Adventures in Japan

Crap, Isn't It?

Visited Ayako in Kyoto tonight. We had no real plan other than I had a souvenir for her from Okinawa. Oh, and we wanted to eat and drink. By we, I mean Carla, myself and Ben. Ben the Ozzie. Our first stop was at my bank. My bank has incredibly stupid hours. As do most banks in this country. Japan is a cash based society. Credit cards are not much of a help here. If you want to spend a Saturday night out on the town, you'll need a fistfull of bills. You wouldn't expect to pay an after hours charge at an ATM at 5:30 in the evening, but that's the way things work here. ATMs close. If you need more money at, say, 1 in the morning, you are out of luck. It blows my feeble white mind. You need lots of money to do anything in Japan, but Japan limits where and when you can access your own money and then charges you way too much. I am angered.

Our second stop was the Hub. I believe Carla has mentioned this fine establishment before. She tells me that the Hub in Osaka is nicer than the one we visited last night in Kyoto. That may well be, but the bar last night was still just fine. Strong Bulls are just a fantastic, fantastic drink. My brain vibrates just remembering them.

From there we　crossed the street and karaoked for nearly three hours. I should warn you now that this post might contain much gushing about Ayako. She rocks. Literally. I might have mentioned how she used to sing in a metal band, but I hadn't really heard her sing properly until tonight. Befitting her death metal leanings, she sang that crap Titanic song. And she sang the hell out of it. We were all amazed. She followed that song up with some screechy, yelly, throaty Japanese metal. We were dumbfounded. We all applauded after every song she sang.

This might seem horrible, but I'm going to go from singing Ayako's praises to mentioning a couple of Carla's flaws. She doesn't dance, and seems to be incapable of making the best of a bad situation. So when we entered Bar Isn't It?, a dance bar, Carla decided straight off that she hated it and sat off in a corner. She stayed there for the rest of the night, exchanging bitchy emails with David. Every once in a while, one of the bar staff would check on her, to make sure she wasn't asleep. I checked on her a couple times too, lest you think I was being negligent in my duties. Mainly though, I danced. That's not quite true. Ayako danced. She used to be a member of a dance troupe as well, have I mentioned that. So she danced, and danced quite well. Ben moved his body in time to the music, and I did so as well, though not quite as well. Ben and Ayako seemed to hit it off, so I kind of moved off and gyrated quietly in a corner. The music was enjoyably crap. It was like I had gone back in time about 5 years.

After that we retired back to Ayako's apartment. Our room at the Orange House might be a little smaller. Or not. But it's a close call. And our kitchen is better. But she has her own bathroom. So she wins. We stayed up until we could catch the first train in the morning. We caught it and slept all the way home.