Johnny Walker will drown the Devil's Strudel

Saturday began as most Saturdays do, at around 3 PM. La Escueleta Corriente’s 30th birthday extravaganza was due to begin at 7 PM, and I had to bring an American dish. I asked her if she’d ever been to America, our job is to take the unique foods from every culture around the world, add sugar, fat, or additional meat, and make it taste better. She was not satisfied with my reproach, so I endeavored to make Hamburger Helper…from scratch mofo. I threw a couple of pounds of ground beef in a pot, cooked it, added a buttload of elbow noodles, some onions and peppers, and a huge swath of tomato sauce, and being able to find only what I could assume was mozzarella cheese, a whole lot of that on top, and let it simmer for about a half hour. It was delicious, I guess American, food.
El Charro came to pick me up and we rode off to the party, and boy was it kicking, by 7:30 the entire party consisted of myself, El Charro, La Escueleta Corriente, another gaijin teacher who we’ll call El Jesus Aviendo, and a Japanese teacher who has expressed interest in reading the blog and as such will now be referred to as Muchacha Reservada. El Jesus Aviendo is the type of person I like to refer to as one funny &%$! though, so everything was ok for the time being. We blew up some balloons and waited for the festivities (drinking) to begin.
The gaijin began pouring in, in ones and twos and threes until there were about 15 Americans, Brits, and Aussies at the party. La Escueleta Corriente knows what she’s doing so she also invited the neighbors, who brought their two little girls, and 2 cakes for the birthday girl. Apparently not everyone brought food, but there was a lot of booze, and good booze. It was a nice feeling to have about 4 pounds of food completely eaten by the end of the party, possibly the first time in history Hamburger Helper has been consumed with chopsticks.
Then the Austrian’s showed up, and Senorita Blitzkrieg looked even hotter than last time. El Charro and I have had long discussions about her. She has the kind of natural beauty you could easily imagine yourself waking up next to for 20 years. We have both agreed that she’s the hottest thing we’ve seen in this country thus far, and because she’s taken and she flirts like there’s no tomorrow, we’d rather her not be anywhere around us. It’s an exercise in sexual tension torture. But suffice to say she baked an apple strudel which caused an event later in the evening, but first to the drinking.
The birthday girl was given 100$ (10,000 yen) drink coupon to a liquor store by someone or other, so she bought two excellent bottles of French Wine, and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, which I don’t think I’ve ever had before. It’s about the smoothest, tastiest whiskey I’ve ever pounded 5 shots of without a chaser in an hour. We spent a good deal of time making each other’s acquaintances, sharing travel stories, the highs and lows of our jobs. Most of the people at the party worked at other English Schools, or had opened their own. Some were just as wet behind the ears as I was, and others had been here 5 or 6 years. It was slightly overwhelming being in the same room as everyone, I haven’t seen this many gaijin in one room since the Toga Party before I left.
Then it came to the point where I was sitting next to Senorita Blitzkrieg, and she asked me if I had tried the apple strudel yet. In fact, I hadn’t, and since the drunkening (thanks Brian) was apon me, I’d love some apple strudel. Completely ignoring EL Charro’s warning, I walked into the other room, where a single piece of apple strudel lay on a plate in the middle of the floor. A dim halo emitted from the crust as if it was the lost Holy Grail. (Which according to Indiana Jones is held in some Nazi bunker anyway).
Suddenly the world fell into a deep silence, my brain felt disconnected from my arm, moving as if the air was thickening concrete, and El Charro leapt into the living room, as if from the top ropes of some wrestling ring in a spandexed Tijuana bloodbath and screamed, “Steve, do not eat the apple strudel.” But it was too late, he fell to the floor with a sickening thud as I put that devil's brew in my mouth, sprinkled with the sugar from Satan's fetid cane fields, where the tormented souls of rapists tend the crops, cooked in an oven heated by the boiling juice of pedophiles exploding eyeballs, with fresh apples picked from the orchards of misery by a thousand naked despots, flailed for all eternity by the peasants they starved and..."is there cinnamon in there?" I asked sheepishly. The answer was “yes, and nutmeg,” this is the best god damn baked good I'd ever tasted, I turned to El Charro, and said, "I must marry this girl." He sighed when I asked him why he was on the floor.
The girl was perfect, and she bakes with evil in her heart, which really turns me on. Soon after the party quickly split in two, since El Charro lives in a neighboring apartment, the more intense partygoers moved next door for a spell.
