After traversing Japan with my good friend Bradley as my partner in crime for 3 weeks, we finished up in Tokyo for our last weekend and decided we needed one final hurrah. So I gathered the troops - mostly former AJETers still in the area - and we hit up one of my favorite spots in Nichome, Arty Farty.For the uninitiated, Nichome is the "gay district" of Tokyo and Arty Farty is about as gay as it gets. So imagine my surprise when I happened upon Ben, a not-gay Londonite who had just arrived in Japan a few days earlier on business and had unwittingly followed some of his new colleagues into a gay nightclub on a Saturday night.
Unlike a lot of people I know, Ben took it all in stride and didn't even seem particularly bothered by the guys that were hitting on him. I was a little more his type though so we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night. When the sauna-esque sardine-can dance floor got old, we bonded over 4am curry and my casual use of Andrew Marvell poetry in conversation. It's not every day some girl quotes 350-year-old poetry to you in a taxicab in Tokyo I guess, but more importantly, nor is it every day that the person listening catches the reference.
In his words, we got on like a house on fire, and then I buggered off back to the States. But strictly speaking, he's not an SSF anymore, because in May of 2008 I went to London!
