My phone pinged for what seemed like the thousandth time. A glance at my screen confirmed that for some reason I was basically Kim Kardashian: notification after notification engulfed my screen.
My jet-lag-addled mind couldn't understand why I was so popular, after just one night in Tokyo.
Then I realised the pings were all about the same friend. And quite a few of them were pictures of him with an array of strangers in what seemed like a scene out of Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void.
The name GOLDEN GAI flashed across my screen frequently, as did MR IBO. What I had was a running commentary of my friend's night out.
While the rest of us had collapsed early due to the jet lag, he had gone out to experience the nightlife.
After a few minutes of this, I got to the whole story. My friend was stuck outside the hostel - they locked the doors at 3am and only opened them at 6.30am. He didn't have the access code for the after-hours door by the rubbish bags.
Recognising that this was a cry for help, I'm not ashamed to admit my initial thought was that one of the other guys would see the messages and go to help him. Sleep was my only emergency and so I waited for that familiar rustle of someone waking up to deal with someone else's problem.
It rapidly became clear that the messages were going not to our Whatsapp group but only to me.
Damned by those blue ticks, I could not pretend I was asleep. I sourly descended the steps from the top bunk, muttering loudly and hoping one of the others would wake up. The snoring and muffled farts assured me no one was going to take this problem off my hands.The hostel had a huge wraparound window on the ground floor, through which I spied my friend and what seemed like a lump of a human body on the pavement.
Downstairs, a Japanese girl was sitting on a sofa, watching something on her cellphone. Her appearance indicated that she too had been woken up earlier than she'd have liked. She noticed me and her eyes lit up with expectation but then turned to disappointment and she returned to her phone.
I opened the door, stepped around the rubbish bags and walked into the bracing cold of an Asakusa early morning.
The vague lump was indeed a human (passed-out, male). My friend was not passed out but looked like he could happily.
According to my calculations, he had not slept for 24 hours, a significant amount of which had been spent either drunk or starstruck by Tokyo (he is a huge Animé fan). Fittingly, he had the crazy eyes of a man unsure of the date, time or place.As I approached, he began to speak but made no sense. I helped him drape his new friend over his shoulder, after which he walked with the obliviousness of a man determined to get to his bed.
After a brief game of pinball with the rubbish bags - his body as the ball - we staggered into the common room to confront the problem of what to do with the motionless man.
We knew he stayed in the hostel, we just had no idea which room. Just then, we heard "MAAKUSU!" (Marcus). It was the Japanese girl with the phone. The sleeping man was in her dorm. With an inelegant heave, my friend threw "Maakusu" on the sofa and staggered to the lift without another word.
Quickly realising that if I stayed any longer this would become my problem, I merely acknowledged her with a curt, "Cool," and bolted for the closing lift doors, grateful to return to that room of farts. 
• Do you have a funny or quirky story about your travels? Send 600 words to travelmag@sundaytimes.co.za and include a recent photograph of yourself for publication with the column...