My Saturday began with a bit of laundry and organizing around the house. I cooked up a big breakfast for myself and then worked on cleaning up. I made plans to meet up with Antoine in Kobe in the evening, and burned a CD full of pictures and music for him to check out.
I made my trip out to Sannomiya, and met Antoine at the movie theater underneath Motomachi. We walked around the block a couple of times before we found a promising restaurant. It was a yakiniku chain that promised all you could eat meat for 1800 yen. We walked inside, but were quickly intercepted by a waiter who talked in rapidfire Japanese. I could catch every couple of words, but it sounded like they were full, and we could walk to their other store near JR station. He gave me directions, and then we marched off.
Strangely enough, we found the place, and if you’ve ever been to Sannomiya on a Saturday night, it’s pretty hard to find anything. We just walked in, I gave my name and we sat down at a table with a big grill in front of us. We ordered beer and meat, and just relaxed as they started bringing food. The waiter came over with some English menus, and we saw that we could choose what kind of meat they brought out. Chicken, rib meat, generic beef, tongue, heart, intestine, stomach, what would you like? We crossed off most of the things from the list and then said knock yourselves out.
We went through three big plates of meat, cooking it ourselves in between us on the grill. There were two sauces available for us to dip the cooked meat in, but I didn’t realize that until we were almost finished. I’m thinking that the next time we do something like this, I’m going to smuggle my own sauces in there and do it right.
After dinner we had a sweets fixation, so we went to one of the many bakery/cafe/coffee shops and sat down for some dessert. Looking around we were surrounded by women talking, gossiping, and trying not to stare at us. Definitely not our scene. A very feminine male waiter in a beret took our order, and then we sat around trying to look comfortable. Weird.
After dessert we felt like more beer, so we went to the bar down the way that serves Hoegaarden, and sat down at the bar between a young couple and an older women that looked like she had been at the bar for the last three years.
We ordered our drinks, and Antoine ordered Sho-chu, which is the Japanese “old man’s” drink that he prefers. Everyone at the bar reacted when he ordered it, and murmuring could be heard in the wings of the restaurant. The bartender asked three times to make sure he understood correctly, and Antoine, who must get this reaction all the time, just confirmed the order and even specified the brand.
I sat drinking and talking with Antoine, with the older woman sitting immediately to my left and the young couple around the corner of the bar to Antoine’s right. As I looked around the bar the female member of the young couple was giving me the look. The “I want to practice English with you” look. Her male friend was too absorbed in his cigarette and beer to notice.
A few minutes later the guy got up and went to the bathroom, and I asked the girl about the beer she was drinking, so she passed it over to me to try. That opened things up and we started talking in English and Japanese. Antoine joined in the conversation, and pretty soon her man came back to find two foreigners talking up his girl. He was cool about it, and we backed off when he came back. She kept giving me the eye the rest of the night, so I don’t know what her issues were.
We settled our bill and got ready to go, and the drunken old woman to my left said in English – “so… SAD!”. We tried to ignore her at first, but she said it again, and so I grudgingly talked to her in Japanese to see what she wanted. She cackled with a cigarette ruined laugh and ordered us two more drinks. We were stuck. We sat back down, and then she tried to hit on Antoine, giving him meaningful looks, mentioning that she is taking the same train back home as Antoine – basically trying to bag a foreign boy.
I tried to run interference by speaking Japanese in between her slurred English attempts, but she had her sights set on poor Antoine. This called for drastic measures – we both chugged our entire drinks in two gulps and made our goodbyes. Antoine was lucky to get out of there in one piece.
Anyway, it was a fun night in Kobe, and it was good to spend some time chatting with Antoine. His background is similar to mine, and he’s got a good sense of humor. We’re hoping to do some traveling together in the future – he wants to go to some of the same places I do.
