So, what
exactly do I do for fun around here? We all know
the Japanese are party animals under that polite surface, but the
nightlife here isn't exactly raging. It seems there aren't too
many dance clubs in Sendai, at least that I've seen. If its
possible to have less 'soul' than the average middle class white male,
the average Japanese person has found out how. I'd say they'd
probably rank right above people with religious bans on dancing.
Though there are quite a few who are coordinated enough to manage the
group choreographed 'new kids on the block circa 1989' dance
moves. But its hard to shake your bum when you don't have one.
But I
digress, I had intended on telling you about my night on the town on
Friday. It was a fairly ordinary occasion, I maybe go out once or
twice a month to Sendai. There were a few more interesting moments
that I will get to later. Firstly, besides myself, there was
David, Nicole, Monika* and Kevin. There were three of David's
English teachers plus Kisara and Hajime. The party was
partly a late New Year's plus a celebration for David's arm getting
better after he fell off his bike and broke it. Well, fractured really,
but that is a whole other amusing story.
The first
place we went to was a karaoke bar, Neverland. We partook of some
nomihoodai and tabehoodai. Nomi and tabe hoodai are perhaps one of
the greatest things to come from Japan. For about two and a half
hours, you get a set menu of food, plus all you can drink for
3500yen. Drinks are always 500 each, so that leaves two hours for
5 drinks at least. Neverland is pretty small, so our group
got shuffled into an enclosed room with a karaoke machine. There
were apparently civilized people in the open room. No one
ever has the guts to sing until they've got quite a few drinks in them,
so there was some awkward silence for a few minutes. I perused the
drink menu with Kayoco*, even though every bar has the same drinks and I
always order the same thing. Which would be a peach fizz.
But this time I decided to be adventurous and get a banana fizz. I
later got even more daring by ordering a banana milk and a violet fizz,
which tastes like a purple Tums. We finally broke out the
microphones, I think Kisara went first. He spent quite a bit of
time convincing me to sing first, he threatened not to let me go home
(to America) until I sang. So that meant I had another six months
to stall. I finally relented and offered to do Cecilia a
particular fav of mine, but the blasted book didn't have it. And
do you know that none of them have Gloria Gayner either? truly a
travesty. So then he roped me into singing Like a Virgin
with Monika*, but I forgot I didn't know the words. HE seemed to
know the words quite well, for all his claims to the contrary.
Hmmmm...... I think some other people sang some too. Then I
was again tricked into singing with Monika, this time the Titanic song
by Celine.... I was ashamed to discover I did know the words. Monika
sang quite well, but I think, I sang it better. Because, I am the
greatest singer in ze world!
We
were promptly kicked out when our two hours was up. So then it was
time to move onto the second stop. We actually went to restaurant,
I guess we were still hungry. They gave us free wine.mmm.
After the fact, I think it was a little dangerous taking such a group to
a quiet, well lit restaurant, but they did have great food.
But, really, I think it was more dangerous that me and Monika sat next
to the two English teachers. It started innocently enough.
In fact, it was Kayoco who started it. Or maybe Monika. I am
innocent. Really. Kayoco mentioned her trip to Italy. This
led to the mention of Italian men. So Monika mentioned that she'd
dated one and that he was an asshole. We were then curious to know
how to say asshole in Japanese, though it doesn't really translate well,
so it required some gestures to get the meaning across. Monika
also mentioned that she was learning some dirty Japanese. This
preluded her description of various incidents where Japanese people had
grabbed certain parts on certain other English teachers. This led
to a diversion to discussing 'small' attributes, but then they asked us
what colloquial words we used for the nether regions. (So, it
appears not to be mine nor Monika's fault, but Kayoco and
Hayashis'*) Running off that list took quite a few minutes.
Hayashi* proclaimed that he discovered she was sleazy. Several times in
fact. I applauded his vocab. We briefly tried to steer the
conversation to a new topic, proclaiming our purity and virgin ears.
(kayoco too.) But then he made the mistake of asking what you say
in English for a woman who pretends to be innocent but is really knowledgeable
about sex. That would be 'a Woman' I responded. Kayoco and
Monica agreed. Well, to make a long story longer, our conversation
continued to degenerate. The high point for me was when she taught
Hayashi how to say 'Come satisfy my rampaging manhood'. He was
very delighted to learn this. And yes, he did indeed understand
what it meant. So we did some pronunciation practice and Monika
wrote it down so he wouldn't forget. He asked David if he had
Rampaging Manhood. Kayoco was feeling left out though, so we
taught her 'give me your love shaft O baby O baby'. This was just
shortly before Monika wrote down 'I wanna *uck you like an animal', and
'you got the peaches I got the cream, sweet to taste saccharine'.
I had to explain those ones. This involved more gesturing.
I'll have to end the retelling there, but that was certainly the worst
of it. We lamented the fact that Hayashi knew no other fluent
English speakers to whom he could say 'rampaging manhood'.
The
rest of the evening was fairly uneventful, me and Monika and Nicole went
to the local foreign bar/discotheque, where Nicole got hit on by some 50
year old married Japanese men. We danced some, when they finally
played some decent music, but we sat thru the following lineup of
psuedo-techno dance remixes: The greatest love of all, I will always
love you, The dancing queen and The heart will go on.
It was somewhat disturbing. On the walk to get a taxi we were
detained by a group of men wanting to follow us home. We had to
bust some heads, but it went fairly smooth. We took a taxi and got
home around 2:00 am. I always get home around 2:00 am. And
this is always after we've decided to take the last train home at
11:55. But then I would have missed the dance remix of Whitney
Houston and Celine Dion.