Partying in Osaka

After three days in Osaka, there's a lot to relate, so I'm going to split it up into a few entries. Most of what we did was partying, shopping, bathing (Spa World), or people watching. For now I'll start with the partying since that was fairly eventful.

On Saturday night, after shopping for most of the afternoon, we got dressed up to go out to the bars. This was a fairly involved process. The hair and makeup was a bit of a struggle as the hostel we stayed in wasn't particularly well lit and there were no mirrors in our room. There were, however, two mirrors in the hallway, so we did a lot of the getting ready out there. Sasha wore a hot pink dress she had bought that day, and Julie and I wore things we'd brought from home. We put a good deal of effort into getting dolled up, which for me is part of the fun.

After that we took a cab to the Dotonbori area to get dinner. We wandered around for a while before we could settle on a place to eat. The final verdict: okonomiyaki. I was quite happy with the choice of restaurant. It seemed like some of the other patrons were curious about us, but no one bothered us during dinner. A person at the next table was so kind as to take our picture for us after noticing us taking pictures of each other. It was a good meal, and a nice start to the night.

Before going to any clubs, we thought we'd have a few drinks at a regular sit down bar. On our way to dinner we had passed The Hub, a British-style pub. Since we had read good reviews of it and knew where it was, we decided to go there. It is a place that is popular with expats, so there were about as many foreigners as there were Japanese people. It wasn't huge but it was considerably larger than most bars in Kochi. We had a few drinks and talked for a while. We had noticed a rather cute young man sitting by himself at another table and badgered Sasha into going over to talk to him.

Unfortunately, at that time Julie and I were set upon by two middle aged Polish men. They came over to our table to talk. Julie had noticed them looking over at our table a lot and had hoped they wouldn't bother us, but unfortunately they did. To be fair, they weren't really hitting on us, so it wasn't uncomfortable in that sense. The problem was more that they were condescending. Both of them had been living in Japan for over 10 years and worked at a university. Although we told them we had been living in Japan for a year, I'm pretty sure they still thought of us as tourists.

When Julie mentioned that her parents were Polish, they took their obnoxiousness in a whole other direction. They asked if she spoke Polish, and she said that she only knows a little. So one of them asked her outright, "So, you aren't interested in your roots?" It wasn't an error of English usage that he asked such a pointed question; they were completely fluent. He was just being a dick. Understandably, Julie felt a little defensive, though she was still entirely more polite than these guys deserved. She explained that her parents had worked full time since she was three, so they hadn't exactly had time to teach her Polish. A little after that the conversation sort of died and the two men started conferring among themselves in Polish. Julie heard one of them saying, "Careful, she understands", but she didn't catch anything else. After a while they wished us a pleasant stay in Osaka and left.

At that point, Sasha and the guy she had been talking to rejoined us at our table. The young man's name was Martin, and he was from Austria. He was traveling around Japan with a few friends, but none of them had wanted to come out that night, so he was on his own. He was a really nice and friendly person. He had studied in Texas when he was in high school and his English was excellent. I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise. Anyhow, the four of us had a very enjoyable conversation about Japan and traveling. After a while we decided to move on to the next venue. Martin walked part of the way with us, but didn't go to the club with us. Sasha traded information with him and now we're all friends on Facebook.

The next place we went to was a club called Pure. Sasha and Julie had been there before and said it had good music and a dance floor, which are two things we can't really get in Kochi. It was also nomihodai (all you can drink), which is convenient. However, when we got inside, we discovered that it was packed wall to wall. It was incredibly difficult to move anywhere. Getting drinks was quite a struggle as you had to force your way to the bar and somehow get the bartender's attention. Julie was so kind as to get drinks for the three of us while Sasha and I used the bathroom. The bathroom was also crowded. There were a group of girls having a conversation in English about penis sizes. That was interesting, to say the least. Anyhow, we eventually got out onto the dance floor, but dancing was difficult because drunk people were constantly bumping into us. Mostly it was drunk girls who weren't aware of how much space they occupy when they move. The guys in the club all had a fairly predatory aspect to them; it was pretty clear what they were looking for. One guy actually tried to grab Julie's crotch. It was such an unpleasant place that after just a few songs, we decided it wasn't worth the trouble and left. Normally at a nomihodai place you try to stay long enough to at least get your money's worth in alcohol, but we couldn't get out of there fast enough.

