This week's drinkin' stories

We've got a couple of business trip visitors here this week, so of course we had to have a party. Party stage 1 was at a restaurant in the sort of red-light area, but it was starting later than normal at 8:30. I had taken one of the guys (Chris) to a restaurant when he got here Sunday. I think I may have mentioned this place before, where the owner was so excited to see American's in his shop that he forced the waitress who could speak English to sit down and talk with us. Well, he did the same thing this time, and invited us back, said he would give us free beer and gyoza when we came. He started naming days we should come back, "Monday?, Tuesday?". I told him as politely as I could in Japanese that maybe we would come. We finally settled on maybe Friday. He looked at Chris and asked if he would come, too, and Chris said "Absolutely".

Now, I don't want this guy thinking that Americans are liars, especially because of something a Canadian said, so we started off the night at stage zero, this restaurant, for 1 beer before we go to the party. No sooner does the waitress (who is surprised to see us) put the beers down then the owner tells her to bring more. So we got our free beer, but were already 2 ahead of the pace when we went to the party.

Pretty standard Japanese party, lots of food and beer. I learned both that the word for cuttlefish is "ika" and that it's delicious. Probably drank a little too much, but I pushed through to stage 2, the hostess bar. I heard one guy on the phone negotiating letting Americans in, and we were off.

It was your normal hostess bar, girls being especially friendly to me. Whether this is because I'm American, or because I'm single, or because the Japanese guys said something to them, I don't know. I must be learning something, because I was able to make a little small talk with girls in Japanese, and to tell them Chris is a movie star.

I don't know if it's a good sign or not, but I've learned enough Japanese to get myself into trouble now. I tried to tell the girl next to me that she's tall, which I though was funny since the word for tall is the same as the word for expensive. Clever Japanese play on words with the girl I'm paying to be my friend. However, my pronunciation was a little off, and I guess I said it it a way that made her sound like an evil giant. She seemed a little hurt, did the playful hitting thing, and told me "Not takai, ookii". This just confused me more, since ookii means big, and even I know you don't tell a girl she's big. Got into a big discussion, mostly of me apologizing and trying to figure out what the right thing to say was.

We stayed there for the usual amount of time, but since the party started late, it was almost 4 before I got home and passed out. I felt surprisingly OK this morning, but when I saw Chris this evening, he apparently didn't fare quite as well. Anyway, sorry no pictures this time. We're going to Tokyo tomorrow, so maybe I'll have some then.

Baby's first haircut

I was in dire need. I haven't gotten a haircut since a few weeks before I left, and I needed one bad. I was little nervous, since I don't know how any barbershop talk like "A little off the top" or maybe "did you see that game last night?". Here's the before picture:
I had a few errands to run, so I figured I'd walk around doing those and stop in if I found someplace that looked inviting. I picked a place near the station, with both the largest number and biggest size barber poles I saw. Turned out to be a good choice, they were pretty easy to communicate with and seemed like they could handle not black, not straight hair.

They pointed me to chair 7 (out of 20 or so) and as soon as I sat down, a girl came over and asked "Shave suru?", which I just learned Friday is the plain form of "shimas", so I totally understood. I looked around, saw that everyone else was getting shaved, and figured what the hell. She started to lather me up, and then gestured to the edges of my eyebrows and the area a unibrow would be if I had one and said "koko?". I thought I said "no", but I must have said "No, don't skip those areas" because she proceeded to lather them up and shave them too. She did a nice job, lots of hot towels later, a guy came up to cut my hair. I had studied before I went and now know "Mijikai" means short. So I pointed and said "mijikai", and he replied "Sho-to?" (short) and I got my haircut. Here's the after, but I wore a hat all day today, so it may not do it justice.
I also finalized my winter vacation plans. I get a week off for new years, and I decided to go to Kyoto. I finally got a hotel booked, so the next step was train tickets. I was a little nervous about getting the right kind of tickets for the right day, but I think it worked out. I'm going to bring my tickets to class tomorrow and have my teacher reassure me.

Last week, I asked the guy who would know what the thing to do in Utsunomiya on a Saturday night is. He said he was entertaining visitors, but I should go up to the Lion's Head Pub and meet anyone who speaks English. So that's what I did. I figure it would be dead until 10 or so, so I started off at home with dinner, beer, and tequila. Here's a picture I though was funny after an hour or so of that. It's tequila and takos, get it?

I went up to the bar, and it was all guys, but I met some people that I have a feeling I'll be seeing around, so it was an OK night. It started raining while I was walking there, but I managed to give the taxi driver directions.

Today, I rode my bike around for a few hours, looking around town. It's just a lot easier than driving and finding parking here. I stopped at the "Hard Off" second hand shop, just to look around. The DVD section had a couple of shelves of American movies in Japanese. I bought Star Wars. Hopefully, I'll learn some Japanese from it. I'm sure it will come in handy being able to say "That's no moon". The thing that kills me isn't so much the language, it's the voices. C-3PO and Darth Vadar just don't sound right. And they keep saying "Lu-ku" when they mean Luke.