another roppongi coke article

[damian 0]

This is a very revealing article. The expat life really is something. It certainly always manages to get up the nose of non-expat types in Tokyo (that was the best pun I could think of).

 

cocaine

[NoFakie 45]

Be a nice Dear and post it will you? You've got to subscribe to read the Times and the Times is not free from non-residents. They get your IP. Either that or they don't like people who put "Andorra" when subscribing.

[damian 0]

No probs, wrigles. It is quite long:

 

The bankers who risk death in Tokyo

Leo Lewis

Highly paid western traders flock to Tokyo's Roppongi district to unwind with drink and drugs. But in recent months, a lethal cocaine and heroin mixture has claimed several of their lives

 

IT IS JUST AFTER 9pm on Friday and in one of the clubs at the foot of Roppongi Hills it’s already a major struggle to reach the bar.

 

Expensive suit jackets have been slung over the backs of chairs or jammed through the handles of designer briefcases. Silk ties have been loosened, the partying has spilt out on to the warm streets and the champagne-fuelled flirting is in full swing. The Western investment bankers are on the town, and they have a very big night ahead of them. {db edit: I reckon they are talking about the appaling bar called Heartlands. Friggin tosser hole crap fest. It is ok to have cash and spend up, but by god, there are better places to do it than Heartlands!}

 

One of the larger groups is joined by a stockbroker who has come straight from his office a little further down the road — a Japanese securities house which employs a smattering of non-Japanese staff to schmooze its foreign clients. On his arrival, he surreptitiously taps his nose with two fingers. Everyone who spots this gesture knows exactly what it means: the cocaine part of the evening has all been arranged.

 

“This little strip of Tokyo must be one of the world’s biggest parties right now, and when city bankers party seriously that always means cocaine,” says a red-faced New Yorker sloshing a colourful cocktail around his glass.

 

“Everyone standing here has a stack of spare cash, is probably single — or pretending to be — and has absolutely nothing to do tomorrow except recover from the night before or play a round of golf.”

 

Everybody from nightclub owners and DJs to strippers and lap dancers confirms that the good times are rolling again in Roppongi. After ten unhappy years in the doldrums, stocks and shares are resurgent and the old bubble spirit, dormant since the crash of 1990, has returned. Bonuses among foreign workers have started to reflect the recovery of market fortunes and suddenly there is a large number of foreigners in town with enough disposable income to crack open a £220 bottle of champagne for the hell of it and spend £300 a gram on cocaine.

 

Towering above this scene is Tokyo’s newest — and most desirable — office block. Its glittering list of tenants includes big Wall Street banking names, international law firms, TV companies and boutique financial houses. As the evening draws on, more and more suits stream out of its doors and head straight down to join the throng in the bars and clubs of Roppongi — the undisputed party capital of Tokyo and the heart of a new cocaine boom.

 

“Bars along the main Roppongi strip have become the prime spots for Western city boys looking for someone to fix them up,” says Hamish, a barman at one of the nightspots. “This is a complete import from London and New York — when the Japanese want to have a good time they hit the booze and perhaps some speed. Cocaine is pretty much exclusively for guys with work visas and expat wallets.”

 

But with that boom has come a chilling chain of incidents all centred on the same small Roppongi area. Over the past three months, the free-spending expatriate community has been rocked by four drug-related deaths and a string of 12 near-fatal overdose comas. A rogue drugs dealer, say police, has been mixing heroin into the cocaine, and some who have snorted the mixture have paid with their lives. The dealer, thought to be an Iranian, remains at large.

 

Rupert Littlewood, a young bond trader with joint British and Australian nationality, made his purchase from the dealer in April. He did not know it but by then the cocaine-heroin cocktail was already responsible for the deaths of a Canadian and a Brazilian. Littlewood was lucky — he only fell unconscious. When he awoke in the Hiroo hospital, which has one of Japan’s few specialist departments for drugs overdoses, he was immediately arrested for possession. More of the bizarre mixture was found in his pocket, and there was almost three times more heroin in his bloodstream than cocaine.

