"I'll take you to the New York Bar," says Raymond, "to get you in the mood."

We're flying out to New York in two days' time. We've been in Tokyo two days.

We started the night in an Irish pub, in Ikebukuro, populated exclusively with Australians and Indians. Raymond's girlfriend, Sumiko, was the only Japanese there.

Next, we went to Speakeasy, an underground bar. By "underground", I don't mean subversive, alternative, exclusive. Speakeasy was three storeys below street level.

"This way," said Raymond, leading us up an alley pooled with neon, devoid of people. We stopped at a black hole between a couple of shop fronts. "Down here," he said, stepping through the doorway. It wasn't completely black inside-just ill-lit, I realised, as I followed him down the red concrete stairs, flight after flight, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the city.

The bar was enormous and nearly empty; we ordered cocktails and sat at a round table that would easily have accommodated ten or twelve people. Raymond and Glenn launched into conversation; Sumiko and I sipped sleepily at lurid beverages. Suddenly I noticed Sumiko's eyes grow wide; she squirmed, giggling embarrassedly, and tugged Raymond's sleeve.

"Oh," he said, looking over at the wall behind me. "Cockroaches."

We all turned to look. Behind my chair was a door-a big, solid-looking door. I couldn't imagine what might be behind it, that far beneath the street. A roach the size of my thumb scurried from the door handle to the top of the door frame.

Sumiko squealed.

"The Japanese have a fear of roaches," Raymond explained, smiling mildly at his girlfriend's reaction.

"Are they... a problem?" I asked.

"Well, there's a lot of them. You see more than you do back home."

"Uhuh."

The roach races to the corner of the room, then begins a halting descent towards the leaves of a potted palm.

"The Japanese really hate them," Raymond was saying. Sumiko grimaced, running her nails along her arm. Raymond noded. "They have a fear of the roaches crawling on them."

I look at the roach; it seems disoriented, but has managed to reach the palm frond.

"They don't seem to be afraid of people," Raymond explained. "I've had a couple jump on me-" he smiled bashfully. "It gives you quite a shock."

We nod, the conversation moves on, the roach is forgotten. I become obsessed with the door behind my chair; imagine opening it and finding nothing behind it but layers of soil, concrete, discovering that it is not an exit at all, but a prop. There are no windows in the room; the walls are an artful near-black. I focus on the glowing bottles of spirits lined up like immense jewels behind the bar.

Before we left, the roach jumped onto Sumiko's leg, as if to prove a point. She squealed, leapt up from the table, brushing frantically at her stockings; Raymond, emerging from the bathrooms at the far end of the room a moment later, told us he could hear her in there.

As we walked to the New York Bar, we noticed a shadow flicker beneath a streetlight.

"Rats," Raymond said. We stopped to watch the lower leaves of a shrub rustle. "They're everywhere," he advised. "The Japanese hate them, too. They come out at night, eat scraps in the rubbish bins."

He watched the shrub, alarmed, but intrigued, as if the sight of an animal was a rare event, but the animal itself was almost too revolting to lay eyes upon.

"Are you afraid of them?" I asked.

"I didn't used to be -- back home, I mean. But now... I don't know. They are kind of freaky."

We continued to the New York Bar, ate a supper of dumplings at 3 a.m. Sumiko fell asleep over her sake.

These were the only animals we saw in Tokyo: the roaches and the rats.

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