It's All T & P With These People

Last night went a little something like this. I spent the day in Hiroshima with my host family, met some cool people who are currently doing BEE Japan, which involves biking the length of Japan over several months. I've decided to do it once I finish JET, but Lord knows when that might be... maybe not for three years. Mon, if you're reading this, you wanna do it with me? Anyway, I met this old Japanese hippie who told me that there actually is a real bike shop in Kure, called Top Bike. My host mom is taking me after work on Friday (payday!) They might have to special order whatever I want, but I am super stoked. Annyyyway, when I got back from Hiroshima, Hessen and I headed to this small concert at Kure port that a 2nd year JET, Julie, invited us to. It was awesome. Two violinists (one was Julie's bf) a pianist, celloist, bassist, and a drummer, who's a 3rd-year named Brian. The show was set on the backdrop of the Seto Inland Sea at sunset, and the air was a breezy 70 degrees. After the show, a bunch of us headed out to an izakaya for dinner and drinks. It was PG all the way through the 5th mini keg, but then suddenly cell phones were being handed to me left and right, with eager red Japanese faces watching me expectantly. Well, it was all penis. Humongous, digitally enhanced penis. This is apparently a popular Japanese male past-time. Every guy at the table had at least 5 hard core male/gay porn photos on his ketai. It was horrifying. And the more horrified I was, the more hilarious it became to them. Anyway, after the porn was put away, the suggestive picture taking started. Mind you, this is in the middle of a restaurant/bar. The picture above is Julie's bf holding one of the mini-kegs, and Brian is catching the beer? I'll spare you the pictures of the women (all in their 30's) making grapefruit bras with the remnants of a chuhai (alcoholic) grapefruit drink. So yeah, finally people started to disperse, and Brian took Julie, her bf, and me home. But before we left, Julie managed to lean against a curtain (drunkenly mistaking it for a wall), and fell into the booth next to us. Photo below.


Classic.

Beer

The beer in Japan is pretty out of control. You can buy it on the street. You can buy it in giant 1000 mL cans. You can even buy it at all hours of the day, night, whatever. The varieties are endless, though they all taste pretty much the same to me. There is even an entire breed of beer that isn't actually beer. Beer is heavily taxed in Japan, so the breweries came up with this brilliant plan to evade the tax by making a beer-flavored alcoholic beverage with some other raw ingredient. I couldnt tell you the difference between the beer and the non-beer, but the non beer tends to run about 100 yen less per can. When you go out to clubs in Japan, they have a free re-entry policy, so rather than buying 700 yen drinks all night, you can leave, walk down the street to a conbini, and down a few tall boys for a few hundred yen. The beer pictured above was bought at a 7-eleven outside our hotel in Osaka. Oh yeah, I spent last weekend in Osaka, the craziest city ever, and then 2 days in Soni-mura, the smallest village ever (population: 2200). Anyway, back to the beer. So I purchased this beer for 584 yen, and by the time we left the hotel to start the evening, I was kind of...ahead of the game. I actually let Rob control the subway map and subsequent decisions, which we realized was a mistake six transfers later.

J-pop Stars Have Moms, Too

Tuesday night I went to my first J-pop concert. In retrospect, it was not something I wanted to experience sober. A JET friend, Kate, came in from Takehara to spend the evening with me, so we met up with another JET friend and neighbor, Hessen, who had been invited to the concert by the PE teacher at her high school. The admission was 1500 yen, which included one free drink. I ordered a gin and tonic (gintoniku in Japanese). I was handed a very tiny tonic. Seriously, I could almost close my fist around the plastic cup. I saw the bartended pour the gin in, but I swear there must have been a hole in the bottom of the cup or something. It was tonic. Anyway, I didn't really feel like spending 600 yen for another miniature drink, so I rode it out sober. It was hard.

I can't really describe J-pop, or at least this particular J-pop group, in words Americans would understand. It's some combination of keyboard and dance beats, yakuza (Japanese mafia) -style suits, whiny singing, and homo-eroticism. The lead singer, above in the white suit, wore a giant pink feather boa for most of the show, which he accompanied with overly animated facial expressions and lots of pointing (see above.) The highlight of the evening was when the keyboardist's mother, who was dressed in a a frilly white jacket, denim mini-skirt, and cowboy boots, introduced him to me. She walked over to me at the bar, bowed and thanked me for coming, and told me to wait while she found her son in the crowd. She then dragged him over and introduced us. I still don't know why. His name was Kenta.

After the show, we all headed to a yatai, because Kate had never been to one. At night in Kure, yatai line up along the major river. They are small street food carts, equipped with stools, grills and sometimes oden. Oden is a type of Japanese cooking/food where a bunch of foods on sticks are boiled together in a big pot. Some yatai also serve ramen, gyoza dumplings, Italian pasta, yakitori (chicken skewers), pigs feet, etc. On Tuesday, I had chikuwa (fish paste), atsu age (deep fried tofu), and daikon (Japanese radish). They all came out of the oden. Oden also usually contains potatoes, eggs, konyaku (a potato gelatin), sausages (in Japanese - wiinaas), and multiple other varieties of fish paste. Anyway, delicious, cheap, and pretty neat. So we ate, then went home and crashed. I had to work at 8 am the next morning.

This weekend I am heading to Hiroshima City to shop, wander, and stay with a friend.