Mr. Beer and Chicken a la Samurai

Your hero in the foreground, rockin the camel hair jacket, the other Steve right next to me, British Rob (who I've dubbed the X-factor of the group) and computerholic canadian Sean in the midst of some alcoholic squat thrusts


As I sit here eating dinner, a concoction of rice, ham, shrimp dumplings, octopus dumplings (apparently that’s what they are) soy sauce, and two other sauces I can’t identify but taste tested, mixed with some sugar, I realized I haven’t told you how our hero faired during this excellent weekend in Nihon (Japan).
Friday ended my observation period, and oddly enough it ended with me actually teaching a woman who was a potential student. All of the gaijin (whiteys) and Nihonjin (Japanese) teachers were meeting at this area an hour from school called Sunzoku. So Cathy (French), the other Steve (USA) and I jumped into a Japanese battle van driven by one of the Japanese teachers and drove off. Her choice of music on the way consisted of Kings of Leon and The Strokes. I was not really ready for how surreal the whole place was going to be, because I thought we were just going to a restaurant, it turns out to be like the Japanese version of Medieval Times. Although disappointingly there were no colored samurai to jeer and taunt, the area was built entirely to look like Fuedal Japan, everything had a thatched roof, hanging lamps everywhere, weird doll things floated around, and opium dens as far as the eye could see. Well, not so much opium dens, but suffice to say if it actually was feudal Japan, and not a crude knock-off, there would damn well have been opium dens somewhere.
The spellbinding power of the buildings really died as soon as we walked out of the car though. We strolled past six rows of chotchky, useless crap being sold to get to the restaurant, which brings me to the title of the post. Once we got to the restaurant the interior was definitely realistic of…something. All the teachers were gathered at one table, I would say there were 16 or so of us in all. We all sprawled out on pillows on the ground because the table was only about a foot off the floor. But it’s surprisingly comfortable and for some reason much more social. All around the table were huge pieces of wood, like two hundred year old tree trunk size, and we had to duck, or climb over, or jump, or veer out of the way of a rolling boulder Temple of Doom style everytime we needed to get a beer or use the facilities. Though the four of us in the battle van walked in fashionably late, we only missed about a beer’s worth of conversation, so Ben and I quickly moved to remedy the situation. We didn’t order more beer at the restaurant, but we did walk outside about 50 feet away to the beer vending machine, which actually turned out to be about the same price as a supermarket. So I put in 350 yen, and out popped a 24 ounce Kirin. Rinse, lather, and repeat 5 or 6 times. This ice-cold box of brew will now lovingly be referred to as Mr. Beer.
The meal itself is where the real medieval times reference comes in. When I say that everyone at the table was eating chicken on a stick, I don’t mean yakitori, or a kebab of some kind, it’s literally a giant chicken breast on what’s essentially a wooden sword. Whatever you can't gnaw off with your mouth, you pick at with your hands, and it was drenched in a tasty sauce as well. So the "chicken a la samurai" was a great hit with all the gaijin (whiteys). So we all paid and left the restaurant around midnight, and then as is typical with gatherings of co-workers, stood around outside for about an hour trying to figure out what to do next, who was driving where, who was going to keep drinking, who wanted to go to sleep etc. In the end, two steve’s, a ben, and a cathy decided to go to a proper karaoke club. So one New Yorker, one San Franciscan, one Frenchie, and one other Steve, who was undoubtedly born somewhere, went to a Karaoke bar where we were later met by Steve’s Japanese wife.
