Okay. We're back! But we have lots of blogging to catch up on...4 months to be exact...so we're going to be brief and get to the good stuff.
Back in September we headed to the beach town of Onjuku. It was great to get outside of Tokyo but Mother Nature was in a pissy mood so it was chilly and rainy all weekend.
So with the beach out of equation we had to come up with alternative modes of entertainment. Answering the call to action were bowling and a strange karaoke excursion.
Bowling is fun in any language so you can imagine how much fun that was. We were almost happy about the rain.
Next up was a trip to the local "pub." We had passed this place on the way into town and since it had a simple sign that said Pub [something in Japanese that we'll get to later] everyone was interested in checking it out. But when we walked in we realized that Japanese pubs are a far cry from Guinness on tap, peanuts on the bar and Sheppard's pie on the menu.
Remember the scene from Animal House when the frat boys walk into the blues bar? Well, that's what it was like when 3 gaijin (foreign) couples (us!) walked into this place. You see; pub here means a hostess bar. Now don't go jumping too far to conclusions. Hostess bar is essentially a place where men go to drink beer (lots of it) and sing karaoke (mostly way off tune). The hostesses make sure their beer glasses are never empty and help make sure they don't break glass when they sing. Anyway, we still sat down for a few beers, dried squid, fish flavored crackers (yum) and you know it...renditions of some our favorit US classics such as Livin' on Prayer and Fight For Your Right to Party. We rolled in like a typhoon and left the locals wondering what the heck just happened...but certainly not wanting anymore.
Back in September we headed to the beach town of Onjuku. It was great to get outside of Tokyo but Mother Nature was in a pissy mood so it was chilly and rainy all weekend.
So with the beach out of equation we had to come up with alternative modes of entertainment. Answering the call to action were bowling and a strange karaoke excursion.Bowling is fun in any language so you can imagine how much fun that was. We were almost happy about the rain.
Next up was a trip to the local "pub." We had passed this place on the way into town and since it had a simple sign that said Pub [something in Japanese that we'll get to later] everyone was interested in checking it out. But when we walked in we realized that Japanese pubs are a far cry from Guinness on tap, peanuts on the bar and Sheppard's pie on the menu.
Remember the scene from Animal House when the frat boys walk into the blues bar? Well, that's what it was like when 3 gaijin (foreign) couples (us!) walked into this place. You see; pub here means a hostess bar. Now don't go jumping too far to conclusions. Hostess bar is essentially a place where men go to drink beer (lots of it) and sing karaoke (mostly way off tune). The hostesses make sure their beer glasses are never empty and help make sure they don't break glass when they sing. Anyway, we still sat down for a few beers, dried squid, fish flavored crackers (yum) and you know it...renditions of some our favorit US classics such as Livin' on Prayer and Fight For Your Right to Party. We rolled in like a typhoon and left the locals wondering what the heck just happened...but certainly not wanting anymore.
Oh yeah, the second word in the name of the pub was "dream." If we had taken an extra second to ponder the name maybe we wouldn't have been so surprised when we went in.
