Adventures in Japan

What we didn't notice while we lived there

Someday soon it will be Canadian Tina's birthday. We heard through the grapevine (a.k.a. David) that there would be celebratory karaoke. So last night we met up with Tina and her many, many friends in an izakaya in Umeda. By the time we got there, the party was well under way. If we'd heeded David's sage advice and just met them for karaoke instead of showing up for the tail end of the eating and drinking, we could have saved ourselves ¥6000. You see, what David must already know but Tyler & I have trouble adjusting to, is that around here the bill for a drinking party among friends is divided evenly among the group, regardless of what each individual ate or drank. So if you show up for the last hour of a night-long party, a couple drinks and bit of food are going to cost you a hefty chunk of change. Especially if there are two of you.

After that, we weren't sure we wanted to spend money on karaoke at all, but what with the birthday, we decided to miss the last train and sing until morning. It wasn't long before someone found a place with a karaoke room large enough to accommodate the lot of us. The lobby featured posters with a weird google-eyes-under-the-nose kind of theme. You can watch the commercials on their website. I recommend that you do. Then you'll have an idea of the kinds of things we see on TV every day. But I digress. The karaoke only lasted a couple of hours, and then everyone else went home. Except David. He's such a trooper. The three of us should have gone back to the karaoke bar and kept singing (we were having a really good time), but what we did instead was wander the streets waiting for the first morning trains that could take us home. In Umeda at about 4:00 in the morning, pretty much the only other people we encountered were transvestites, and groups of young pimps with big, blond hair and snazzy black suits. Eventually we stopped in a little bar and indulged in perfectly ordinary cocktails that cost us each ¥1100. Cheaper than I taxi, I suppose.

And now we're home and the sun is coming up, and that's about the end of that.