My friend Coreen (http://www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/1967) introduced me to a Japanese CD named Saya-san and we exchanged e-mail occasionally. I went to Tokyo in June, 1998 and Saya-san kindly introduced me to the CD world there, which largely centres on Shinjuku.

Saya-san's home page is http://www2.gol.com/users/saya. It is in both English and Japanese and has maps indicating where some of these places are.

The first evening we met at the Lisa Bar, a TG bar in Shinjuku 3-chome. It is in the basement of a high rise building full of bars and has a very nice atmosphere. The first thing I noticed is that they must have a very good ventilation system, because even though people were smoking and it is quite small (it seats about a dozen) the air seemed quite fresh. Everyone was very friendly. The people who run it are Ayukawa Lisa-san and Kawashima Sayoko-san. They have a home page at

http://www.jah.ne.jp/~lisa It is also in both Japanese and English. Because the bar is quite small, there is a cover charge which is very high by Canadian standards (5,000 yen, about $50 Canadian), but this is quite within the normal range for a small bar in Japan. Lisa-san had been to ski at Banff a few times, so she knew Calgary at least a little (Calgary is the nearest airport to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies).

Later we went to another TG bar called Swan no yume (Swan Dream) in Shinjuku 2-chome. The bartender was Inoue Harumi-san and the place has a web page at http://www.din.or.jp/~swan (Japanese language only). A gentleman who seemed to be in charge took us over to their club facility, which was new and very well kept. (Most Japanese crossdressers seem to be very much in the closet, so they belong to clubs where they can store their stuff and get changed before heading out on the town.) The cover charge here was lower (about 1,500 yen I think), and they CDs there also seemed very friendly. There was a little more explicit activity going on there than some people might be comfortable with, though.

We ended the night at a disco called Sazae (cover charge 1,000 yen) which had good music. Several people had already passed out due to the late hour by that time.

Saya-san and I stayed out all night, and I caught the subway back to my hotel around 6AM when it started up again. Saya-san went back to her club, the Guppy Bar Actress, to resume her everyday life.

The next weekend we went out again, starting at the Lisa Bar. We wound up at a reggae bar with some friends of hers including an Italian TS and did a lot of dancing. Once again I caught the early morning subway home--about 5:30AM!

This trip I was in drab both times because I didn't know what to expect and I also had an itinerary that took me to some places I didn't feel comfortable packing Teri's things along to before I got to Japan. Now that I have a better sense of what the Tokyo scene is like and know some of the people, I am looking forward to next year's trip and a night in Shinjuku en femme! I wonder if the Japanese will notice a redhead who's 6'8' in the four-inch heels she usually wears when out and about?!

Thanks for introducing me to the Tokyo TG world, Saya-san!

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