When you are drunk you feel like one of them.

Well, even when you are tipsy you do.

The reflection in the train window is, different, somehow.

And on Friday nights, the ride home is like a party, a mad departure from the usual weekday commute. It's lovely. It's loud. It's actually animated and people's faces are finally... alive.

But this isn't a story about the three salary men riding the train home drunk, pulling on each other's ties and stumbling left and right with the roll of the train.

The ride home is just the end.

This, my friend, is why we live.

Out of options on a Friday night I found myself in the biggest red light district in Japan--smack in the middle--bored, lonely, strolling in no general direction with all the time in the world and a Saturday to recover from any decadence...

But alas, I simply sat there, alone, friends to busy to "play."

So I sat in a large square beneath a large statue of Freddy Mercury and a large TV, playing advertisements for "Queen" the musical.

The college students nearby were puking so much that even the homeless people stopped to look.

The air was warm, so was the pavement.

The square I sat in had a pulse.

"I want to ride my Bi-cy-cle!!" came roaring from the huge TV monitor.

I just sat, debating whether I should go home, go talk to the puking college students, go for a walk or just go nowhere.

"Do you speak Japanese," came the broken English from my right.

I was going somewhere, but not home.

"Yeah, I speak Japanese."

And then I was on my way to a bar with two students from the Tokyo University of Agriculture.

And then I was riding a train home, thinking about how a night that started with nothing turned into an evening to remember.