The Weekend

Well the week end's almost over and on the 31st Fred No 1 is leaving the land of the rising sun for good, not sure if he is happy or sad about that. I'm sure he wants to get home but it's always a bit strange when you leave a project after working on it for so long in fact sometimes it's pretty difficult especially if you have made friends either at work or in the local community. Phoned him up last night to see if he wanted to go out for a beer or three with us, we haven't been going out together all that much since he's been here but it was getting close to him going home so though i would see if he wanted to come out to play.

Everyone was in an Italian restaurant told Fred where it was and that i would meet them later as i didn't want anything to eat after all I'm only here for the beer. Actually I'd never been to this place before it was only just down the road really from me, in what i refer to as the red light area.

The red light area I'm talking about is only about 3 minutes walk from my place and it's an area literally fulls of small bars and restaurants. Most of the bars cater to Japanese guys and are places where you pay for an hour at a time and can drink Whisky or Soju for free, it's not really free it in the price for the hour. In these kind of places there are girls inside who's job it is to come and sit with you try to get you to buy them a drink and stay longer, or extend as they call it here. Each hour costs another 3,ooo yen about $30 and these are the cheaper places, anything you buy other than Whisky or Soju also cost extra. Don't ask me how i know just take it from me that i do, I've been here quite a while after all. I know it all sound strange but the Japanese love it and to them it's normal and is just like going down the pub, oh almost forgot all these place have Karaoke and that's real popular.

Oh the guy in the red shit with the long hair is my mate Lee, it was his birthday the other day we had a few drink on that as well, have work with Lee on about 4 projects now he's a good guy.

Anyway we are all out eating and drinking, in my case just drinking and guess where we ended up for an hour, got to say it was pretty enjoyable i even sang karaoke which I'm told was quite memorable in a forgettable sort of way. Then came the dreaded word "Sasae" which is guaranteed to put a damper on the night, basically It means stay and pay another 3,000 Yen. It's always hard to resist this a it's said so sweetly but i did resist and decided to go home, i know it all sounds a bit naff, i mean why pay $30 just to talk to a girl and sing badly for an hour sounds crap right. If you are with friends though and go ever now and then it can be real good fun believe it or not.

So that was Saturday night over with apart from negotiating the way home, luckily for me it was only a 5 minute walk to my apartment, right on the doorstep so to speak not sure if that's a good or a bad thing though. one thing i did notice on the walk home though was the Kebab van, reminded me of a night out in the UK and the obligatory Kebab on the way back home after some beer. I't all seemed a little surreal to see one in Japan though, just goes to show everyone likes a kebab after some beer or in this case Sake, will have to try one another night.

To night Sunday just been out for a meal, found a new restaurant a few days ago that i liked so went there with Fred for something to eat. Place a bit of a hole in the wall really but i find these smaller places are the sort i like better not plush or swanky pretty down to earth and usually the food is great they also have lots more character than the bigger plusher places.

We had sort of a bowel of noodles in an earthenware pot that is literally red hot, i mean it's not red but if you touched it I'm sure your hand would stick to it and you would get first degree burns. The HSE in the UK would have a fit if this happened in a restaurant "Blighty" not to say anything of the restaurants liability, well lets just say it wouldn't happen. They bring out the hot pot full of noodles and vegetables, no meat in sight, then they bring out a big dish of sort of a soup either spicy or non spicy what ever you want and pour it over the noodles, the heat from to pot cooks everything, and let me tell you it was great. When the soup is first put in they give sort of paper sheets to protect yourself from all the spitting an splashing from the pot, like i say it's just all boiling away right in front of you.