The Weirdest Sunday Night of My Life

4 am, Monday morning, and the sky is just starting to turn grey. I should be at home sleeping on a futon, but instead I am on the streets of Shibuya...with a microphone in hand...singing Simon & Garfunkle...

Several hours earlier, I had been sitting at home feeling rather bored. Having not done any really stupid for a long long time (no point hitchhiking around Tokyo, the trains are too cheap!), I was itching for another adventure. Luckily, I get in contact with another itchy traveller in Tokyo (Soh, aged 19 from America, who I had met at Takayama) and he proposed a very crazy idea indeed. Without a second thought, I was on the train to Shibuya to meet him.

Nobody told Shibuya it was a Sunday night. The moment I leave the station I am completely overwhelmed as the giant screens attack me from every angle, flashing and glittering with all their heart.

Everything is covered in trendyness, even the weather report on the TV has rap music accompanying it! The famous Shibuya crossing is an amazing sight; crowds gradually build up behind the traffic lights until they are suddenly released, and then suddenly hordes of people start marching towards you, like a huge human wave. The wave is anything but homogenous though - Japanese people and foreign people, goths and cheerleaders, people with blue hair and people with blonde hair, gangsters wearing Wu-Tang and businessmen wearing suits, they all congregate together in a sea of humanity.

I meet up with Soh, and we quickly realize that neither of us knows where a bar is, and neither of us brought a guidebook either. Dont worry, help is at hand! In Japan, nothing ever closes, and this includes bookshops. I feel like a bit of a tool leaving the party-goers on the street to visit the bookshop, until I go inside to find the afforementioned sea of humanity is in there too. What the hell are they doing in a bookshop?! Every aisle has people in it, even the ones selling books on Economics and Political Affairs.

We find the Lonely Planet, find a good bar in Shibuya, and leave the bookshop. Then we realize that neither of us actually thought to check where it was on a map. Damn! So we wander the streets instead, and eventually findourselves a deal that sounds too good to be true. All...you...can...drink? As in, I can drink however much I like?! Of any drink I like?! What about beer? What about sake? What about cocktails? The answer to these questions is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and when they ask if we want to go in, the answer is YES!

It cost 1500 yen ($15) per person for 2 hours. Fortunately for them, we are both sensible people and drink in moderation compared with the people around us. The whole idea of having unlimited free drinks is very, very dangerous. You want a bottle of warm sake? Here you go. You want three beers? Here you go. Part of the deal is that you have to buy some of their very overpriced and very salty food, which is fair enough, and we still walk out a good deal drunker than we would have been anywhere else for that price.

Now, we must wander to find a new location. On the way though, we find a pair of street performers playing on the street, and stop for a chat. The music sounds absolutely beautiful (I think it was actually good music, and not just our warm drunkenness), and naturally we request just about every song we know. Completely forgetting about other bars, we spend the rest of the night here, and some of the morning too!

While we sit on the stone benches watching the sports cars and drunk-ferrying taxis slide past, Soh asks me stupid questions - `Do you like Cat Stevens?`, `Do you like Peter, Paul and Mary?`, and even `Do you like Simon & Garfunkle?`. After swaying on the street for a very very long time listening to the Beatles and generally having the time of our life, me and Soh gradually sneak in on the instruments until we have stolen both the guitar and the microphone. Now it is our turn! His guitar playing is quite good considering the amount that we drank. My singing however, which isnt great even in the soberest of times, leaves a lot to be desired. It reminds me of climbing a wall, when you drag yourself over that last little lip in a messy, unnatural and completely unelegant way.

Having done several renditions of Cat Stevens, and Jeff Buckley`s `Hallelujah`, we finally find our niche with Simon & Garfunkles `Sound of Silence`. At last the original performers reclaim their instruments, and perform a few mellow songs standing in the middle of the footpath, as the grey light of dawn grows and grows.

By 5am it is well and truly morning, and it is time to put our master plan into action. We are off...To Tsukiji!
Tsukiji is a major tourist attraction of Tokyo, the largest fish market in the world. The tuna auctions here are world famous, and plenty of tourist rise at impossible hours to watch them unfold at five thirty in the morning. Neither of us particularly like getting up that early, and so we decided that it would be far easier to just stay up until then!

It is indeed worth the effort. The tuna fish are gigantic, some frozen, some fresh, and they go under the hammer for ridiculous prices; the record so far is $200,000 for a single fish. After being bidded for, they are taken immediately to the work benches to be turned into Japans most illustrious seafood - sashimi (certain cuts of tuna which are eaten raw either by itself or as sushi). Here men work with giant swords and mechanized saws to skillfully cut up fish weighing up to 200kg, which are then passed on as quickly as possible to the wholesalers to be used in restaurants. Tsukiji is the largest wholesale seafood maket in the world, handling on average 2000 tonnes a day, and there are around 400 varieties of seafood sold here; basically, if it lives in the ocean, you can buy it here.

The goal is to get it to the table as fast as possible, and to achieve this, workmen race around in the most annoying, dangerous vehicles known to man. Basically its a standing platform with wheels, and it has the ability to accelerate very quickly, turn very sharply in any direction, and suddenly reverse without notice. There are thousands of them hooning around the market, and as hungover tourists, they are the absolute bane of our existence. After spending an hour or so wandering around the markets being chased by these contraptions, we settle down in a sushi restaurant to see what all the fuss is about. The prices are absolutely ridiculous, but the flavour is indeed completely different. This sashimi has never been frozen or refrigerated, but has simply come out of the ocean, gone under the hammer, been processed and served on my plate all within a few hours. The very apex of the Japanese obsession with freshness, it does indeed taste rather nice.

By the train home we are completely exhausted, and miss our stop by falling asleep in the carriage. By the time I finally make it to the other side of Tokyo, I am sharing the train carriage with businessmen on their way to work. I smile as I review the events in my mind; All you can drink, busking at dawn, tuna auctions and fresh sushi - a very unique adventure indeed!