When I was leaving Japan, having lived there for three and a half years, I had a huge leaving party. About 55 people showed up. Parties were easy to throw in Japan cause all the expats and students we were friends with were all on Facebook and you just put up an event and everyone shows up. But i hadn't really accounted for 55. I thought at most there would be 40 and so I booked for 50 just in case.
In Japanese Izakayas, which are like restaurant bars, you can generally book a private room if you have lots of people and generally you order some sort of set menu with nomihoudi which means all you can drink. Which I believe is just awesome. It's about $40. $40 all you can drink and enough food for everyone with some left over. All my Australian mates reading this are now booking flights.
So at the end of the night they asked not how many were there but how many we booked for. We said 50. They then quoted a price. Everyone came out and we collected their money on the way through. In the end though, we were about $150 up and Hiro and I hadn't paid yet. I very quickly pocketed the money and told Hiro I'd be shouting our drinks. It was a GOOD night.
I really miss nights like that in Japan. When I went back we went to Miami Beer Garden for my birthday. This was just a 1 week holiday but it happened to fall on my birthday. Miami Beer Garden is on the top of the DaiNagoya building. It opens over the summer and it is $40 all you can eat and drink. It has yakiniku which is thinly sliced raw meat that you cook yourself on a small bbq and lather in sauce before eating. In Miami Beer Garden there is a smorgasboard of raw meat to choose from and it is AWESOME.
The variety of beer is good too. When you are finished with your three hours you have to pay $5 per half hour to continue. Can I eat and drink $5 worth of meat and beer in half an hour? Yes I think I can.
AND I WILL!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
I have been going to the gym a bit recently because I'm applying for the police force. I went the other day and the number of people there was just stupid. So I've been trying to find places I can exercise outdoors instead of going to the gym and it reminded me of this guy I saw in Japan. I lived in this place for five months and it had no parks, grass, trees or green anywhere near it. And I used to get back at about 11pm and there was this guy running up and down the stairs at the station. He looked like one of the 70's tennis players with the small shorts, tight shirts and headbands. So there's no place to exercise so he chooses the train station. The train station. What I loved about it though was that this wasn't in the outer area of the subway. This was inside. So either this guy has some deal worked out with the station guards, or he has actually paid for a subway ticket to he can run up and down the stairs. I couldn't understand it really. Nobody batted an eye. he ran back and forth past them and they just ignored him. Balsy.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The idea of a fad to me is interesting. By definition it is something cool that is sadly destined to go the way of the dodo in a very short time. There are people that latch on to fads as soon as they come to the fore and spend a large portion of their time practicing to become the best at whatever fad is in. This elevates the fad freak to instant celebrity status in the eyes of other fad freaks who are not quite so freaky. Until, inevitably, the fad loses it's steam and the fad freak, like an aging celebrity, tries in vain to cling to the fad just that little too long. They are therefore instantly shunned and even mocked for trying to hold onto their stardom.
Once the fad is over, the people who leave with their cool status intact are the ones that let go of the fad first. Or even better, were never seen to be interested in the fad in the first place. This is something I imagined was universal until I travelled to Asia and realised that this entire continent was obsessed with fads, and fad freaks held on to their fads until they came around in the next decade. My mate recently informed me that the latest Japanese fad is for girls to wear ridiculously larged framed glasses, reminiscent of The Big Chill, with no lenses in them. Apparently the bookworm look is in.
The reason I'm writing this, like usual, is to have a little rant. I was in Japan you see at the time of the natto and banana fad diets. Some brilliant dietician had developed a diet where you could eat whatever you wanted throughout the day as long as you ate only natto in the morning. Natto is fermented soybeans that smells suspiciously like fart and is so sticky you need to act out interpretive dance moves in order to cut off the stringy bit that hangs from the bottle to your plate. So when the natto diet went big I was relatively unaffected ecxept that I was forced to spend hours of my day talking about it in classes filled with image obsessed housewives, but then when the banana diet came out I was severely put out. You could not find a banana in any supermarket in the city. People were lining up every morning at opening time and buying up every banana in the store like they were flood victims stocking up on canned goods. When the fad died down a little but the supermarkets were still trying to make money off of it I tried to buy a bunch of bananas and found that the smallest bunch I could buy was a bunch of 40. Nice. Brown banana city at my place.
Once the fad is over, the people who leave with their cool status intact are the ones that let go of the fad first. Or even better, were never seen to be interested in the fad in the first place. This is something I imagined was universal until I travelled to Asia and realised that this entire continent was obsessed with fads, and fad freaks held on to their fads until they came around in the next decade. My mate recently informed me that the latest Japanese fad is for girls to wear ridiculously larged framed glasses, reminiscent of The Big Chill, with no lenses in them. Apparently the bookworm look is in.
The reason I'm writing this, like usual, is to have a little rant. I was in Japan you see at the time of the natto and banana fad diets. Some brilliant dietician had developed a diet where you could eat whatever you wanted throughout the day as long as you ate only natto in the morning. Natto is fermented soybeans that smells suspiciously like fart and is so sticky you need to act out interpretive dance moves in order to cut off the stringy bit that hangs from the bottle to your plate. So when the natto diet went big I was relatively unaffected ecxept that I was forced to spend hours of my day talking about it in classes filled with image obsessed housewives, but then when the banana diet came out I was severely put out. You could not find a banana in any supermarket in the city. People were lining up every morning at opening time and buying up every banana in the store like they were flood victims stocking up on canned goods. When the fad died down a little but the supermarkets were still trying to make money off of it I tried to buy a bunch of bananas and found that the smallest bunch I could buy was a bunch of 40. Nice. Brown banana city at my place.
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