The Bubble(s): Alive and Well!

I crashed the Citibank year-end party here in Japan last night. It was a surreal experience.

The party was held at the Nikko Hotel in Odaiba. If I can be allowed a small (?) aside, Odaiba is possibly the largest architectural disaster in all of Tokyo. Odaiba sits on the other side of the bay from central Tokyo and was built on top of garbage. Yes, garbage. The Japanese have engaged in various “land reclamation plans” over the years, which involve dumping garbage into Tokyo Bay until you get something large and stable enough to build on top of.

So, start with garbage. Then, add a huge series of concrete hotel monstrosities, garish supermalls and a huge neon-lit Ferris wheel and you have a pretty good picture of Odaiba.

Back to the Nikko Hotel — Citi Group rented out the largest ballroom in the hotel and filled it to the gills with great food, booze a-plenty and a 12 piece jazz band. The theme of the party was “movies”, so throughout the night various Citi employees got on the stage to recreate movie scenes, including an elaborate reenactment of a scene from “The Matrix”, complete with slo-mo Kung Fu moves.

Once the sushi snarfing and wine guzzling was complete, Citi raffled off about $25,000 in prizes, including a complete home theater system, a helicopter tour of Tokyo and an all-expense paid trip to Hollywood.

Citi was partying like it was 1989 in Japan or maybe 1998 in the US. Guesstimates of the party’s cost ranged from $100,000 to $250,000. I’m clearly in the wrong business.

Posted by pmk at December 14, 2003 4:58 AM | TrackBack