversations with their fake eyelashes, they come back week after week bestowing bracelets and the occasional Mercedes, the general debauchery away from their wives, the meeting at the office ran later than expected, the boss insisted we have a night out on the company dime, those demure, passive, unquestioning spouses, the same wives who are seeing heavily deodorized and mustached gaijin from Toronto on the side, a rotten palette floats by as you’re sitting on uncomfortable wooden stools, you have to part the hanging red curtains to enter, you’re each busy calling your dates and getting the voicemail, each wordlessly slurping down the tonkotsu ramen, a soup made from boiling down bones of the pig’s snout for twelve hours, a stench too burley for most foreigners, you are now texting your date, to see if she might meet you tonight, you notice Savage grab an extra helping of the bright red dyed ginger, it plummets into his soup, you get another message, this one of even greater bewonderment: Is impossible meet you because I making very important bathtime, which you immediately show to Savage, who conveys to you shruggery and returns to slurping, you were not aware that bathtime was something which could be made, you can only assume it must be a wonderful thing to make, especially if it is, as she claimed, of the very important variety, you would love to witness just how bathtime is made, Maybe you can tell her you are making very important ramen time, Savage says and suppresses his laugh.

Oh the joys of foreign blunders, you once witnessed an Australian English teacher attempt a deep, respectful bow to the President of the ESL company, he began his greeting not facing him but looking over his shoulder from the side, so by the time he was fully bowing, his ass was more or less directed to the President’s face, the deviousness of his action so brightly hued, the green silence of envy perseveres.

When you first land at Tokyo’s Narita airport, you grab a coffee, there are two girls in short skirts sitting with their suitcases, Is that David Beckham? says one of them, motioning with chin in your direction, that’s when you know you’re going to have a good time in Tokyo.