Saturday slept in a little bit and then did odd jobs around the house. The weather was nice outside – things are warming up gradually, and today we had some sun to dry out our laundry.
Pretty early in the day Kuniko had to leave for a drinking party with her college friends in Osaka, and soon after that I left for a drinking party of my own with Struan and Antoine.
The original idea was just to meet up with Struan, but Antoine got a rare Saturday night free because of a fight with his girlfriend. We met up at the Belgian beer place, and the bartender defended Antoine and Struan’s empty seats until they arrived.
From there we went to Asian Days for all you can eat dim sum, and I will admit that I ate way too much. I don’t know why – we just kept talking and eating. We got a lot of attention from the other patrons, mostly female. I was egging Antoine about the possiblity that he is a single guy now. He was joking around about it, but I could tell he was pretty bummed out.
From there we walked over to Higashimon street, and found an underground bar that we’ve visited a long time ago. It was a pretty upscale place with a really good atmosphere. There we talked and talked, and finally we decided to go to one more place.
As we walked north into Kitano we found ourselves outside a themed bar – The Lockup. It’s a relatively new place, and the idea is that they put you in a room with bars and serve you weird drinks and food, and then every so often all the lights go out and crazy guys in scary costumes run around and try to scare you. We sat and drank glow-in-the-dark sweet barely alcoholic drinks and ate peanuts while all the fun was happening around us. Antoine was on his sixth or seventh sho-chu by that time, so he was starting to feel the effects. We tried to arrange for a photo with the “warden” of the place, a girl dressed in a plastic policewoman suit complete with miniskirt, but apparently she had just left when we asked. We had a couple more drinks, and then headed back to the station.
I think Antoine and Struan were going to stick around, and I think Antoine had missed his last train, so I took off and met Kuniko at home – she went all the way to Osaka and still beat me home. After midnight it was officially Kuniko’s birthday, so we opened presents, and she seemed to like her present, a BabyG watch that I picked out for her.
We went to bed late, so we slept in today early. Kuniko is going to be leaving soon for a party for one of her exchange students. As it happens, her student (Hayley, from Canada) has a birthday on the same day as Kuniko. The school arranged to have a birthday party for her at Kitano club, a really nice place in Kobe. There’s another birthday surprise coming up, though. Stay tuned!