The birthday had peaked and its downward parabolic arch was pointing straight to a club. Someone who spoke decent Japanese lined up 3 cabs for us, but some people had bikes, and some people were bailing, so we only needed two. However, if we ordered ten cabs and only used one, none of the drivers would have said a word to us. They would have shrugged gotten back in their cars and left, giving respect to those who don’t deserve it is built into Japanese culture, and we’re going to abuse that fact until they realize caustic honesty and derision is what makes the world go round. Before we left though La Escueleta Corriente and I for some reason took turns punching the monkey hanging from her living room light. The shit eating grin is thanks to Mr. Johnny Walker Black Label.
The cabs mosey down to a bar called Suzie Wong’s. It’s fairly large, has a medium sized dance floor, nice catches to chill on toward the other side, and relatively but not outrageously overpriced drinks. There was only one aspect of the bar we were concerned with really, that it was empty. We stayed for about two minutes because we were waiting for the folks biking down, and then we decided to wait outside. Suzie Wong’s was an abysmal failure, but we’ll have a decent Suzie Wong’s story next weekend to make up for it. One of the other reasons we left is because one of the gaijin teacher’s who we’ll call T (because I don’t feel like spending 5 minutes on Babelfish right now) happened to be smuggling the bottle of Johnny Walker into the bar with her, and as the bar was completely empty, felt rather conspicuous about it. The smuggling will be a continuing theme throughout the night.
We waited outside for a wall, there were a lot of new faces for everyone, so we had plenty to talk about, El Charro went to vomit his Johnny Walker somewhere as I swigged a little more at sporadic intervals. The people on bikes finally showed up, a few people went home, and most of us agreed to meet at the Q-Bar. The stomping ground of the Russian Working Girls the night before. This time I knew better than to steal a bike and tool around though, I was sure my stomach was going to find plenty of reasons to be mad at me by the end of the night anyway. As we were walking away some Asian girl begged us to stay as Suzie Wong’s, we gently informed her that Suzie Wong’s sucked, and the owner of Suzie Wong’s was the same owner of the other bar we were going to, that would no doubt suck as well. She pouted as we left, but I don’t think anyone noticed or cared when she appeared or left. The translation, folks, is that she wasn’t attractive.
We rolled ten deep into Q-Bar, and T was toting the bottle of Johnny under her jacket and disappeared into the bathroom. The rest of us quickly ordered a beer and surveyed our new temporary surroundings. It was the same dark hole as it was Friday night, the music was a little better, and we had brought a big enough posse to keep everyone entertained, so life wasn’t so bad. About 5 minutes later the ugly, pouting girl from Suzie Wong’s showed up with what could be called two moderately attractive compatriots. During the course of the next few minutes or hours a few minor incidents occurred, I would say they weren’t even blogworthy, but I’ve seen what bored 16 year old girls put up on their blogs. I tried vigorously to get one of the shy Japanese teachers, Muchacha Reservada to dance. It did not work, so I danced with my wingwoman La Escueleta Corriente for a little while, so I could check out the Asian girls from a distance. Not that this was necessary, because Japanese girls don’t play mind games, but it’s a force of habit. I quickly decided tonight was leading in the direction of impossibility for any kind of sexual performance so I got a double jack and coke after a quick swig of Johnny in the bathroom and stopped dancing for a while.
About halfway through the jack and coke I decide it will be more fun to flirt with El Jesus Aviendo’s wife. This is much more playful than it sounds though, as she went to school in the US, she not only speaks English but actually acts like a person with feelings and emotions. This is a rarity among Japanese girls, and the two of them have a really great sense of humor. This is why I can ask her if she’d want a gaijin who actually wants to go somewhere where she can get a green card, or if she’d like to upgrade from a man with a bicycle to a man with a shitty car. No human being driving around in the car we drive around in should ever feel confident talking to a woman, in any country but Japan.
Eventually I managed to get El Jesus Aviendo’s wife and Muchacha Reservada on the dance floor at the same time. I had to keep hold of one of their arms, which rather severely limited actual dancing, but they were on the dance floor nonetheless, and despite repeated attempts they did not make out.
Whatever time it was after this happened was agreed as the time to go, so everyone packed up their jiving, the bottle of Johnny Walker was left behind, it may in fact still linger under the same very sink, and we prepared to vacate, El Charro however, had decided to stay behind and hit on one of the Asian girls, he said he would meet us a half hour later at the Karaoke Bar, I estimated at the time that we would see him in about 6 and a half minutes. The funny thing is he was staying to hit on this girl because it was really obvious she wanted nothing to do with him, and that made her the most appealing Japanese girl he’d seen in the country so far. Two other gaijin remained dancing with her two friends for a while. It would result in neither of them going home with a Japanese girl.
