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Roppongi is a novel that can be hard to put down at times. If one has ever visited Roppongi district or even just to Japan, then this is your book. The main character Zach returns to Roppongi with a plan to make and save some serious cash and then get out before he manages to get sucked back in again as when he was there before.
Everybody looks to Zach for answers. He knows the place has quite a seedy element to it as do many places where lots of unaccounted money can be made. He is a survivor and knows how to deal with the dark side of humanity very well. He is a bit poetic and romantic as he always seems to find himself in between humanity and the forces of darkness.
If you have no experience working as a bartender or manager of a night club, you will learn some interesting things like what is really involved in keeping everything running smoothly and everyone somewhat satisfied. From what I remember of a dazed few hours I spent in Roppongi one night in the eighties, was that the place was too much and I would never see this place in it entirety unless I was here for weeks. There are many Zachs about that are fearless, connected, experienced, knowledgeable and open to expanding the mind with what the earth has provided us all. This being said, I think Zach has the power to change the world. If there is further writing about Zach, I will be excited to see how he feels and deals with the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the end of conspicuous consumption.
I really liked the page at the end entitled: “care to help.” I found it to be excellent advice that would further help the author as well as anybody else who wants to write their own book and get it out there the best they can. I also very much appreciated the Translated Foreign Dialogue & the Glossary at the end.
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About Nick Vasey
Nick Vasey was born in 1968, raised in various parts of Australia, and completed a Commerce degree in accounting, marketing and law in 1989 at Murdoch University, in Perth, Western Australia. Thereafter, one year of working in a multinational accounting practice was all it took to convince him to quit the typical career-path, and go travelling instead. Wise choice.
Over the next fifteen years Nick had a variety of adventures in over forty countries around the world. It would be safe to say that travelling itself became his primary passion. These experiences have confirmed in Nick a profoundly libertarian streak, and repeatedly proven to him that governments rarely have their citizens' best interests at heart, and by default, should therefore be regarded with extreme scepticism.
Two of these years of global gallivanting (94/95 & 97/98) were very joyously spent living, working and partying in the nightlife industry, or mizu-shobai (water-trade), of Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan. The purpose each time was simple; to save as much money as possible in order to fund further travelling adventures. Suffice to say these two years in Roppongi proved to be more than sufficient in terms of providing both the material and the motivation for writing his first novel, 'Roppongi' (website below).
Out of curiosity, in 2004 Nick briefly returned to Australia and plugged back into the 'Matrix' for a while, but found he still had no use for it. Dumbfounded and disappointed by people's mindless pursuit of material wealth, AFL Football and reality-TV, in 2008 he quit the first-world altogether, for a more tranquil life in the Southern-Sierran township of Vilcabamba, Ecuador.
Nick and his wife Laura now live simply, with their many animals, in the mountain-top sanctuary they have named 'Motu-Iti' ... in the Southern-Sierran township of Vilcabamba, Ecuador.
In 2008 Nick also founded the real-estate consultancy "Vilcabamba Real Estate Company" (VREC Properties) ... which helps people wanting to relocate to Vilcabamba find their dream property (see website below).
Currently, Nick is probably building a hummingbird feeder, and thinking about writing his second novel. If you would like to contact Nick, please email him directly from either website: www.vrec.org or www.roppongithenovel.com - depending upon whether your interest is in Vilcabamba property or his writing ability! :)
Vilcabamba Real Estate Company - Mission Statement
VREC Properties provides its clients with the most professional, ethical, fair, fee-transparent and user-friendly real estate service possible. Our objective is to simplify all aspects of the information flow between relevant parties (buyers, sellers, surveyors, legal processes, municipality etc), and thereby facilitate a transaction which both buyer and seller understand and will be happy with. Our reputation is of paramount importance, and will be vigilantly safe-guarded by the impeccable conduct and intentions of all our staff and associated partners. As a result, VREC Properties will establish itself as the most noteworthy and pre-eminent real estate consultancy in the Loja region of Southern Ecuador.
Roppongi - the Novel
Roppongi is an 'adventure-travel-fiction' story, exploring the crazy and often dangerous world which is living and working as a foreigner in the Roppongi nightlife industry of Tokyo, Japan. The novel follows the (mis)adventures of its travel-addicted protagonist Zack, and in that respect is similar thematically to Alex Garland's 'The Beach' or Gregory David Roberts' 'Shantaram.' Accordingly, the reader is viscerally transported into the surreal realms of Roppongi, as Zack attempts to come to terms with a series of life-changing events unfolding at rapid pace. In the process, the novel punches through the impossibly glamorous surface of Roppongi and plunges the reader deep into its seedy underbelly ... showing a disturbing side of Japan not often written about in the English language.
