The Bob

This week was all quiet for the most part, but I did have an interesting Saturday night. I had agreed to meet my friend Callie in the city to go for a drink with her and some of her friends. After getting there, I was a little surprised to find about 20 people in her crew! Half of them I didn’t get round to meeting but there were some really safe people there, including one of the hip hop dancers from the last time we went out.

We started off going to Mybar, a gaijin bar. After drinking and chatting for a while someone decided to buy a round for everyone in our group! Someone also ordered a big plate of chips and some fried chicken for people to share which was greatly appreciated by me.

We met some American guy who joined our group and then we left to go to a club, Looop. One of the girls with us had a brother who was gonna be rapping on stage so we headed to the club. On the way lots of our group split up to go home (in Japan if you leave before 1230 you can get a train home and get a reasonable nights sleep, but if not you have to wait til the trains start again around 6).

On the way we met some skateboarders and chatted to them for a bit. We then saw some hip hop dancers and tried to persuade them to come with us but to no avail. Just before we got to the club, we stopped off at a combini (convenience store) to get some food. I bought this battered chicken and cheese thing and some oden. Oden is a type of Japanese stew containing chicken, fish cakes and various strange things you can only buy in Japan. Most combinis have a big oden which people can help themselves to (for a fee obviously). Whilst I have had Oden at home many times this was my first taste of Combini Oden. It might have been that I`d drunk too much but it tasted really awesome.

After we`d eaten we met this girls brother outside the club. He was called `Texas` and looked like a Japanese Snoop Dogg. He spoke little English, but had an affinity to me as we had the same coat.

Texas gave each of us a flier to get a discounted entry. The club was on the 3rd floor of this building and surprisingly was not a hip hop club, although they did initially play a lot of hip hop. Once we got in we drunk loads more and I ended up meeting this Japanese bloke called Bob (apparently his real name was too hard to pronounce). The ironic thing about this Japanese guy who had taken an English name was that he didn’t speak a single word of English all night. This gave me a great opportunity to speak Japanese although most of what he was saying I couldn’t understand. Nonetheless I pretended I knew everything he was saying and whenever he asked me a question I replied either `Yes` or `Hmmmm a little`, and this seemed to work.

I also met this radio DJ who was really cool and who spoke very good English. Apparently he was actually quite a famous DJ. I`m not sure how famous, but he did have girls hanging off his arm every time I went to chat to him.

The music in this club was nothing if not varied. They started off playing hip hop, changing to rock, then to German folk music and then to a Japanese cover of the YMCA. Eventually Texas and his friends took to the stage and did a really quite decent set. There were about 4 other MCs and one singer with him, although Texas seemed to be the frontman.

After Texas had finished the music suddenly changed to extreme death metal which meant a lot of people left and we did too. We decided to go to Mago, a techno club which is apparently the best in Nagoya. Since no one really knew where it was we got a taxi, and the driver dropped us relatively near (I guess he didn’t really know where it was either).

We stopped at a combini en route, and I stocked up on junk food, buying a folded naan bread with a sausage in the middle. After this we went into Mago, drunk some more and met a few more random safe people. After a few hours it was half 6 and so we decided to go.

On the way we stopped off at Denny`s (a popular American restaurant chain) to get some breakfast. I had bacon, sausage, eggs, salad, 3 pancakes and a Japanese style croquette which really hit the spot. After a while Texas came to join us as well- presumably he`d stayed at the other club all night.

Once we`d all eaten Bob decided to pay (he was still with us. At one point he had bought me a drink, then I returned the favor and it escalated until he was with us for the whole night). I gave him some money and he refused it but I eventually managed to put some yen into his hand. I found out later that it is Japanese tradition that at meals etc, the person who is oldest pays for everyone else, and he had generously paid for most of the people with us (which by this time had reduced to about 8, though this is still quite a lot if one persons paying for it!).

We left and all went our separate ways and I ended up getting home around 9. Once home I went to sleep and managed to get a few hours before waking up and taking a long walk around our neighborhood with Ayae.

Monday and Tuesday I had work so didn’t really get up to much, but Wednesday me and Ayae went into Sakae. We shopped for rather a long time as it was the end of the January sales. I got a nice new designer shirt plus a load of books including a lonely planet guide to Thailand. Ive recently come to the realization that I need to start figuring out what I want to do at the end of this year. I decided a while ago that I should try and tick off some of the countries in South-East Asia while I am here, and also that I should do them all at once when I finish work　probably in June or July. Anyway that’s another blog for another time.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday Ive been caning the work thus this blog has been put together rather hastily. The school reports had to be in by Saturday and because I stupidly left them to the last minute I had to spend all day doing them on Friday then go to work then come home, work til 1am finishing the reports then get up again at 7 on Saturday to go to work again. The reports were quite easy to do although it was a little weird being on the other side and actually writing them. It wasn’t too long ago I was getting reports myself which actually helped as I had some good key phrases to use, although I don’t think any of the reports about me said “This is an awesome student”.

This weekend I am going to my friend Rauls birthday party followed by Karaoke. Also on Sunday, Im meeting up with “Bob” to go to the cinema to see a Japanese film which should be a pretty hardcore test of my Japanese skills. Not just the film but of course Bob as well.

Sorry to cut it short here, but Ive been exceptionally busy and I wanted to get it out before the weekend. Expect a longer blog around Thursday. Anyways thanks for reading everybody.

Peace out

Jack

P.S Heres 2 videos. One of the Japanese version of the YMCA, and one of Texas tearing up the stage. Enjoy.