Well once again we managed to escape out of our all-female apartment block via the kitchen window and past the Popasan - a chain smoking thin Japanese guy who lived on the ground floor. His job was to make sure we were all safely inside after the show ended, at around 12.30am.

You may ask yourself why we weren’t supposed to go out on our own in the evenings especially as we were all in our early twenties and fairly well travelled for our age. It’s because young blonde western women had a habit of going missing, sometimes being kidnapped and sold as sex slaves.

But this still didn’t put us off wanting to go out and party. So most nights after the show we would pretend to be in for the night, but little did Popasan know we were hoisting ourselves out of a rather small kitchen window.

The first time we attempted this I got totally stuck, but eventually we did master the art of wiggling our way out. We would head down to our local karaoke bar which was only about a five minute walk away.

On this particular night the bar was quiet so they were closing a little earlier than normal, but we had just got into full swing and wanted to carry on. We’d been trying to talk to a guy at the bar in our pigeon Japanese and he offered to take us to another karaoke bar so of course we were up for it and off we went.

We piled into the back of his van (it really stunk - I think he sold sushi) we were quite drunk and making lots of noise - nothing unusual there. But we soon realised that he was also drunk and driving far too fast. We asked him to slow down but he seemed in a rush and he was looking a little strange. We started to get a bit worried and it dawned on us that we had been travelling for quite a long time and didn’t know where we were – but we were surrounded by paddy fields.

Then all of a sudden… Crash! We had driven into a drinks machine. Yes you may be wondering how a drinks machine is in the middle of nowhere but this was Japan and they had Karaoke machines in the middle of nowhere, so a drinks machine seemed pretty much the norm.

Anyway I took charge and ordered everyone out of the van to get a drink (from the machine we’d just smashed into!). We were all a little dazed but sobering up quickly. The guy was now getting angry and we were scared, so as soon as he wasn’t looking we ran off.

There was a farmhouse near by so we hid round the back of the house on a little ledge, it was still dark and we couldn’t see too well. Hardly dressed for the great outdoors we had cycling shorts and crop tops on, full stage make up and false eyelashes. It must have been around 4am.

The guy was now franticly looking for us, driving around in his car back and forth. He stopped and we could see him get a shotgun out of the back of his car and carry on looking for us on foot. He was saying ‘Bakayarow’ which we all knew meant something like ‘bastards’. We were just willing him to drive off - it seemed like an eternity balancing on the ledge behind the farmhouse. We still had cans of pop in our hands and Mandy was trying to put hers down on the floor, which would have been disastrous if it had gone over making a noise - our cover would be blown! And especially as Mandy was probably the clumsiest person I know. Eventually he did give up and he drove off.

It seemed like a bad dream and we couldn’t take it all in. When we felt it was safe, we emerged from the back of the house and just started running. We had no idea were we were, so we ran across the paddy fields towards the lights in the distance, the ground was really uneven. Then I heard a loud cry - yes you can probably guess Mandy had gone over on her ankle. It was swelling up like a balloon so we had to carry her from there on in.

We eventually found ourselves on a street, there were shops and bars but all the shutters were down. We could see light seeping out from underneath one of the shutters so we looked underneath to find four or five old men playing cards and drinking, we knocked on the shutter and the bar owner let us in. He gave us food and drink. I remember looking over at Mandy and she was as white as a ghost, she was in a lot of pain. Oh I forgot to mention that when she fell over she also ripped a big hole in her cycling shorts, so her bum was hanging out - goodness knows what the old guys in the bar must have thought.

We must have stayed for well over an hour, we were waiting for the railway station to open (that gives you an idea of how far we were from the appartment). The owner of the bar took us to the station, I think he even had to pay for our tickets, we exchanged addresses and some time after he came to see one of our shows… but that’s a whole other story.

Of course we were in big trouble when we got back, our manager went off her head and Mandy had to go to hospital and have lots of time off the show to recover. You’d think that all of this would have taught us a lesson wouldn’t you? Well you’ll have to wait for my next blog to find out!