Sorge lived in a house in a respectable neighborhood in Tokyo, where he was noted mostly for heavy drinking and his reckless way of riding his motorcycle. In the summer of 1936, a Japanese woman, Hanako Ishii, a waitress at a bar frequented by Sorge, moved into Sorge's house to become his common-law wife. Of all of Sorge's various relationships with women, his most durable and lasting one was with Ishii, who tried to curb Sorge's heavy drinking and his habit of recklessly riding his motorcycle around the Japanese countryside in a way that everyone viewed as almost suicidal. An American reporter who knew Sorge later wrote that he "created the impression of being a playboy, almost a wastrel, the very antithesis of a keen and dangerous spy".