By day, Vancouver is one of the world’s most beautiful cities but by night the negative vibe of our club scene leaves people cold.

Roppongi is Tokyo’s party district

The combination of tyrannical bouncers, long line-ups, and cover charges, creates a hostile environment before you even get inside the club. It is no wonder that once people make it in they often seem aloof and unapproachable.

Despite Japan’s capital being so densely populated, line-ups are hard to find in the internationally renowned party district of Roppongi. The clubs there operate in quite the opposite fashion to Vancouver’s curbed nightlife. Rather than creating a number of barriers, Tokyo clubs actually encourage customers to enter.

The job of a bouncer in Tokyo is not to keep people at bay but to stand on the streets and to entice clientele to come inside. These bouncers, dressed in suits or tuxedos, will even walk you a couple of blocks to the door of "their club" like gentlemen.

Even the most popular spots in Tokyo let customers in right away. They want to generate a higher turn-over rate and in turn more drink sales throughout the night. Usually, there is no cover charge, which makes people more willing to pay for the outrageously high priced drinks. But if there is a door charge, then you will always get at least one free drink inside.

Any night of the week a number of clubs in Tokyo have a "Ladies Night," which means that women receive an unlimited number of free house drinks.

Back in Vancouver Ladies Night at most clubs consists of a cover charge for a stripper.

In Tokyo everyone is friendly and open to dancing the night away with strangers. In such a fast-paced and hard-working city, dancing becomes a stress reliever. And de-stress they do.

Businessmen dance like they are starring in their own music video with big, uninhibited movements up on platforms for all to see and cheer on. At Castillo’s, a bar that specializes in playing only 70’s and 80’s music, businessmen do more than unbutton their collars at the end of a long day. They swing their suit jackets around their heads rodeo-style and strip off their ties to use as air-band instruments.

But back in frigid Vancouver everyone is waiting outside. There was the excuse of fire codes to justify more gradually being let in. The general consensus was that Vancouver clubs are trying to appear exclusive like New York’s Studio 54.

This type of pretentiousness seems quite unfitting for a city more famous for people wearing roller-blades than Sex and the City-style stilettos. However, there are still a couple places in Vancouver like the Cambie, which retains a more down to earth and even international element. Instead of bothering with a line-up or cover charge, customers can get right to conversing and drinking inside. This could be because it is located right below a hostel and visitors from abroad know better than to put up with the Vancouver wait-around.

How to remedy Vancouver’s nightlife? Perhaps the club managers should take a trip to Tokyo and look at why business is booming every night of the week there. Or else they just better hope that too many of their patrons don’t take a trip across the ocean and see what they are missing out on here at home.

Shannon Woron contributed this article. She spent one summer in Japan after graduation from UBC.