 

His trial for drugs possession opened two weeks ago, and the verdict came extremely quickly by Japanese standards: having pleaded guilty, the 32-year-old received a suspended sentence — a result regarded by his lawyers as a significant victory given that the traditional Japanese outcome of such cases is three years’ hard labour.

 

But while his lawyers may be pleased with the result, the high-octane life that he built in Japan is now in tatters. Within a couple of hours of the verdict on Monday, arrangements were being made for Littlewood to be deported, and he will not be able to return for an extremely long time. When he was arrested in April, he had been working for just a few months for Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank with offices not far from Roppongi. He had moved to Tokyo in 2001 with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the Anglo-German investment banking house, where he built a reputation as a man who enjoyed everything the expat life had to offer. Previously he had worked in their Sydney offices after completing a PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Sydney where he was very highly regarded by his professors.

 

One of his former DKW colleagues said: “He’s a great guy, but he knows the risks and still takes them. Was he doing anything more than any other trader on a Friday night in London? No, but I think you can lead such a comfortable life here that you forget how much trouble you can get into in the blink of an eye.”

 

There is no bail for suspected drug offenders awaiting trial in Japan, so when Littlewood could not turn up for work after his arrest, Morgan Stanley was forced to sack him. A career that would reliably have delivered years of mouth-watering bonuses and generous salaries was suddenly crushed.

 

Just three minutes’ walk from the dive bar in which Littlewood bought those few grams is hard evidence of what he lost — his sprawling, luxury apartment nestling among embassy buildings and chic restaurants. Normal Japanese office workers cannot hope to afford such a flat in the very centre of Tokyo, where the only apartments are constructed for the super-rich. The average daily commute for Japanese workers in the financial district is more than an hour each way. But a great benefit of the massively subsidised expat life is that non-Japanese investment bankers can afford to live perhaps 15 minutes from the office in flats that would comfortably house a Japanese family of six.

 

On the same day as Littlewood’s overdose, two Americans also bought the cocaine-heroin cocktail. In 33-year-old Tim Kelly’s case, the level of heroin was fatal. His friend and colleague, Billy Philips, managed to stagger back to the corridor of their glittering apartment building in Atago Hills before collapsing into a coma. The two men worked for the same company, an American flight simulator manufacturer that had recently signed a massive deal with Japan Airlines and posted the pair there to work with the clients. They had plenty to celebrate, and Roppongi was where they naturally headed.

 

A recent newsletter sent around by the American Embassy in Tokyo warns residents to be particularly wary of the Roppongi scene, and that overdosers on heroin “may have believed they were purchasing cocaine”. The letter went on to remind Americans that “the risks of possessing, purchasing and using illegal drugs abroad include accidental death”. But many think the message has so far failed to sink in. One embassy insider says: “These warnings go out but there is a certain community out here where the culture is just too ingrained.”

 

The other victims have all come from equally high-flying sectors of the economy: financiers, consultants and senior executives have all fallen prey to the rogue dealer’s mix. A Canadian man who died from the mixture ended his life as so many visitors end their nights out in Roppongi: in a Chinese massage parlour.

 

“We can clearly see whether they have been drinking or snorting coke when they come here,” says one sex worker at a club just off the main drag. “They used to turn up so drunk that they could hardly walk. On coke, they think they are porn stars.”

 

Nobody has yet explained the exact motive for the string of heroin cocktail sales. Some believe that they represent a straightforward instance of robbery: the drugs dealer would add the high levels of heroin to the cocaine knowing that within minutes users would overdose. Once the users were in a coma, he could then steal their wallets and passports.

 

Drugs experts believe that the incidents may also represent the first appearance in Japan of a notoriously dangerous practice that has claimed lives across South-East Asia — an attempt by dealers to make cocaine more addictive by creating a dual dependency on heroin. Police are working on the assumption that the rogue dealer simply concocted this mixture wrongly.

 

The rise of Roppongi as Tokyo’s cocaine capital coincides exactly with the soaring number of foreigners arriving in Japan to work. The trend is particularly noticeable in the financial industry, where many institutions have recognised the need to bring in experts from abroad. But that flow has brought its own culture with it. Across Japan, drug abuse — along with general crime levels — is extremely low by international standards. Speed and a few designer drugs have their followers among a small cross-section of salaried workers and students, but cocaine, say Roppongi police, has thrived only because the place is crammed with people who used it back home.

