We left at dawn with all the Japanese kids, all of us sweating, them in their tight racing-striped tees and platform boots and hair dyed blonde, hair dyed blue. There was a locker room where we all had checked our bags and it really looked like a gym locker room and for a moment I fantasized I was one of them in a Tokyo school. I liked to stand among them, their titters and glances dancing around me.

Roger and I went into a train station and a British couple approached us to chat. They'd been out celebrating his birthday – happy birthday, we said. He'd had "quite a few beers, mate, quite a few tequilas." Turns out they were there teaching English; they lived in a tiny apartment somewhere and had this strange ex-pat life. They were ordinary working-class British, down to earth and fast-talking. We asked them what it was like and the guy riffed about Japan and the Japanese. He was funny and I liked him. He said it was right strange living here, mate. The Japanese do not feel shame the way we do, he noted. For example, they are not the least bit disinclined to stare straight into your eyes for a long while simply because you're white. It happens to him all the time, he said. He'll be on a train and he'll sense something a bit off and look up to find the commuter across the aisle staring intently at him and, rather than looking away in embarrassment upon being caught, unflinchingly continuing to stare, every bit as intently. And also the customs, you have to be careful. It's quite taboo to eat while standing up. Very taboo. Don't eat a piece of pizza or something standing on the platform of a train or walking down the street. And don't blow your nose in public. You may just as well be wiping your arse.

What do you eat?

Lots of noodles mate. You get used to noodles. You have to get used to noodles if you want to live in Japan. Food is bloody expensive but noodles are fucking cheap, mate. And a bit of seafood now and then yeah? But the shop is very strange here too. The way prices are for things. For example you can go into a shop and find a mini-stereo, speakers, CD player, radio, the whole lot, for 3,500 yen. And then you go to the fruit section of the store right? And you pick up a package of red apples, three polished red apples packed in clear wrap on a green styrofoam tray and you look at the price and it's… 3,500 yen.

The girl was quieter but funny too and I liked them both. She had brown hair tied back severely in a ponytail and bright red lipstick and lots of mascara and a sexy sort of form-fitting leather jacket. Roger said are you a Jordy then? She smiled and said yeah, she's from Newcastle, can you tell? And Roger said yeah, you got a Jordy accent.

I took a great picture of the two of them on the train, her head on his shoulders, and then they got off forever and there I was with Roger on our way back out through the suburbs, gray and dewy this time, schoolgirls staring with their white socks up. We got off in a little town near the airport and took a walk, and he wanted to go see a monastery or some fucking thing and I just wanted an excuse to leave him so that's where we parted, him walking down the road, me hailing a cab back to the hotel. I took a shower, numb and nauseous, and took the bus to the airport and flew back around the world.

There was a huge crowd in a U-shaped space around the bar, everyone dancing in place, like everything else in this city. A DJ was spinning up-to-date hip-hop. I waded from one side of the room to the other, watching people, stopping to dance awhile, hoping to really feel lost. It was mostly young Japanese but there were Westerners here and there. There was a magnificent sight all along the bar: ten or so beautiful young Japanese women all dancing in a row, their hips and arms in counterpoint. I approached and faced one and danced before her for a while, aware of myself as a sort of worshiper or supplicant. She occasionally graced me with her gaze and smile. Eventually it was just too much and I had to move away, and I danced before another one, and another.

When I saw Roger again he had gotten a hold of two glow sticks and was dancing ostentatiously raver-style, his gaze intent, wildly waving his arms in the space he'd created around him. I wandered away again, hoping to perhaps never see him again.

The music was hot and I was drunk, a mass of dancing youth around me. Everything vertical, up up up! Time raced for the sunrise. A particular bar dancer caught my eye because she was wearing a t-shirt that said something. I could tell from afar that it was English and I knew that if a beautiful Japanese woman dancing on a bar was wearing a t-shirt in English, then what it said had to be remarkable. I made my way closer to have a look. I felt hot and short of breath in anticipation. Finally I could see it. She was dancing, knees pumping up and down, arms swaying. The t-shirt was white, with a rainbow on it. Above the arc of the rainbow it said this: COMMUNICATION. And below the arc, on three lines: GOOD JOYFUL HAPPINESS.

I wanted to cry it was so beautiful. Then I danced in front of her like a fool.

We got out at Shinjuku Station and found a place to eat, a sushi restaurant on the second floor. Everything in Tokyo is up stories; it's a vertical city. Bars, shops, restaurants: 2F, 5F, 7F. What's on the ground floor? Banks.

