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103 chapter four Roppongi Rhythms, Recently crow time Early in the morning, Roppongi belongs to the crows. At least that’s the case on this June day during the crows’ mating season. They are enormous crows, black as can be, with mastodonic beaks, strong, mean, and smart. I’ve never seen crows anywhere in my travels like these Japanese crows (Corvus macrorhynchos ). They have been known to stop trains by piling stones on rails, attack people and kill small pets, and crack nuts by dropping them onto the path of traffic. They are Tokyo’s scourge, feeding on the leftovers of a well-fed city, scattering the contents of street-side trash bags, and cawing so loudly during their first-light gatherings that entire neighborhoods cannot sleep. Aggressive crow-control efforts have made things better in some districts, but still the back streets of Roppongi, where bags of fresh trash are piled from just a few hours before, are the domain of King Crow, the regency of Roppongi’s raptors. If the early morning is a Saturday or Sunday, or a national holiday, the crows have considerable company. There are all-night Roppongi-goers every night of the week, but Friday and Saturday nights as well as holiday times fill the streets, clubs, bars, amusement arcades, karaoke parlors, and almost every other kind of fun establishment that the neighborhood has to offer, with a much larger percentage of clientele staying out until crow time. Most of the partygoers seem perfectly functional, some having regained their faculties after some earlier loss of control, but many more were always in command of themselves and are now anxious to go home. The first subway train out of Roppongi is at 5:08 a.m., and hundreds of people are waiting to board. It’s like the famous Tokyo sardinecan rush hour, but not quite. There are plenty of passengers in now-rumpled business suits carrying briefcases, but there are also people in party finery, as well as those in T-shirts and jeans. And very importantly, there are also many, many people who have worked all night, providing for the happiness of their fellow passengers: bartenders and wait staff, cooks, nightclub hostesses, touts 104 • chapter four and bouncers, strippers, and many others. Everyone is tired, few are talking, and quite a few, especially those lucky enough to have seats, are sound asleep. It’s some time before the train is far enough from Roppongi for passengers to begin getting off. In the meantime, as it pulls into station after station, almost no one boards or gets off: these are not action neighborhoods where people have stayed up all night, and they are not where Roppongi’s early morning train-riders live. This is the “Roppongi Special,” running the full route of the Hibiya Line but filled only with those who saw Roppongi’s crows. That first train would make quite an interesting sociological study. So would other subsets of Roppongi’s population, most particularly those unfortunates who did not board the Roppongi Special but probably should have. They are the ones who linger endlessly in the Roppongi morning, past first light and then sometimes into the 9:00–10:00 a.m. morning and beyond. At first they share space with the crows, many of them literally among the bags of scattered trash and empty beer cans, and then they outstay the crows and the trash cleanup. They simply can’t get themselves together enough to make it home. Some are sprawled motionless along the sidewalks or in doorways, others are staggering, taking a half-hour or more to advance a single block, while still others are so “in love” with their companions of the night that they can’t seem to part, but just kiss, kiss, and kiss again. These are people still in their business suits from yesterday, or the overdressed or barely dressed nightclubbers in sequins and miniskirts, or young hip-hop fans sporting baseball caps with graffiti. I’d start my study of them with a review of the scene and the question, “Who are these people and what the heck happened here?” and work my way backward to cover the rhythms of the previous hours. However, instead of focusing on the morning I’ll take the more conventional approach and start with people arriving in Roppongi in the evening. This makes it easier to give a fuller account of the many different kinds of people who come to...

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