This weekend, Sasha was in town again for Genki rehearsals. We had originally been planning on having a big girls' night out with Julie, another ALT, but for one reason or another that fell through. So Sasha and I thought we'd have dinner and maybe a few drinks instead. After Sasha was done with the afternoon rehearsal, we met up at my apartment and hung around for a while. As it got later, we picked out some going out clothes and did our hair and makeup. We always seem to end up leaving later than intended because it takes a while to get ready.
While we were walking into the center of town, we made sort of a game out of accumulating points for the number of people that stared at us. Once when we walked past two parked taxis, both drivers followed us with their eyes for like ten seconds. That was worth triple points. Needless to say, we got a lot of stares, mostly because we were foreign but probably also because we were a bit dressed up. Young people, old people, all kinds of people stared at us. It can be a bit frustrating when you're by yourself, but when it was the two of us, it was mostly entertaining. Sasha dared me to try something to make people stare even more, so I executed a hair toss, and a group of punks walking by at the time shouted "Hello!" to us.
We hadn't entirely decided where we wanted to eat, so we started out at Hirome. However, being a Saturday night, it was packed and we couldn't find a table. So we decided to eat at a restaurant down near Harimayabashi. Along the way we stopped to do purikura (the sticker photo booths) and ran across a band playing near Central Park. They were playing classic American rock and roll. There were two guitarists, a string bass player, a trumpet player and a trombone player. They were even singing in English, though it was kind of hard to make out. Sasha put some money in the guitar case they had sitting out, so one of the band people (who was not playing at the time) decided that he should take our picture with the band. All of the pictures turned out blurry, but it was kind of fun anyway.
While we were listening to the music, some other ALTs wandered by. They had been at a potluck at Philip's and were now headed to get ice cream. It was about 8:00 and we still hadn't had dinner, so Sasha and I went on to the restaurant instead of joining them. We had curry at Masala, an Indian restaurant. While we ate we tried to decide on our plans for the evening. Sasha ended up setting a few "missions" for us. One of them was that we needed to go to a bar we had never been to. I'm a little squeamish about going into places I don't know because you can never tell if they're foreigner-friendly. There are some bars where you will be glared at as soon as you walk in. But sometimes you just have to do things by trial and error.
After dinner, we went to the Irish bar, Amontillado. All of the tables were taken so we sat at the bar. We only had one drink there before moving on. It's a nice enough place, but we were kind of restless, I think. We went to check out Cafe de Blue, a basement club with a dance floor. They were playing rock and roll (which turned out to be the theme of the evening), but there was a 2,000 yen cover charge and there weren't all that many people there, so we decided to keep moving. On our way back to Obiyamachi, we noticed a little bar that I think was called Okinawa. On the little rain awning over the door was printed "We win the Pacific, Rock 'n' Roll". There was a display in the window with a jukebox, a string bass, and some strange kewpie-ish dolls. It looked interesting, so we went in.
Inside the bar, there was a semicircle of red couches with a group of young people on them, a few people sitting at the bar, an empty booth, and two bartenders. Sasha and I claimed the empty booth. We ordered drinks, and the bartenders seemed friendly enough. I didn't feel like anyone glared at us when we came in; in fact, it felt like they mostly didn't notice us. They were playing classic rock and roll, as the band in the park had been, so Sasha and I listened and chatted and occasionally sang along. Sasha decided to show me how to jive, and it turned out to be basically East Coast Swing, but in reverse. I don't think this bar was intended for dancing but once again, no one really seemed to care. One of the most entertaining things about the bar was the bartender; he had his hair slicked back in a '50s do. Sasha referred to him as Japanese Elvis.
Sasha added a few challenges at this bar; one of them was to ask to turn up the music (which she did), and the other was for me to talk to a young guy sitting at the bar. I was hesitant, but Sasha kept prodding me, and as she had said, what was the worst that could happen? While Sasha took a bathroom break, I went up to the bar to order a second drink and asked the guy if he liked rock and roll. His answer was "Maa, maa" which means "So-so". Given that he had come alone to a rock and roll bar, I'm guessing that he did in fact like the music, but was probably just showing his disinterest in talking to me. I didn't really have anything else to say, so I took my drink and went back to our booth. Once I had finished my drink, we decided to move on.
When we went up to the bar to get the bill, some lady sitting at the bar started loudly saying something about "gaijin". I couldn't understand what she was saying, but it couldn't have been that polite as "gaijin" is a fairly rude way of referring to foreigners. I'm sure she was intending for us to overhear, as well. That rather pissed me off. It made me wonder if we had been welcome there in the first place. I liked the bar and the music, but now I'm not entirely sure if I'll go back there. I might try it again with some other ALTs and see what happens. It could just be that there happened to be an unfriendly customer.
After Okinawa, we decided to go to Onzo. Sasha thought that maybe she had been there early on in the year, but wasn't entirely sure. It turned out that it was the place she had been thinking of. There was a DJ that night, though the music was still not very good, and it seemed to be some sort of event. There were quite a few people there considering the size of the bar; it's probably the same size as the basement of Mom and Dad's house, or maybe a little smaller. I went to use the bathroom, and when I returned, a guy in dress pants and a vest was talking to Sasha. He seemed very friendly. We had our suspicions that he might've been a host, and I'm pretty sure we were right. Japan has a type of bar called a "host club", where handsome young men are paid to pour drinks and chat up the female customers. These men are called "hosts". From what I've heard, host clubs are fairly expensive. Anyhow, it seemed that for one reason or another there was a host working at Onzo that night. Our suspicions were more or less confirmed when he came back with a tray of bite-sized cheesecakes and insisted on feeding them to us.
We stayed at Onzo a while longer and attempted to dance, but the music was not so great. Some drunk guys came over and danced with us, or rather, next to us. After a little while we decided to move on again. It's pretty atypical to go to so many bars in one night; usually it's Hirome and one or two other places. But we were on the move. We decided to make Dahlia our last stop of the night. Chances were that the music wouldn't be any better there, but it was worth a shot.
When we arrived at Dahlia, there were only one or two other customers in the whole bar. The music was awful and ungodly loud. We attempted to talk to the bartender, but his smiles seemed rather forced, so we just had one round of drinks before calling it a night. We started walking back to my place and realized that it was going to take us a very long time, so we got a cab the rest of the way. All in all, I'm not sure how I felt about the evening. There were some pretty fun moments (the purikura, listening to the band by the park, rock and roll music at Okinawa, an encounter with a host at Onzo), but there were also some rather depressing elements (the woman who kept talking about gaijin, bartender who is apparently less friendly than we thought he was). I'm glad we went out and had some fun, though. I think Sasha is a good influence on me when it comes to being more adventurous.
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