Tonight after work, Mr. Hayashi, Miss Kageyama, and a Japanese History teacher joined me for sushi on the town. Earlier they had taken me to McDonald’s for lunch, which was quite funny. It was weird to be the only American in a McDonald’s. Everyone watched me to see my reaction to the food – almost like they were making sure that they got it right. After that, I was definitely up for some sushi.
The first place we went to was already sold out of fish, so we went to another sushi place, and I let them order up the food. We ended up with a wide assortment, but my favorite was the tuna sashimi. We also had eel, scallop, mackerel, egg, and deep fried tofu. We had a couple of giant beers with dinner, and so everyone was feeling good and more food came along. They brought fried chicken, and a sausage platter – I guess they weren’t sure I was full from the sushi.
Afterwards, we went to the history teacher’s favorite bar, where they serve Guinness. It turned out it was served from the bottles, and without the little widget, so I had to make do, but it still tasted great. The servers all knew the teacher, and so we had free appetizers while we drank. We had fried shrimp, edame beans, pizza, and Chinese dim sum. The pizza was my favorite – maybe a little too cheesy, but otherwise quite good. The bar itself was as close to a dive as I’ve been to in Japan, in a rough neighborhood. We sat in the smoke-filled back room, and listened to a strange mix of American music, like Radiohead, Bryan Adams, and Whitesnake.
We finally stumbled out of there, and on the way back to the car, passed by a strip club. Standing outside the club were various women trying to reel in customers, but one was a foreigner – she looked American. She had seen me coming and I could tell she was a little embarrassed. Outside of my meetings with other JETs, I’ve only seen a couple of foreigners. She probably stands out there every night and sees a foreigner once a month. I said hello as I walked by, and she gave me a grin and said hey. It was an odd moment – it’s a big event to meet a foreigner, but to meet one in that circumstance was really weird. I guess they put the foreign girls out front as they are considered more exotic. I think they do the same thing in the US.
Miss Kageyama drove everyone home, as she was kind enough to drink juice all night, so we all got home safely, and ready for work the next day.
