The musical Cats returned to Tokyo last year for the first time since its initial run ended eight years ago. Despite all of the hoopla, I truthfully could not have cared less, as there are few things I dislike more than watching people sing and dance about in a gaily fashion (a colonoscopy being one example).

Seeing as my neighborhood doesn’t have much to offer besides a bustling seedy red-light district (which I assure you I have never patronized), one can likely understand the surprise that I experienced when walking home one night from a different direction and encountering this:

Yes, that is the Cats Theater, home to Tokyo’s production of Cats and located only about a hundred paces from my apartment building. I can only presume that this particular location was chosen due to inexpensive land prices, because there is absolutely nothing else in the vicinity worth visiting, especially for the type of crowd that I would imagine is wont to attend musicals. Nonetheless, it has proven to be a popular attraction and at fixed intervals throughout the day, the street in front of my building floods with a mass exodus of women in their 30s leaving the theater.

The show has already been in production for nearly six months, but I never bothered to snap a photo of the theater until this past weekend. I’d like to say that the presence of an acclaimed Broadway musical has introduced some much-needed class or culture into my neighborhood, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, the only noticeable difference is the ubiquitous presence of stupid Cats posters on every fucking flat surface within a five-mile radius. For some reason, the expression on the face of the ginger woman on the left really gets on my tits.