My first weekend in Japan was utter madness, but in a good way. I hung out with Sam (my host brother) his girlfriend Amelia and all of Sam's friends. He has about 8 really close friends who are almost all from England. He met them all at the international high school he went to in Japan, so they have all lived in Japan at some point. They're an amazing group of kids and I look forward to more fun times with them. But anyway, my weekend went as follows:
Sam, Amelia and I met up with them on the subway into Tokyo at about 9:30 PM. At around 10:00 PM we arrived in Rappongi, an area well known for its quantity of bars as well as the high amount of foreigners who frequent them. We started out at "Club Manhattan" and needless to say a few alcoholic beverages were bought and consumed to start the night out. At this bar I had a great time getting to know Sam's friends. After about 2 hours at Club Manhattan, we hit the streets and found the second bar. One of Sam's friends is apparently a big shot around the Japanese bar scene so he led us to this smaller bar, whose name I can't really remember. At this second bar people's wallets had become a bit looser and rounds of shots were bought with startling frequency. We danced a bit and after about only an hour we headed out for our final destination.
This place was a hip club named "Ferria." By the time we had entered Ferria it was about 1:00 AM, but the night had still just begun. The cover price was a bit steep but the atmosphere and our previous activities caused money to fly from my wallet at an alarming rate. It was well worth it though as Ferria was a packed dance floor with a bar on the side. It was filled with foreigners and was an absolute blast. The DJ had a tendency to play sing along songs rather than club mixes; so songs like "Smells like Teen Spirit" and "Billy Jean" were the norm. We ended up staying at Ferria until about 5:30AM. At 5:00 AM I had, of course, wisely chosen to nap on the benches lined next to the dance floor, so I was wide awake when we emerged from the club into the bright light of day.
We shambled our way to the subway and found our way home by about 6:30 AM. My one grievance is that, while there are an inordinate amount of vending machines in Japan, it seemed that not one of them was selling water that morning. So on the way back I managed to buy two water look-alikes. One of which is a milky white drink called "Calpis" that tastes like an extremely sweetened version of what its name proclaims. The second was called Aquarius, which despite its water-like appearance and water-sounding name, is also filled with sugar. Once we got home though, we slept until late in the afternoon and were feeling fit as fiddles for the entire next day.
Saturday:
Karaoke. We all met up in Yokohama, which is a nice close walk from my house, at a fairly sketchy karaoke parlor. It was the same crowd so we didn't end up staying that late, but it was amazingly fun nonetheless. The basic scene is that everyone sits on couches in a big room facing a TV. There are giant phone-books full of songs you can input into the TV and two mikes to pass around. Everyone orders drinks and you can sing your heart out to almost any song. There's a little bit of echo put into the mikes so even the worst voice sounds passable. I got the fever and sang a bunch of different songs and even rapped once (which I will never do again.) So that was an awesome time and I expect to do it again in the near future.
Sunday:
It was Julie (my host sister's) 21st birthday so we went out to a nice dinner at a large restaurant called Tycoon. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was great. Once again it was the same crowd, and it was a fun dinner. That night I decided to round out the weekend by watching the World Cup at from 3:00 AM to 5:30 AM with everyone else at my host family's house. It was an awesome game so I'm happy I did it and I got just enough sleep to handle work the next day.
I didn't expect this one to be so long but it should give you a very good idea of my weekend. Coming up next I'm going to fully explain, with pictures, the amazing hand washing device in the men's bathroom at AOI. Please send some comments to or e-mail me, I'd love to hear what people are doing. Until next time, Sayonara.
