Underground and Underrated

by Paul Rubio

 
I exited the Shinjuku Sanchome metro station keen to discover Tokyo by night. My pupils dilated and contracted adjusting to the flash of ubiquitous neon, engrossed in a canopy of foreign characters and fascinating calligraphy.

I could still taste the remnants of tempura flakes and barbequed eel from dinner as I mentally recounted my second enchanting day in Tokyo — sunrise photographs of the vibrant Tsukiji fish market, treks through scores of deeply misunderstood Harajuku teens to reach the sacred Meiji Jingu Shrine, and soliciting the favors of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, at the hectic Sensoji Temple. In a short 48 hours, Tokyo had won me over.

Curious to discover Tokyo’s gay nightlife, I mapped out a plan of action before leaving my swanky hotel room at the world’s most seductive Ritz-Carlton, the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo. I was tempted to simply enjoy the splendor of my newfound favorite hotel, but a brave new world beckoned. While my Japanese friends had insisted homosexual hangouts were scarce in the capital city, my due diligence and the guidance of the hotel’s cherubic concierge supported another theory — a raging yet clandestine scene, centralized in Tokyo’s unofficial gayborhood, Shinjuku Ni-chome.

As I retrieved my pocket map outside the metro station, I noticed a group of muscular twenty-somethings sashaying in the same direction. I stalked the group for about five minutes, finally stumbling upon the lost city of Homo Edo.

I heard some familiar English intonation and gravitated towards a group of expats practicing Japanese with a group of Asian jocks clearly reveling in their endearing accents. I was quickly adopted by the multicultural assembly and given a primer of gay Tokyo.

We were standing at the heart of the Shinjuku gayborhood, facing Advocates Café, which claimed unofficial rights to the main street. In a society where foreigners are often viewed with suspicion, Advocates Café was a pioneer in gay nightlife by opening its indoors and outdoors to locals and foreigners alike. It is now maintaining its reputation as the early evening watering hole, loud and chaotic, packing the street like a small gay pride parade, where smiling visitors toast to Tokyo’s iconoclasms and eager Japanese boys eye up the Westerners and each other.

My newfound friends — three Anglo-Japanese couples — shared a common theme: the young expats had studied in Tokyo, fell in love with Japanese guys, and never left. The Texan, the Bostonian, the Aussie and their Japanese beaus were on a mission to help me discover the gay scene over the course of two short nights. Their insider knowledge revealed a shocking and unexpected statistic: Tokyo flaunts the highest concentration of gay bars in the world.

The narrow, stacked buildings standing above us struck me as a series of futuristic beehives. Inside were vertical assemblies of petite gay bars, stacked one on top of each other, amounting to over 200 individual businesses in a five-square-block area. My new friends warned of the strict members-only entrance policies for the boutique bars — some catered to a particular sub-culture like hardcore leather or bears, some attracted those into a specific fetish like sniffing sullied underwear, others drew gents interested in kinky Japanese rape porn.

After encountering much door-slamming disappointment, my new friends informed me that most of these shoebox-sized bars were miserably boring. Varying in size from a cruise ship cabin to a New York City studio, few could fit more than a dozen people at a time. Instant membership is impossible. Personal friendship with a member or the bartender determines the right to enter; and an xenophobic attitude precludes most foreigners from ever sampling the local esoteric flavors.

But it turned out that there is fun for foreigner visitors. Advocates Café is by far the easiest place to make new friends during your visit. After that, the crowd divides between the wildly popular Western-style dance club, Arty Farty, the smaller outpost, The Annex, the no women allowed leather palace, Dragon Men, or the upscale and intimate Kinsmen. There are also numerous word-of-mouth events that crop up almost nightly.

This particular Saturday night, the crowd at Advocates buzzed about a late-night Madonna-themed party at Arch. Come 1am this was the destination of our group, which had grown to a dozen people representing five countries. As we entered the subterranean chamber, familiar tunes poured from the sound system as we gazed at paper dolls representing Madonna’s various looks. Club kids, drag queens, Harajuku girls, and shirtless, toned circuit boys partied like it was 1999, flailing their arms, shaking the sweat from their thick black manes, and eagerly and incorrectly shouting the lyrics.

In an instant, the intoxicating cacophony turned to order as patrons diligently assumed seats on the dance floor. On an exact replica of the set from the Sticky & Sweet Tour, an incredible impersonator (strangely resembling Madonna after fresh rounds of Botox) performed 10 numbers with a troupe of professional dancers. During the rendition of “4 Minutes” there was even a guest appearance by Justin Timberlake (okay, he bore little resemblance to the real thing).

The perfection of costumes and choreography, the crowd’s too-orderly conduct, the constant greetings from the people sitting next to me, the countless rounds of sake, and the awesome people I met that night reigned as the party highlight of my two-month trip to Asia (a close second was the drag show extravaganza at DJ Station in Bangkok).

A few nights of partying later, I had yet another reason to be fascinated with the land of Hello Kitty and Pokémon. Tokyo is also home to an original and robust world-class gay scene, with constantly changing offerings.

As Tokyo creeps out of the closet, fashionable bars and restaurants such as the New York Grill at the Park Hyatt Tokyo and Forty-Five at the Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo are noticeably filled with the upper echelon of gay society. This fast-forward capital city provides a niche for all flavors of gay life, relentlessly imbuing everyday with a wow factor that makes you feel that you have arrived in an alternative universe.

Portions of this article originally appeared in The Guide Mag, a Pink Triangle Press publication.