We took our shoes off at the front door and sat cross-legged at a low table in the back. I had sake and Roger had tea and we ordered sushi that was no better than it is in New York. We talked about where we were from and then about girls and relationships and he said he was in love with some girl but he cheated on her or something and pissed her off and now he wants her back. Outside it began to rain.

There was nothing happening in the neighborhood so we took a cab to Roppongi. As I gazed through the beaded water on the windows I wondered, this place could be any city, it's like all the cities I know: What makes it Tokyo? I searched for something that would evoke magnificent, strange difference but found only pleasant residential streets lined with trees and shrubs and walls around parks, streetlights and crosswalks and cars and parking meters.

When we got to Roppongi the rain was pouring in thick, warm ropes. It was maybe the hardest rain I'd ever seen; a choking, blinding deluge that soaked all the fabric on my body. We walked up and down the main street and finally decided to go to the Gas Panic Bar, just down a side street. We spent a couple of hours in the second-floor bar, Club 99, a relatively subdued place with an American-looking bartender and lots of young Japanese. We sat at a small table, drying off and drinking beer and looking around. I took pictures in the red-lighted semi-darkness. And then we went to the bar on the third floor.

The city train was more crowded and I felt people staring at us, not in any kind of antipathetic way but out of naked curiosity. We were so obviously different. Their gazes followed us in and out of the car and almost every moment in between.

The train was full of somber, inconspicuous commuters; working people; young pigeon-toed women clutching their handbags, paunchy men with their arms crossed. After we shared perfunctory background information about ourselves – he's "going to university" for physics, I'm starting a new job – Roger managed to steer the conversation to Her Majesty the Queen: she has more power than you might think actually, and I thought, what is it with the English and their queen? Here we are in Tokyo and I have to hear this. I looked away during a pause in the conversation and perceived a wild burst of fiery red light in the darkness right outside the window. I turned to see a hovering, laser-projected logo on the tunnel wall and it said:

Yahoo!

The ride took about an hour and a half and we still weren't there. We got off at some arbitrary station that seemed deep in the city but then we realized it was the business district – a forest of office buildings with corporate logos on the top, empty for the night. A sweaty man with glasses offered to help. "Where are you going?" he said haltingly. We tried to tell him and he said OK, and he made some strange remark about girls, were we looking for girls, and we said ha, no no, but he did tell us what connection to make to Shinjuku Station. We thanked him and he bowed and nodded and thanked us.

We went out to dinner that night with Jo and Michael and his wife and the kids, at a good French restaurant. We sat at a long table in the back and had spicy Australian wine and I had the lamb and it was all very good, and we talked about this and that and I admired Jo diagonally, in vain.

Then the next morning it was time to go, just like that. Kevin had to go to work and so Kate drove me to the airport and walked around the terminal with me a little while, killing time. We browsed a clothes store – it was odd to be engaged in such mundane behavior so soon before our separation. But finally I had to pass through the gate and we embraced and like always Kate said, "You're shaking!" and I said yes I know, I'm a trepidatious man.

I landed back in Tokyo nine hours later, at about 7:30 at night, went through customs, took the shuttle to the hotel, checked in, and there I was, in Tokyo with the night ahead of me. I went down to the lobby and noticed a line of taxis outside. I got in the back of a taxi and told the driver I wanted to go into Tokyo. He didn't understand a word. I wrote "Shinjuku Station" in my little notebook and tore out the sheet and gave it to him. I had read about bars and nightlife at Shinjuku Station.

He scribbled something and handed the paper back. It said "25,000." That was like, $250. I briefly considered giving it to him but figured there had to be a better way. He gestured with his hands and said something in half Japanese, half broken English, articulating how far away we were, how that was a normal price. I said no thank you and slipped out of the cab.

I was asking someone at the front desk how to take a train to town when a young English guy sidled up to me.

"You going into town?"

"Yeah."

"So am I. Let's go together."

"Sure." I didn't want to say no. How do you say no to a complete stranger in a place that's strange to both of you? But I had fantasized about being alone in Tokyo, of having a solitary and unpredictable experience. And I was sorry to give that up.

We got our directions and took the shuttle back to the airport and descended to the lower levels of the terminal, where the trains were. The deeper you went, it seemed, the less English there was. At the bottom there was nothing anywhere but Japanese characters: exit signs, train schedules, poster ads, everything was a colored blur of lines and squiggles. I had a sense of truly entering a different world, where my reference points had vanished. We went to the ticket booth and with difficulty got the man to understand what we wanted, and we found a train to take. We could take the express or the cheaper local commuter train and the English guy, Roger, said he wanted to save money so I said OK fine, and we took the slow train, and I already began to regret having met him.