After that we had another place in mind to try. It was a relief to get out in the open air, even if the streets are also crowded. Along the way I made a fun sighting: a rat! It was just snuffling around in the gutter looking for food. It didn't seem particularly wary of us, though we obviously didn't get all that close to it. Somehow the rat ended up being one of the highlights of the night. For a city rat, it was pretty cute.

While we were looking for the next club, we ran into a 19 year old English guy who had gotten separated from his friends and was lost. He didn't speak any Japanese and didn't know how to get to Sam and Dave's, the club his friends were at. So Julie asked a sushi vendor for directions for him. We sent him on his way and went back to looking for our club. When we eventually found it, it seemed to be closed. We decided to try the club the English guy had been looking for. That turned out to be another mistake.

Like Pure, Sam and Dave's was packed with creepy guys. It was another meat market. The music was good, but it was difficult to dance while also trying to avoid unwanted contact with men. We saw our English friend there; he managed to find his pals. I have no idea how he got into the club since he's 19 and the legal drinking age is 20. They were checking IDs at the door, too. Anyhow, he seemed to be having a good time. I apparently was drawing the most unwanted attention, so Julie and Sasha had to make a protective barrier around me while we were dancing. We stayed there for a few songs but didn't stick around all that long.

By this point it was fairly late, we were all rather disappointed, and our feet hurt, so we decided to go home. Unfortunately, we hadn't brought the piece of paper with our hostel's address, and it's a small enough hostel that the taxi drivers didn't know where it was. So we had to walk. It was a very long walk to make in four inch heels. I had worn the most impractical shoes of all of us, but everyone's feet were hurting. Each step took a conscious effort. There was a lot of bemoaning our poor choice of footwear, but likely we'll all wear those shoes again in similar circumstances. Eventually we made it back to the hostel and could collapse into our futons.

After my shower, I did an extremely stupid thing. While my towel was wrapped around my head, I used it to dry off the things I had brought into the shower; first my shaving razor, then the bottles of shampoo and soap. Unfortunately, I was holding the razor in my left hand when I brought a bottle to the towel to dry with my right hand, and cut my third finger pretty deeply with the razor. It bled a lot. I think I left a few drops of blood on the concrete wall of the bathroom. Fortunately I had brought bandaids (which I had been intending to use for blisters), so I sopped up the blood with a tissue and put a bandage on it. The cut kept bleeding for a while even after I applied the bandage, so the bandage had a large red splotch of barely contained blood. It was pretty gross. Anyhow, that was a somehow fitting end to a rather disappointing night.

While Sasha was taking her shower, Julie and I were laying in the dark talking about the evening. Although we'd all been careful not to get our hopes too high, I realized at that point that I'd had a few basic things I'd been hoping to do. I had come to Osaka hoping that I would talk to or dance with at least one pleasant guy, and that I could get in some fun dancing with the girls. But I hadn't really managed to do either. It had been a night of creepy men and too-crowded dance floors. I know better than to expect to meet my soulmate in a bar, but I don't think it's so unreasonable to hope to have a few friendly, enjoyable interactions with men in places like bars and clubs. It is possible. We just ended up at the wrong clubs on the wrong night. But laying in the dark after a night of dodging gropey men and getting drinks spilled on us by drunk girls, I couldn't help crying a little from the disappointment of it.

So, I realize this turned into a rather depressing post, but I promise that the next one is a lot more fun and upbeat. Tune in next time for Bathing in Osaka: Adventures at Spa World!