Osaka Meet Market

So I’m back from Osaka, and what a strange experience it was. The city itself was just a blur. We explored about 1% of the area we were in – just a square block or two of a gigantic city. The feel of the city was much different than Kobe, where I usually go for big city fun. There seemed to be more smokers, and people were dressed up big time for a night out on the town.

Antoine and I navigated three different train lines and a subway system to get near the party we were attending, and then Antoine messaged his friend using his cell phone. She came and led us to the bar where the party was. The bar was called “Bar, Isn’t It?” I always seem to find myself in bars that use poor English for names.

Antoine had arranged something so that we paid 2000 yen at the door, and we drank for free until 8:45 p.m. I made my money back and then some very quickly. I took advantage of the situation to drink some real Mexican tequila (Patron) and some real American “beer” (Budweiser).

As for the party itself – I don’t know how else to say it… it was a foreigner meat market. Within five minutes of sitting down, we had five Japanese women at our table talking to us. Half an hour later, there were about twelve of them gathered around. Antoine left our table to talk to another group of about six women, and so I was left on my own to entertain all these women. Everyone wanted their picture taken, and when I took pictures, they wanted to exchange keitai (cellphone) e-mail addresses with me to get a copy of the picture. I gave out my regular e-mail, but didn’t realize until later that it was a sneaky way to track me down.

I looked around and there were other tables with foreigners talking to Japanese girls. There were also tables with Japanese men looking forlornly at our groups. They were pretty lonely guys. Apparently they were hanging around looking for castoffs from the foreigners. One came by the table to talk with us, and each and every girl just turned around and ignored the poor guy. Notice the lonely guys in the background in the picture below.

I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. Apparently it is a regular party, but the host imports the foreigners (like Antoine and I) and it is a chance for all these women looking for foreigner boyfriends. Most of the women spoke some English, and when they found I spoke a little Japanese, look out!

Finally, at around 10 o’clock, I told Antoine that I was hitting the road – I had a long way to go to get back to Futami, and I was exhausted from almost literally fending off all these women. Antoine said he was going to stick around and socialize some more. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I could navigate my way back to the subway and the train station, but one of the women volunteered to escort me back. I bought her subway ticket, and she got me to Akashi without a problem. I took the Sanyo line from Akashi, and got back to Futami around 11:30, with thirty minutes to spare before the train line shut down. I already had a couple of e-mails from people at the party. They work fast around here.

I doubt Antoine made it back in time – I’ll have to find out what happened with him and where he ended up. As for me – it was a little much. I’m hoping to take the time to explore Osaka later on under less rigorous conditions.