As I’ve said before, I think one of the most important steps into adulthood is to admit you are a hypocrite.
I’ve never really liked going out to packed bars with people, and I can’t recall any time I enjoyed enough to justify the cost and the sleeping in and the hangover of the next day. I think it’s something people do in response to the week of work or studying, or if they’re a bum, just because they have nothing else to do. They’ve been starved for social contact, so they go and shout at people in a hot room with music so loud that no one can understand them anyway.
But it was my friend’s birthday and St. Patrick’s Day, and with those hefty reasons stacked against you, it’s hard to worm your way out of a social call. First off the train we met with some other foreigners that I didn’t know. There was a girl, teaching at a high school much like my position, and she had come with an exchange student from her school—a high school student. So he’s like 18. I started talking to him and it turns out he’s from Minnesota, gosh darn wouldn’t yabecha. And he was a pretty witty guy, if a bit insecure about his age—but can you blame him? Still, if I were in high school here, I’d just hang out with the other high school kids. He applied through some program that lets him spend a year in the school here, apparently free of the responsibility to do any of the homework, and in spite of the fact that he had not studied a word of the language before he got off the plane. Is this really where my tax dollars are going? Well, not this year, if my income tax fancywork pays off.
The first bar was named “McMickey’s” or “McMarlow” or whatever and it was full of English-speaking foreigners who all had something desperate to say to each other. I crammed myself next to the bar and my friends started taking pictures, celebrating the great five minutes they’ve spent together sweating with other strangers. The crowd was your usual bar crowd: guys with wooden smiles talking to girls while they nod like a Labrador and pretend to wave or give even cheesier signals to their “friends” across the room. Then there’s the guys whose idea of a joke is saying a story louder and with more hand gestures. The women, well, the common bar-going women I know mostly shed their personality at the door, and just like to smile and stare into a guys eyes, nodding and saying “yeah” or “no” or a “no way!” or “that is so cool!” with more and more emotion as the conversation continues, then move on to someone new. Repeat.
I just kept saying we should get ramen. That’s the only thing I like to do past midnight. And it’s also the only place I can speak to people, other than in the street between bars, but in the street, you’re just trying to figure out how to get to the next bar. We never made it to a ramen place; I’ll just spoil whatever weak suspense I had laid out.
My favorite part of the evening was when my friend Mr. Mi started puking. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t out of sadism, it just forced me and a few people to hang out in the street and chat while he recovered. And also we got some drinks at a nearby convenience store (you never have to go farther than ten steps to find a convenience store in Japan). The only conversation of substance that I had occurred at this time, with Mr. G, who was telling me how he decided to call it quits with the JET program after two years to go back to his woman in the states. I’ve had two friends that have decided to do this, the other is quitting after one year. Both say that if it weren’t for their women, they’d stay.
The problem with falling in love is that it usually doesn’t fit into your schedule very well. I guess there's other problems with it too.