It was here that I found myself, one steamy August night, sitting in a darkened strip joint while the police knocked on the door. I went traveling just about as soon as I was able to leave home. It began with a flight to Tokyo, where, aged 19, I spent three months working in a hostess club, then made a loop around the southern hemisphere before returning back to the U. A few years later, armed with a degree but few prospects for making anything of myself, I returned to a place where I could at least make someone else of myself and earn a pretty good amount of money doing so: Roppongi.