We had one decision to make when we entered the Karaoke bar, which was if we wanted the 2 hour all we could drink price, or the regular price with ordering overpriced drinks occasionally. So three seconds later, after we’d paid, we went to our room. Now, this will take some explaining for the folks at home. Apparently a real Japanese karaoke club is much different from anything you might know of. In fact I like it a lot better than anything we have in the states, or even in Turkey where rows of Karaoke bars seduce drunken brits to sing Soccer Hooligan songs until the break of dawn. So at a Japanese Karaoke bar, you pay a flat fee, and then you go into your own very comfortable room with couches and chairs, and there is a large TV and some microphones inside. So basically you can go with your friends and get drunk and sing without an entire bar hearing you. I (tone deaf) really appreciated it’s discrete nature. The room also has a phone to call down and order drinks. Which we may have used a solid 8 to ten times over the course of two hours. So the five of us (Steve, Steve, Cathy, Ben, and Steve’s Wife) sat in a room picking out American songs (although Cathy sang some Japanese songs as well) ranging from Eminem to Aqua’s classic hit single, Barbie Girl. Which I’m proud to say thanks to the men nailing their part (Come on Barbie, Let’s Go Party) we achieved our highest score of 9.7 on the song. There is a rating system, but I have no idea how it works or what it measures. The highlights of the night were probably when Ben gave up on hip-hop lyrics and began freestyling about sushi, teaching English, and Tokuyama, and then ended one rhyme with “so why don’t you kiss your wife.” The rhyme was so impressive that it was followed by Steve trying to oblige Ben by leaning over to kiss his wife, and summarily falling straight onto the floor in the process. After our 2 hour drinking period ended we didn’t have much of a reason to stay at the Karaoke bar so we left, although the fact that it was around 4 or 5 AM might have had something to do with it too. So Friday night was over, I came, I karaoked, I conquered.
Saturday was mostly spent in a daze after waking up at about 4 PM. I don’t think anything remarkable happened, and I decided not to go out Saturday because I was meeting Cathy to run to the top of Tycozahn, which is the tallest mountain in the area, where I assumed I could get some good pictures, and I would try to purchase a cell phone.
But, of course, I woke up Sunday and it was pouring. So I met Cathy and then we went to Vodaphone to procure a portable communication device. Cathy lived in Nagoya for 3 years so she speaks close enough to fluent Japanese to seem like a native speaker to me. We got to Vodaphone, I picked out a plan where I got unlimited texts and e-mails because actual minutes are ridiculously expensive here, and bought the phone for 58 bucks, the only thing I’ve seen that was cheap. I was told I needed to present my papers I got from the Tokuyama government office (because I don’t have my alien card yet) and everything would be settled and they’d give me my phone, and put the bill on my debit card. However, when I dropped Cathy off, picked up the papers, and returned they said my address wasn’t on the papers, so I couldn’t get anything. I’m in the process of having the school snail mail me a memo because they said any mail with my name on it would do the trick. But, as usual I have the sneaking suspicion nobody involved in this situation knows what the hell they’re talking about.
After that Cathy, Ben and I met up at around 7 PM, and we went to the 100 YEN STORE!!! It’s a dollar store for those of you reading this in English. Dollar stores in Japan are nuts, they make Wal-Mart look like Tiffany’s. Apparently what happened is that Japan looked at itself and said, “Wow, shit’s really expensive here, maybe we should utilize the fact that 9 out of every 10 workers in Asia are slave labor, and import something.” So this place had hardcore pots and pans, clothing, gardening equipment, food, dishes, glassware, plates, sick-ass sharp knives (for the kitchen) office supplies, shampoo, conditioner, soap, and everything is good quality stuff.
Then we went straight to the second-hand store and I almost wet myself, wait, nope remembering it now I did just wet myself a little. The whole bottom floor, that’s right this is a multi-floor salvation army (although maybe the Buddhists call it the enlightenment army or some such tree-hugging rapture-less nonsense) consisted of books and electronics and musical instruments. Although they only had about 6 books in English and they were all children’s books, it’s still a big used book store, which excites me nonetheless. Upstairs was entirely devoted to clothes and furniture. I’m not too proud to say I bought a Winnie-the-Pooh pillow, because it’s the first pillow I’ve come across in two weeks, but Ben bought a really nice couch, and a huge desk, and is having it delivered to his apartment for 150 bucks. When you consider that a bag of rice, in Japan, is like 12 dollars, that’s a pretty disgusting deal. After that your hero went home and planned some lessons for his first day of work.

Wheat Out