Nampa

On Saturday night, I had a fun cultural experience: my first nampa. Well, it might be more accurate to say it was the first time that I was nampa'd. The word "nampa" refers to picking up women. I think it's pretty much limited to men, though I think some of what Julie, Sasha and I have done might count as nampa. But in this case, we were the targets.

I went out with Julie and Sasha to get dinner and drinks. After eating, we headed down Obiyamachi and tried to figure out where exactly we wanted to go. We weren't really looking to dance all night, so we were trying to think of a bar that was better for sitting and talking. As we were walking along, we passed a group of guys, and one of them called out to us. He approached Julie since she was the closest to him, and he asked where we were going. Since we didn't have any place in mind, Julie asked if they knew of somewhere good to go. The guy (whose name turned out to be Kodai) invited us to go along with him and his friends. We were all up for it, so we joined the group.

I think that picking us up had been entirely Kodai's idea, because his friends seemed surprised to suddenly have a group of foreign girls with them. Kodai was very friendly and chatty, but it took the others a little while to get used to us. Altogether there were five guys. The first bar we went to was too full for our group, but they directed us to a bar across the street. There was pretty much no one else in that bar. Our conversation was a little odd in that Julie had to translate most of it; I could understand some of what they said, but I couldn't reply easily, and Sasha didn't really understand much. It started out fairly standard, with them asking about where we were from and what we were doing in Kochi. I can't remember the guys' names, but from the sounds of it they all worked for a pharmaceutical company.

When we had first met up with the group, I had noticed that one of the guys was tall and rather handsome. I was interested in him... until he opened his mouth. He was so incredibly obnoxious. He kept teasing us and asking rude questions. I mean, a lot of the questions we got from the other guys were pretty strange, but his questions were flat out inappropriate. I don't know if we weren't giving him enough attention or what (Kodai mostly carried the conversation), but he turned rather sullen, as well.

We stayed at the bar talking for a good length of time, then decided to go to Onzo to see if there was anything going on there. We had been told there would be a hip hop DJ that night. At first it seemed like the guys were going to go with us, but we split back into two groups. The guys were so kind as to pay for our drinks, which surprised me. That doesn't happen much here. Anyhow, Julie and Kodai exchanged numbers, and we headed off.

When we got to Onzo it turned out that there was not in fact any hip hop music, and very few people at the bar. The music was kind of atrocious, actually. So we turned around and went to look for a different event we had heard about. When we ran into one of Julie's friends and asked him for directions to the second place, he said that it was pretty far away. Since it was still raining pretty hard, we decided that it wasn't worth the walk. We went to One Love, but they were having an event of some sort and it seemed like we weren't welcome there. While we stood around talking about where to go next, we heard some interesting music coming from the basement level of the building. There was a "live house" (concert house) called Back Beats downstairs. We went to check that out. There was a live band playing American rock 'n' roll. It was really fun, but we only caught the tail end of the performance, so we had to leave pretty soon after we arrived.

While we were in Back Beats, Julie had gotten a call from Kodai. She called him back and it turned out that the guys were still downtown and interested in meeting up with us again. We told them where we were, and they came by to meet us. Then we all went to Onzo. It seemed like the tall guy (who we had nicknamed OB, for "Obnoxious Baby") was being better natured. Maybe he had just been too drunk at first, and had sobered up a little.

At Onzo, the music was somewhat better than when we had stopped by the first time, so we all danced for a while. It was pretty funny, though; if Julie and Sasha danced together suggestively, they could get the guys to do the same... with each other. The sight of these guys grinding on each other was hilarious. Everyone seemed to have a good sense of humor, so we all had fun. When we got tired of dancing we went back to the couch and sat down (this bar has a couch in it). OB sat next to me and we talked for a while, during which time it became apparent that he probably was just as obnoxious as he had seemed at first. He asked how much money I made and how much I weighed. When he wouldn't stop asking about my weight, even after I flat out told him that it was a rude question, I smacked him on the arm. But we kept talking.

We left Onzo around 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning. It was still raining. We said goodbye to the guys and walked back home. Sasha and I aren't in contact with any of them, but I think Julie might meet up with Kodai sometime. He seemed very personable. I think Kodai and Julie have the same skill for keeping people talking; Kodai led the group conversation from the Japanese side, and Julie led the conversation from the English side. Anyhow, that was our first nampa. Even though I wasn't interested in dating any of the guys, I thought it was a lot of fun. It's kind of nice just to hang out with some new people, and I can't say that I minded the attention.