This week has certainly been the most fun I've had in Japan. After Joey's birthday dinner (Tuesday night) I began working on my presentation. I hadn't really realized how insignificant all my past research was until I had to do a presentation about it, so naturally I spoke about my bulldog George, South Africa/The Kruger Park, and the University of Florida for about 8 minutes before basically saying "uh yea...I mean I kind of did stuff." Luckily there were very few questions, which was mainly because there wasn't much to ask. Kuboi did grill me for a bit however, and I have to say for the first time since I've been here I was pretty happy someone had no clue what I was saying, though there have been times I've been a bit embarassed that people do know what I'm talking about. Who would have guessed that the Japanese words for "velour" and "miniskirt" are the same as the English ones...luckily they haven't caught on to badonkadonk yet.
After the presentation Wednesday finished off like normal. Thursday I went in to the lab and had a chat with Hiro about what the hell I'd be doing. He basically told me that Tuan-san and Tasaki-san had projects that I could help with, and he explained to me the projects. We decided that the following Tuesday I would begin working with Tuan-san, which would last about a week or so, after which I would begin working with Tasaki-san.
Friday rolled around and ended about as quickly. That afternoon I decided we were going to all go to Bar Orugan, the bar the grad students had taken me to after the welcome party. It was also the bar we were looking for the night of our pizza-gouging incident. Luckily Tim and I had spotted it while wandering around one day so we knew where to go. At about 6:00PM we headed over to the bar (Chris was going to meet us later) but decided it was a bit too early to drink, and we were a bit hungry, so we stopped by McDonalds.
Seriously, if you want to see the 3 or 4 fat people that live in Japan (and are natives) stop by McDonalds. It also seems to be a particularly popular place for teenagers to hang out/eat. I've gotten the ordering down to a science now:
Me: "Um...bigu macu...seto...ginga ayil-o...furenchi furieso, ookii"
Translation: "Um, I'll have a big mac combo meal with a ginger ale and large fries"
Jap1: "ano...bla bla bla, japanese japanese"
Translation: "Uh...that'll be Y560"
Me: "Aragatto gozaimasu!"
Translation: "Why thank you noble employee of the finest establishment in town"
We usually go eat upstairs because the smoking section is downstairs (really it's because that's where all the teenage girls are and Tim insists we go there). We finished up dinner and I realized we pretty much did the exact same thing last week: went to a bar and ate McDonalds on the way. Not being one to break with tradition, especially those involving burgers and alcohol, I declared that the following Friday we would return to said procurer of the finest beef this side of kobe and let the tradition continue.
After dinner we made our way over to Orugan to get our drunk on. All the drinks are Y300 so we decided to make it an evening of experimentation.
We started off with beers.
After our first beers we looked through the menu to see what other choices we had and Tim and I ordered. A few minutes later the bartender comes over with another two beers which certainly was NOT...
...the Tequira Sunrise I had ordered (I actually ordered kamikazes, but I figured this would be a nice segway to the picture posting). Not long after Chris managed to find the place, despite my awful directions, and the festivities continued
The night progressed as usual; everyone continued to get drunk, the Vietnamese/Inbred Redneck/Jew jokes flowed like wine, and we made Joey recoil in uncomfortable silence after a 10 minute long conversation about balls. At about 9:30 Tim decided we should go home because the bar was empty, and Chris and I decided we should go get more McDonalds and then come back to the bar. We ordered some cheeseburgers and ice cream, wolfed them down, and returned to the bar whereupon it had gotten a fait bit livelier. There were a bunch of people sitting at the table we were at before so we decided to go speak to them. Turned out they were all english literature majors who were at the "2nd party" for their teacher who was leaving for another school. Why an english speaker would become an english literature major is beyond me. Why a japanese speaker would become and english literature major is absolutely incomprehendable.
We chatted a bit longer before Chris and I decided to head home. We hopped on the train and I decided I wanted ice cream, so we stopped by the local Lawson's, a popular chain of Japanese convenience stores, and I got some rum and raisin. While standing in line at the counter we also caught a glimpse of their strategically placed breaded chicken and cheesy chicken balls, so we decided to get some of those too.