 

Roppongi’s longstanding reputation as a ghetto for foreigners has given it an equally long immunity from serious police activity. Government-led anti-crime drives have always tended to focus on the Kabukicho district of Shinjuku, where Japanese are more likely to be both the victims and perpetrators of crime. But the deaths and comas have startled the authorities into an unprecedented burst of action — last week a raid was mounted on one bar, where four staff and a customer were arrested on drugs-related charges. One employee was charged with dealing in cocaine from behind the bar itself.

 

Roppongi regulars reported only a brief interlude in the party spirit as word of the raid spread. Phillipe Carina, who works as a tout for a hostess bar, says: “For one night, things were really quiet. People avoided all the usual places because they thought nowhere was safe. But they have come back — this is where they want to be.”

 

Sure enough, one night later the old haunts were throbbing once more. Graham (not his real name), a 31-year-old equities broker who has worked at a major-name investment bank in Tokyo since 1999, explains the picture.

 

“Traders will do coke just because they have the cash, but with brokers it is different. I’m not saying that I was hired to score coke for my clients, but my job is certainly to show them a good time. The whole business of client entertainment operates on an incredibly intense level out here in Tokyo — far more than back in London or New York. In the City there will always be a few clients who want to go to a strip club. Here, everyone wants that. Debauchery is just part of the pattern,” he says.

 

He goes on to describe a typical Thursday or Friday night out with clients, and adds that in the four years he has been here, the past three months have involved the hardest partying of all. Some, he says, live in Tokyo anyway, others are over to visit Japanese companies or are on some other business. Either way, they will want their night’s route to include at least one lap-dancing club and plenty of bars.

 

“There is a killer combination of what is on offer in Roppongi and that total sense of freedom that comes from being thousands of miles from home,” says Graham. “The clients expect us to make their night a memorable one, and the whole area is completely geared towards that. By two in the morning, the fun is just getting started and some bars are only just opening. Everyone is having a great time and soon enough, someone will ask whether there is any coke about. If the client is important enough, you do what you have to do.”

 

He pulls from his breast pocket an elegant silver business card holder, embossed with the well-known logo of the investment house at which he works. He opens the lid to reveal a perfectly mirrored interior and grins: “I couldn’t swear it, but I think my boss was smirking when he gave me this. It only has one use, and it isn’t holding business cards.”

[Ocean11 0]

One doesn't want to be too judgemental but...

 

...Untermenschen

[damian 0]

yes, it is not hard to attach that label. Strangely enough, this exact scene is as much part of Japan as are more traditional "in touch with the culture" Japanese experiences. Sub-human or not, the main expat players and the Roppongi arena are just as much part of the diverse furniture that decorates the recent times Japanese community as are the English teachers, US military, backpackers and pimple anime losers.

 

(I seldom run with my own pack and this article demonstrates why. It is very accurate and totally realistic)

[NoFakie 45]

The existence of such places keeps that crowd and the drug cops out the decent clubs though. Some clubs are so small it doesn't take many pricks to ruin the atmosphere.

[montoya 0]

Back in the 90's in Tokyo, did a brief stint at a US securities house. First day on, my boss took me aside and told me this was a "work hard party hard" place. Looks like not much has changed, according to the article...

[sunrise 0]

Interesting article. I had no idea the scene was that full-on. Thanks for the read.

[damian 0]

I was amazed at the level of detail that was reported. Not good for the named top tier securities firms/banks.

 

Consider this. He was 32yrs old, been in the game for a while, fixed income trader, very good quality employer …. everything is variable and it is never easy to categorise who earns what in the trading world, but the guy that lost his job also lost an annual before tax compensation package of (99% probability) greater than JPY20million, quite likely greater than JPY40million per year.... plus a bonus of the same amount (in a good year). He quite literally blew a total gross income of about JPY40-80million pa, much of which would be tax protected due to the manner in which his package was likely structured.

 

Whoops.

[Ocean11 0]

> JPY40-80million pa

 

What good is all that if your idea of fun is snorting white powder up your nose at a sociable 3 am?