On the way out of Q-Bar we ran into a half dozen Japanese dudes, who may have been nearly as drunk as we were. They quickly recognized the significance of 7 gaijin standing out on the street at 4 AM and began making conversation. I was at the point of the evening where I was probably a few volume notches higher than necessary for conversation, and as such drowned out most of the group. He asked if we were all English teachers, and I pretended to take horrible offense at the assumption, telling him we were all CFO’s and VP’s of various parts of Saikyo Bank. Since the president of the bank is one of my students, I could name drop fairly well. But my credibility may have been suspect since I was probably slurring a good deal of my words, however, one word I managed to get out was Karaoke. At the very mention of Shidax, the karaoke bar, the gentleman’s eyes lit up, he reached into his shirt, and I shit you not, handed my a tambourine. Just like that, all of a sudden the walk down the street was taking on completely new vibes, because I’d been randomly gifted a tambourine. Soon after they headed into Q-Bar, and we took off toward Shidax, following the barely rhythmic shaking of a tambourine toting drunkard.
El Jesus Aviendo was riding his bike, as he turned his head to say something about the tambourine he ran into the clear wall of a bus stop. The laughter was nearly vomit inducing. He claims it was on purpose, but I don’t believe him, for the next five minutes what he did was on purpose. He said he always did it when his brother came into town. In Tokuyama people of all ages have bikes, they’re parked everywhere, they don’t have gears, but they have baskets. I call them Dorothy bikes because they are the same model Dorothy rode in the Wizard of Oz circa 1955. These bikes are parked in near rows, tightly packed together. El Jesus Aviendo ran full speed into one, and a column of twenty Dorothy bikes fell like Dominoes. In the course of a 5 block ride he must have knocked over 200 bikes. I nearly sneezed, burped, vomited and poo’d myself at the same time.
As we were collecting the group in front of Shidax, the Karaoke place, an exceptionally wasted Japanese guy was jumping around screaming Ozzie Osbourne, El Jesus Aviendo and I looked at each other, and he quickly grabbed his camera, saying quietly, “stall him, stall him, my flash is charging.” I quickly started doing my Ozzie schtick, which can be quite funny unless prolonged to the point where the very impersonation makes you want to eat live rodents. However, I don’t think the Osbournes had penetrated Japan yet, so I belted out the opening lines to crazy train, and he ran with it, and we got this picture.
It was quickly apparent the tambourine under my jacket was in fact stolen from this very establishment. El Jesus Aviendo asked me why I was hiding under my jacket when I was bringing it back to the place it came from. “It’s because drunks don’t return stolen property, they steal property, and that little man down the street will not have drunkenly stolen this in vain,” I blurted. I was going to take this out with me again, and the great cycle of drunkreprocity will be complete.
It immediately dawned on me that crowding people into a little box with no air conditioning in our currect collective state was not the best Idea, but they had cold drinks and I wanted the mic in my hand.

“Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,Engines pumping and thumping in time.The green light flashes, the flags goes up,Churning and burning, they yern for the cup…

The cake was flowing, the beer was on the way up, and the night was not yet over. We belted out some American feel good rock tunes, the girls sang some feel good girl tunes, and general frivolity permeated the room.
Then El Charro stumbled into the room, with the three Japanese girls from the club in tow.
He has no idea how he got them to come, or what he said to them to get them out of the bar, but he was officially in bad shape. We smiled and kept singing our songs, they ordered beers they didn’t drink, and sang some Japanese songs. El Charro began freestyling over Eminem beats, and the Japanese girls were becoming more uncomfortable, they ordered another beer, despite barely touching their first beers.
Then as soon as they came, they left, without saying a word, and most importantly without paying. El Charro decided to take a nap on the floor a few minutes later. Ignoring the consequences of the events transpiring around me, I set to work on Pearl Jam’s “Alive”. Soon, T the handler of Johnny Walker for the evening left money on the table and rushed out. Our time soon ran out, and we walked downstairs for the invevitable paying of the tab. Most of which would fall on El Charro for drunkenly inviting the bitches who ordered drinks and ran out on us. El Jesus Aviendo’s wife managed to talk down the tab a little bit, and we left.
I got home sometime after dawn, and woke up sometime before dusk. Sunday would be a quiet night.