What do you get when you mix a thousand bars with several hundred strip clubs and lap-dancing joints, add a smattering of shady drug dealers and then throw in thousands of exuberant football fans?
It's anyone's guess.
But it's a question that the denizens of Tokyo's wildest nightlife area are having to ask as they prepare for the arrival of the World Cup and its attendant hoardes.
The Roppongi area's neon-bathed jungle of hostess clubs, brothels, sports bars and other watering holes is expected to act as a magnet for the hundreds of thousands of fans heading for Japan for the May 31 to June 30 tournament.
Bar managers are frantically making more space in their often pokey premises and installing the latest plasma TV screens for what should be a huge boost for business.
Renting some muscle
Other last-minute preparations reflect their worries about what could go wrong -- anything glass being swapped for plastic and a hiring spree on muscle-bound security men.
"It's going to be crazy," said Rob O'Rourke, sipping a pint of lager and drawing on a cigarette outside Paddy Foley's, the Irish bar he manages.
Right next to Paddy Foley's stands an English bar, part of the United Nations of drinking establishments in Roppongi. On match days, both pubs will be brimming over with fans, many the worse for wear from alcohol.
"It could just start off with some friendly slagging, but then someone throws a glass and all hell breaks loose," said O'Rourke, explaining why he will be hiring bouncers at his bar for the first time.
Sin city
Paddy Foley's is just one of some 1,150 establishments within a 365m radius that caters to every nocturnal desire from rub downs by Korean "masseurs" to high-class striptease acts and after-hours clubbing.
On weekend nights, Roppongi crossing is a teeming mass of pleasure seekers and providers.
Drunken salarimen heading for hostess bars and karaoke joints rub shoulders with the beautiful Western and Japanese women who staff them, while drugs are never further away than a knowing look and a hurried exchange down a side street.
It is a volatile mix that regularly spills over into violence and crime, a rarity in relatively law-abiding Japan.
Shady past
Roppongi made headlines when young British hostess Lucie Blackman disappeared two years ago and was later found dead, allegedly murdered by a wealthy Japanese businessman.
"It's the only part of Japan where you have to watch your back and be careful what you say," said O'Rourke.
Over the years Roppongi has nearly seen it all, but next month's invasion of soccer fans will be a new experience.
"We'll be taking special measures, but of course we don't know quite what because we've never had anything like this before," explained an officer staffing the Roppongi crossing police box last Friday night.
Bar owners in the area say police, clearly worried, have visited them to ask about their precautions, but have offered little advice of their own.
`Getting handbags at ten paces'
Just next door to Paddy Foley's, bar manager Carl James from London's East End is expecting a 50 percent profit boost from the World Cup, but fully expects that things will "go off" at some point.
"It's a pretty volatile place anyway," he said.
"I think it will be okay if the fans are handled properly on the streets and if the Japanese can get their heads around the idea that the World Cup is just a big party."
James is taking on three or four extra security men and introducing a membership system, and says the bar will emphasize the international flavor of the event rather than attracting just England fans, who have earned a reputation for violence.
Although Tokyo is not hosting any games, accommodation shortages and the lack of a decent nightlife at venues means fans are likely to flood back into the capital, and Roppongi, after matches like England-Sweden on June 2 in nearby Saitama.
Illuminated by the glow of his five newly installed plasma screens, Paul Wagstaff of the cavernous Tokyo Sports Bar said he expected little if any trouble.
"There'll be nobody to fight," he said. "Usually at World Cups you get fighting against the locals, but the Japanese don't want to fight."
"You might get handbags at ten paces but that's about it," he added, using the British slang for a half-hearted punch-up.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has