I find myself walking through the doors of this Latin bar in Roppongi, Tokyo quite often. I'm even planning to tomorrow!
My image of Roppongi when I first moved to Japan was not the greatest one. I'd only heard crazy stories from friends who often went out clubbing and partying, which isn't really my scene. I remember when I'd started dancing salsa and bachata, I was always hearing about El Cafe Latino in Roppongi as the place to go for latin dance. I'd heard people refer to it often, and measure the level of how crowded a dance spot is as "el cafe on a Friday or Saturday night". It's the place everyone goes to dance, or ends up at after any dance event at another location ends.
The first dance event I went to in Roppongi was at Pepe (another great dancing spot), when I'd first entered the Tokyo Latin dance community outside of HTDC. Pepe is like a dance studio that also has a bar, but the main purpose people usually go is for dance. Sometimes they have performances, and are a little bit on the pricier side to get in. I suppose it depends on the day and the event, but it usually finishes up at 11:30. El Cafe continues until later, I think until morning on weekends, but I have yet to pull an all-nighter there.
I remember the first time I was wanting to try going to El Cafe was when I was VERY new to salsa and bachata. I hadn't officially started taking HTDC salsa and bachata lessons, but I'd went to their Halloween event, knew a little bit beyond the basics, and had been going regularly to the HTDC Club J social dances. I'd already been bitten by the salsa bug, and the venom was still sinking in. There was a joint lesson and event at Pepe that included a west coast swing dance lesson with the teacher Okacchi who I'd take a few lessons with before. Even though I felt like I couldn't really get the hang of west coast swing, I really liked the teachers and their community, so I thought this would be a great way to get to see and dance with them again, and also kind of get a feel for the Roppongi Latin dance world, along with trying try to dance and learn more bachata out in the wild. But, as I tend to do when I'm excited and going to a new place to try a new thing, I arrived in Roppongi suuuuper early...so I thought I would take a look and see where and what this famous El Cafe Latino place was all about! I found and went to where it was, but I was too scared to go in...it was also really early, and still daylight, but they were open.
It's so funny reminiscing about this 😆 Now, I walk through the doors of El Cafe on any day of the week confident, greeting, even hugging the bartenders and workers and other regulars offenders, get a drink with my drink ticket, and then grab the nearest person I recognize as a dancer on the upper-floor to dance with me while we wait for whatever lesson is going on downstairs to end 😆
Every time I come to El Cafe, I’m greeted with warm smiles and a hug, and always asked how I am doing 😊 The answer is almost always the same though. No matter how I’m feeling before I walk through that door, I know as soon as I’m there, I’ll see lots of friends, meet many potential new friends, and dance until I can’t dance anymore! 😁💃 So, I always say that I'm great! Or, what I said the last time I came, now that I'm here and going to dance, I'm great!
If you’d told me when I first came to Tokyo, that I’d be spending most of my nights dancing salsa and bachata in Roppongi, I would not have believed it 😆 But, I am so glad to have found my passion and people who share it here and now in in Japan. It's so crazy to think about the fact that I've never been able to be so into the latin side of my heritage until I came to Japan and Japanese dancers taught me how to move like a Latina XD I love it 💕 Today I danced with a guy from Russia who told me there’s no way I learned how to dance like this in Japan, but, actually, I did, so I told him! Thank you again Hiro and Taku 😆
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