 

I wonder if this article will have as much impact in Japan as that other article in the Times about the 'broken butterfly'

[scouser 4]

I was thinking the same.

Is that "fun"?

I must be getting old.

 

Ocean11 - missing the broken butterfly thing, whats that?

[Ocean11 0]

Masako-sama going on strike. The article caused a bit of a ruckus.

[stripper on coke 0]

300 Pounds a gram........come on, coke has NEVER been that price in Roppongi, at least not where I've been.

 

Surprising there is not more being said about crystal meth here. I mean, it has been a massive problem for the Japanese community since WW2 - anyway......

 

I know an interesting story from a few years ago. It seems the Columbians (at the time) where bringing coke into Japan through a highly placed person in the Tokyo Metro Govt building. This person would swap the Columbians coke for speed. The Columbians would then distribute the speed, while the coke was distributed by a Japanese consortium. This way, the importation of cocaine, plus the distribution of amphatamines (???) could all be placed squarely at the feet of foreigners.......kind of makes sense to keep the general perception that foreigners are the ones behind the drug culture.

 

I wasn't involved at all in the above story, so I am sure there is going to be a few to question the reality of it all. All I can say is that I knew a couple of highly placed people in the transaction, and they told how it went down.....as Ripply says - 'believe it or not'.....

 

P.S. I love the comment by the sex worker "people on coke think they are porno stars" ha ha ha very true indeed......

[rach 1]

I'm obviously living in a completely different galaxy, so don't know what to say Can't say I'm envious....

[sunrise 0]

Yes it was an extremely detailed article, unusual to see that.

[KlingKlang 1]

That was an interesting read.

 

 Quote:

I mean, it has been a massive problem for the Japanese community since WW2

Perhaps a slight exaggeration there...

[Davo 1]

I don't think thats an exageration. Crystal meth was used widely by the Imperial Army. In fact I think it was developed specifically for this purpose. After the war it found a new role in helping workers develop Japan Inc. You could buy speed (perhaps not in crystal form) over the counter. Japan has had a large amount of speed addicts for quite a while now, nothing new.

[fukdane 2]

Yep, I would say that at least 80% of our small town here are addicts. They have these secretive weekly meetings in the kominkan and stuff like that. Uncontrollable it is.

[Davo 1]

No fukdane I think the inaka secret meetings are all about the consumption of sho-chu as opposed to shabu . In the city it's a real problem and it ruins a lot of peoples lives. My wife's uncle is a classic example and has been disowned by the family for the constant trouble he brought to their door. My Mother-in-law has told the police not to call her about him again. This guy has been in and out of jail, rehab etc for over 20 years in his battle with addiction. The last call was to say he'd been arrested for having a big meal in a restaurant with no money to pay for it.

 

I know other people who've had problems with this crap drug in Japan. One Japanese guy I know gave the stuff up but he wasn't quick enough to keep his teeth. Another guy killed himself. I've never come across a substance which can screw someone up in such a short period of time. I don't subscribe to the view that "all drugs are bad" (simplistic ignorance) but there's nothing good about speed.

[mattlucas 0]

Well I'm glad my lucrative JET salary keeps me away from spending 300 pounds per gram.

 

That's just about a weeks worth of money for me there.

[rachael 0]

I just think a fair few people on here know a very strange, non-representative sample of Japanese people.

[Ocean11 0]

There are a lot of people in Japan with very weird stories when you get to know them. Often they won't even tell you the story when you do get to know them, but somebody else might.

 

You may not know that the manager of the local rural JA and his wife are into gangbanging with total strangers, but if you look at certain websites, you might find evidence that indicates that's what they do once every few months. You may even find a photo of his implant-studded stubby. Honto ni igai nan dakedo.

[rachael 0]

Or perhaps you too know a very strange, non-representative sample of Japanese people.

[Ocean11 0]

Yeah, perhaps after 14 years of living in middle-class neighbourhoods and working at high-schools and big Japanese companies all I know are non-representative weirdos.

 

Maybe you just appear a tad too naiive to merit anybody's confidences...

[rachael 0]

Maybe.

Maybe not.