#1 Nightlife and Karaoke

When I arrived in Japan there were five Nova teachers in Kyowa. Sunshine (from Melbourne, AU), Amber (from San Diego), and Erin (from North Carolina) lived on the other side of the tracks, and Brian (from Boston) and I lived in Sun City Windy Courts. Now, Carmen (from Melbourne, AU) and Amy (Long Island) live across the tracks, and David (from Tasmania), Tom (Washington State), and I live on this side.

Another American is going to move in with Amy and Carmen on the 24th of this month.

Amy and Carmen are much cooler than Erin and Amber were, and we've all been hanging out recently. The other night, after drinking at their place for a bit, we went out for Japanese curry. We discovered a new bar called #1 Nightlife. We got a few drinks, split a pizza, and had a pretty good time. There were some Japanese girls in yukata (summer kimono) but I'm not sure what the occassion was. There was karaoke there and we were drunk enough to think that's a good idea. I dazzled the entire bar with my renditions of China Girl and Break on Through.

At some point the owner of the bar joined our table to chat with us (foreigners, especially drunk ones, are always the center of attention) and find out where we were from. He brought over these rubber masks for some reason, so of course we put them on and got our picture taken with everyone in the bar (I'll post the pictures later). When we were ready to jet after 2, the owner himself brought us the bill. It was a white piece of paper with the suspiciously round number 9,000 written on it. That's not a ton of money for 5 people in a bar, but two of us weren't drinking and the pizza was cheap. We couldn't ask him where that number came from either, so we just put everything we had on the table. When we hit about 7,000 yen he told us that was close enough and forgave the remainder. Maybe that was an awesome one-time favor from the owner, or maybe the number came right out of his ass and the fact that we were willing to pay any of it was good enough. We were all on early shifts the next day so we got ice cream from 7-11 and went to bed.