Update, Part 1

Discovery: My new favorite activity is playing guitar while watching sumo wrestling with the sound turned down. Good times.

Well, enough has happened in the past few weeks that I haven’t written about that I think it’ll take more than one post to fix. So much has happened…

Anyway, here we go:
HALLOWEEN - October 30^th found me heading out to an izakaya in a black trench coat, black t-shirt, black pants, black shoes, and two plastic pistols shoved in my belt. The plan was to look like Neo from The Matrix. People told me I looked “tall”. But anyway, it was fun; lots of great people, lots of great costumes. Devin was Hunter S. Thompson, and looked pretty much dead-on. The izakaya was great; we had an entire room to ourselves, “ourselves” being 35 Nova and Aeon teachers, and three hours of nomihoudai and tabehoudai – all you and eat and drink. Which, with 35 people, is a LOT.

The best part of the night, I have to say, was Yukiko: she’s an Aeon teacher, twenty-eight, gorgeous, speaks great English, and just so happens to know my good friend Luke Scripter. It turns out she lives in the same town outside of Nagoya as Luke lived in, and met him on the train when he was going to Korea. I met up with Luke on his way back from Korea, about a week later. Cue “It’s a Small World”. Yukiko was thrilled that I knew where Nakatsugawa was, and I, in turn, was thrilled that she was thrilled (I’m all about the small victories). We ended up talking about Luke for a while, the differences between Nova and Aeon for a while, and the origins of Halloween for a while. Good times.

After all the eating and most of the drinking we could do, Sean, organizer of our little soirée and ringleader extraordinaire, decided it must be time for us to hit a club. So we all ran to catch the last subway to Sakae and find the club, which Sean knew more ABOUT than WHERE it was exactly. Along the way we either amused or frightened the Japanese we happened to meet; Rob especially frightened them. When you’re a head taller and twice the size of the average Japanese man, it’s not too difficult to do; add black clothes and a clear plastic mask, and you’ve got a pretty frightening sight. Well, we finally found the club, which really wasn’t too hard; all we had to do is follow the guys in tennis outfits. The club offered free admission with a costume, and there were a LOT of costumes.

We stayed at the club for a few hours, chatting with some costumed and enthusiastic locals and listening to Japanese hip-hop. The strange thing about Japanese music is that it throws random English (or, more commonly, Japanglish) into songs; so you get, “[something something something] flying the sky, [something something] baby, [something]”. So after a couple of hours of listening to bad English in bad hip-hop inside a third-floor club with a low ceiling, we decided to take the party somewhere a little quieter. So karaoke it was.

But before that, we needed to FIND a karaoke bar. There are plenty in Sakae, but the trick is finding a cheap one open at 3:30am. And despite the fact he didn’t know where to go, our fearless leader Sean kept us moving until we found a place that would admit 15 costumed gaijin. Note: It helps if you flash money.

Karaoke, as always, was a blast. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a dark room with a bunch of people you’ve just met, and belting out tunes that everyone seems to know. Karaoke – bringing the world together. Well, the English-speaking world at least. I, as always, sang the one and only Jimmy Eat World song in Japan – “The Middle” – to much applause and many jeers. I think I’ll keep my day job, y’know, just to be safe. We all had fun singing, or croaking, along with everything from Chuck Berry to the Beatles to Men At Work to something Japanese that someone accidentally punched in. Japanese karaoke songs are like Japanese TV: you can make up your own words, and it’s funnier that way.

By 5:30 we were all pretty knackered (tired); and rightfully so, since we’d been going since 8pm! Fortunately, the first trains started running around then, so we hopped on the first one heading our way, and beat it home. After a healthy breakfast of microwave teriyaki burgers, I hit the sack. Woke up at 2pm, got ready for work, and taught five classes. Piece o’ cake.

And that was Halloween! I’ve got a lot more coming, so stay tuned. I’m Audi 5000.