We continued walking home blissfully, cheesy chicken balls in hand, at which point I decided to try my rum and raisin ice cream. This had to have been THE RUMIEST rum and raisin I had ever eaten. Now I was pretty drunk at this point, which usually masks the taste of liquor, and this shit was STILL the rumiest rum and raisin I had ever eaten. I'm almost tempted to go back and buy it while sober but I'm a bit scared at this point. Needless to say I finished it, and we made it back to the dorm without incident at which point we both went to sleep.
Saturday was a waste of a day. Seriously, a complete waste. I would have liked to have seen some of Osaka but unfortunately I had to find out first hand just how meaningless Kuboi's "meaningless discussions" are. I had a meeting for 1PM, so being the punctual guy I am I get in at 12:15, and since he was in a meeting with someone else I just decide to go grab some lunch. I get back, 12:50, and he's still in a meeting. Ok, that's cool, I'll just wait a bit. Unfortunately I didn't bring my laptop because, reasonably, I assumed that a 1PM meeting was a 1PM meeting. Unfortunately it turned out to be a 4PM meeting. A 4PM meeting that lasted 20 minutes and really accomplished nothing (meaningless?) so I just went home and lay in bed for a bit.
At 7 or so we decided to go back to Orugan for the evening which we did. It was pretty empty again so we decided to walk around to see if there were other bars in the area. After a quick detour into a side alley so I could silently protest the size of Orugan's restroom, we found another bar that turned out to be a bit more upscale. We each got a beer, drank it, and decided to head back to Orugan where we saw that some people had taken our seats. We wound up sitting near this guy I had seen there before we left who was sitting alone.
I ask him if he wants to join us and he says sure, at which point he sits down and Tim asks him where he's from. "Ya, I'm from Johannesburg South Africa" he says in the familiar accent, to which i respond in my poor excuse for an accent "No fucking way, I'm from Joburg too!" I was pretty excited so started asking him some questions, turned out he was visiting some friends. Unfortunately my excitement soon faded after we realized that yea it was pretty cool that this guy was from South Africa, but it wasn't so cool that he was a bit of a douche. Regardless, before we left we took a quick photie
and made our way back home.
Sunday was the international student bbqthat the chemical engineering students were having for us, so at about noon we made our way over to the building to begin. They had a couple garbage bins full of beer and wine coolers, and charcoal grills with a LOT of meat/vegetables/noodles. I wasn't quite in the mood for beer yet, so I found a wine cooler instead, which was awesome, because it tastes like fruit juice and gets your drunk at the same time! The japanese style of bbq from what I understand basically involves grilling meat and using dipping sauce, so people pretty much crowd around the grills with chopsticks and eat thin strips of meat off the grill like so:
The guy that coordinated the thing was pretty awesome. We all crowded around in a circle and he started giving a speech, and then randomly he just yelled "KUNPAI!" and everyone clapped, yelled, and drank their drinks. A bit later he asked all the REU students to give a quick speech
Not long after we began, one of the students arrived with his wife, his pimp-ass son, and their dog that would run for its life every time it saw Clare.
At some point we let them know we wanted to play another game of soccer that day, so two of the guys took off their shirts and started playing drums on their stomachs while one of the others played with a soccer ball and they picked teams
As is often the case with me, not-in-the-mood-to-drink-Dane became hey-do-you-guys-know-what-chug-is-Dane.
"Do you guys know what it means to chug?" I asked the eager onlookers
"What's Chuck?" Hama-san naively replied
"Well...watch" I said as I downed a beer.
"oooooooooooh sugoy!" (sugoy means great)
They informed me that it was called iki, so I handed everyone a wine cooler because that was all that was left, told everyone to quietly gather around, and then yelled:
"IKI IKI IKI!"
...and we iki'd.
A bit tipsy at this point, Hama-san and "Sexy-boy" decided to teach me the "Sexy-Boy-Pose."
The party carried on and people suddenly started dropping like flies. It was at this point where, for the first time, I realized what a detriment I am to peoples' health.
At this point, people had literally disappeared, so the few of us that remained went over to the field to play some soccer. People slowly trickled in and eventually we had a 11v11 game. Soccer was fun as usual, and I made some new friends with my random Japanese. A couple hours later the game ended and we basically went home and all passed out.
Monday was a national holiday (National Sports Day or something) so we didn't have to come in. We decided to make our day trip to Nara. I'll let you mull this one over for a bit and I'll post that one when I can. It's basically a lot of pictures of temples and shrines.
