My Weekend
This Friday I was invited out by one of my co-workers at the town hall to a “party.” Since Japanese people don’t usually do house parties like we think of them in the west, I had a suspicion that it was a group date, and that I was just being invited to round out the numbers. And this turned out to be correct. But I went along anyway and had a good time.
Group dates are pretty popular in Japan as a way to meet potential romantic interests. A guy will invite a few of his friends, and a girl will invite a few of her friends, and the idea is that everyone meets everyone’s friends and increases their potential dating pool. This date turned out to be me and three other guys from the Ajimu town hall, and four girls I had never met before.
They were nice enough girls. One of the girls was only 19, and the guys were all my age or older, but I’ve noticed age difference doesn’t appear to be a big deal in Japan. I have a feeling a couple of the girls might have been keen enough if I or another one of the guys had come on a bit stronger, but as it was no body really pushed anything to hard, and at the end of the dinner, we just called it an early night and went our separate ways. (I found out later one of the guys was actually married. I asked him if his wife knows he went on a group date, and he responded that he just told his wife he was going out drinking with Joel. I suppose I’m going to have to cover for that now if I ever met his wife.)
After the date, I and the 3 other guys went to a “snack bar.” These snack bars are pretty interesting in a kind of pathetic sort of way. A couple pretty girls work there, and the customer pays a lot of money just to sit and talk to these girls and have them laugh at your jokes and tell you how wonderful you are. As you can imagine, it is a popular place for lonely old men to hang out. But the night life in Japan is somewhat limited, so occasionally I find myself ending up in a snack bar even when hanging out with a younger crowd.
There were pretty girls there. And they did laugh at my jokes, and talk to me and make me feel pretty good about myself. But it’s a bit of an empty feeling knowing they’re paid to do it. And pretty damn expensive as well. We were in the snack bar for about an hour, I drank less than one beer, and the bill was about forty dollars. That, plus the bill for the restaurant earlier (which was largely paid for by us guys), plus the taxi ride home meant the whole night came close to $100 for me. Which is a lot of money to drop for a night out. Things can get expensive fast in Japan, especially when hanging out with other Japanese people who are used to paying such prices (not many foreigners would pay $40 to hang out in a snack bar).
Saturday
After sleeping in and lounging around my apartment, I met my friend Eoin for a late lunch in his town of Usa. At the restaurant, we ran into a group of Eoin’s high school students, six female seniors. Eoin said hello to them briefly, but then as we were eating at the restaurant we noticed they were paying a lot of attention to us, and trying to discreetly take our pictures with their cell phone cameras. Eventually a couple came over to Eoin and explained that they thought I looked cool and they wanted permission to take my photograph.
Ah…Japan. I’ve had a number of similar experiences over the time I’ve been here, all with girls that were too young for me to possibly consider dating.
I’ve been here long enough to know that the attention I received was because of the scarcity of foreign boys, and not because of me personally. I’ve also discovered that the easily won affection of high school girls doesn’t necessarily translate into success with women my own age. And yet all that being said, it did kind of make my day that they wanted my photograph. That put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.
In the evening Eoin and I went to visit Greg in his town of Kusu. We went to “D-styles” a bar in Kusu and sang karaoke all night. I didn’t drink but still had to pay the bar entrance fee (about $30 for all you can drink), but since I hogged the karaoke machine all night long, I thought maybe it was fair enough.
Since I don’t possess a voice like an angel, I was pretty shy about Karaoke the first year or so I was here, and would spend a whole night out with my friends and not sing a single song. I’ve loosened up a lot since then.
Karaoke is different in Japan than in the states. For one thing it is so central to the Japanese night life that everyone is expected to sing Karaoke whether you are good or not, and consequentially no one really cares how good you are. Also in Japan Karaoke either consists of a private Karaoke booth, or a small bar. Japanese bars are really small, usually no more than ten people at any given time. So it’s not like doing Karaoke in a club in the US, where you are giving a performance to a crowd of strangers.
And the really great thing about doing karaoke with Japanese people is that being able to correctly pronounce the English words in a song is seen as a great feat in itself. Nevermind about your voice. If you can sing “Let it Be”, and pronounce all the L sounds correctly, or just keep up with the English in a faster song, you’re a superstar.
Although I’ve been somewhat negating this advantage lately by trying to sing Japanese songs. I’ve been trying to make inroads into the Japanese music scene, and enjoy trying to sing the new songs I’ve learned. When I get to a Kanji character I don’t know, I just “la la la” over it, which I imagine is a bit painful to listen to, but I think it’s good for my studies to at least give it a go.
Also, just as in the States my taste in music leaned towards older stuff, I’ve really gotten hooked on Japanese oldies out here. I listen to a lot of old songs and CDs, and know a lot of old groups. This is always good for a laugh when we go to the bar. The Japanese people are really surprised at all the obscure old songs I know, and I am sometimes accused of lying about my true age.
Sunday
After a late night Karaoking, we spent the night at Greg’s house, and I missed church again. Upon returning to my own town, I got a visit from some of my recently graduated former junior high school students (now first year high school students). They wanted me to drive them to Nakatsu to go shopping.
As a JET, I think interaction with the students inside and outside of school is part of my job, and beneficial for building internationalization. So if I’m free, I usually try and accommodate any invitations I get from my students or their families. In this case though I felt like I was in demand not so much as an agent of internationalization but as a licensed driver.
Although I was reluctant to establish myself as the taxi service for the local high school students, I thought about it and decided it would probably be fun to go to Nakatsu this once. We all squeezed into my car, and headed off to the shopping malls of Nakatsu. We stopped in a couple stores, and then spent a lot of time in the video arcade, where I got some quality international video game playing in with my students (the first person shooter games were our favorite). Afterwards I took them to Tropicoco (my favorite Mexican restaurant in Japan), where I treated them to all sorts of exotic food they had never tasted before, such as cheesy Nachos, Tacos, and root beer. (And I did end up treating everyone, (high school students never have any money). Which added to what had already become a bit of an expensive weekend. But I’m hoping this act of generosity will result in a couple dinner invitations from their parents, which should even everything out.)