Bloom In Japan

So after eating at the coolest sushi place ever, Eric and I took a cab over to the Miyoshi Town city hall. First a little note about the taxis in Japan. After flagging one down (red light means vacant and green light means occupied…?), you don’t want to try and open the door for yourself. Instead you just say abra cadabra, and vualla, the door automatically opens and closes for you. It’s the same deal on the way out, which makes the outrageous fares seem a little less harsh. Anyways, as a foreigner living in Japan, you are required to register as an alien and receive a “Gaijin Card”. So after arriving at the city hall, we proceeded to the counter and began the most complicated form completion in history. The man behind the counter didn’t speak any English beyond two words (which will be covered in a second). I was presented with the registration form, and after 5-10 minutes of Eric trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do, the kind man broke out with these useful instructions. “Name, name, name, name, name”. I literally had to write my name 5 times on almost consecutive lines. After filling the form out and presenting it for review, I was relieved to hear the man bust out with “OK, OK, OK, OK, OK” as he pointed to each instance of my name. I really don’t know why I had to write my name a million times, but after 30 minutes of waiting I was presented with a temporary certificate that I would need to use until my card was ready 3 weeks later. If Eric hadn’t been there I would probably still be standing there like an idiot trying to speak in broken Japanese. It was day 1, and I had just realized how nice it would be to actually speak the language in this country.

After spending 15 minutes trying to decipher a bus schedule, we managed to catch a ride back to the apartment. We had just talked with Mike and agreed to meet him and a couple of friends out in Ikebukuro to celebrate a birthday. As Eric is getting ready, I turn on the TV and get greeted with a news report about the Typhoon that was on a crash course with Tokyo. What’s better is that it is scheduled to hit at 9pm, right when we were going to be in Ikebukuro celebrating. Obviously being the superheroes that we are, we weren’t going to let a little Typhoon keep us from a night out on the town, so we made our way over to the station and caught the train downtown.

After meeting us outside the train station, Mike led us over to a small London style pub called HUB for a couple of drinks during happy hour. After chilling for a little bit and meeting the birthday girl Reiko and Mike’s friend Simon, we made out way over to an izakaya for dinner and some more drinks. Izakayas are extremely common in Japan, and offer you the chance to enjoy dinner with a bunch of friends in a traditional atmosphere. You walk in, take off your shoes, and are seated in a private booth with the rest of your friends. You basically just order a bunch of dinner plates and share with everyone involved. I don’t remember everything we ordered, but everything was delicious.

After completely filling our stomachs with food, we decided to keep our livers in tip top shape by going to a shot bar. A shot bar, as you may be able to guess, is a bar that specializes in shots. The menus do have a couple mixed drinks available, but the vast majority are just listing for different shots and that. We were only there for about an hour, but I think we managed to kanpai about 6 shots each. I think 4 or 5 were tequila based, but one was a special order by Mike. I can’t remember the name for the life of me, but it was this dark green concoction that was 120 proof. Needless to say it burned a little going down the hatch. Another interesting thing that you can see a picture below is the bar food. In America most bars offer popcorn or peanuts or something similar. This bar had neither, but instead served ginger sticks and soy beans. Both were surprisingly good, and more than did the trick.

After stumbling out of Radio Hall, we decided to go back to HUB and drink up before having to catch the last train @ 12:30. One pretty sweet deal is the Liter Tower Beer. As you can see in the pic below, you basically get a liter sized mad scientist pitcher full of some tasty suds. You get about 4 glasses out of each one, so the 1350 yen price is actually a pretty decent deal. The strange bar food continued with the smallest wings I’ve ever seen, and the addition of fried ravioli to my repertoire. The TVs had typhoon news coverage on, and it showed some outlying areas getting smashed pretty hard. Last train was quickly approaching, so we left to go walk Reiko back to her apartment. On the way there we made our way through a pretty sweet park and navigated through some random ass alleys and whatnot. I’m a huge fan of the movie Blade Runner, so walking through a big city late at night, with the rain falling and neon everywhere is quite exciting for me. At any rate, we finally got to the birthday girl’s apartment, said our goodbyes, and made our way back to the train station. The typhoon peaked around this time, so running around without an umbrella quickly turned Eric and I into a couple of soaked drunkards. I also learned that a piece of cardboard really doesn’t do the trick for very long. A 30 minute train ride later, and we were back home. After surviving sushi, alien registration, a taxi, a bus, the train system, a pub, an izakaya, a shot bar, and a typhoon, day 1 came to an end. Welcome to Japan.