After work on Sunday

It so happens that towards the end of the day, they had someone come in so that they didn’t have to cancel so many classes (and thus loose money). It was a guy named Greg, that I had met a few days earlier during my training days. I went out with an English guy named Brenden, and played pool. His English friend, Greg, met us. The same Greg came to help close the office today by instructing two classes. After the day was done, he asked if I wanted to have a drink, so we went out looking for a nice place that we might drink. Because I went out last night to what is called an ‘izakaya’ (it sounds like an Amish person’s name), I didn’t really want to do that again.

An izakaya is a Japanese bar. But it is not a bar in the sense that is familiar to me. There is not a long bench-table with stools all around surrounding a person who serves drinks. Instead, we walked in and were seated at booth tables. It resembled a restaurant more than a bar. However, the place seems to mostly serve drinks, and the food that is served is usually appetizer sized plates (not actual dinner plates) which are served by a waitress. So we order a lot of different things to eat, and have a few beers. The thing is, that it helps to have a decent command of Japanese to order what you want. Furthermore, it seems like it’s a bit more expensive than a bar that I am used to.

So Greg and I looked for a western styled bar so that we could get cheap drinks. We couldn’t manage to figure out the area around Mizuhodai too well, so I suggested that we go into the convenience store, buy a can of beer, and find someplace outside to sit (such is allowed in Japan). There happened to be a bench on one side of the square outside Mizuhodai station that was adjacent to my office. So we sat there and talked and drank… until about 11pm (we probably started at 6pm and we walked back in the store to get more beer several times). We talked about a lot of different things, and mutual interests, so it was really fun and enjoyable.

I have to say that meeting new people here in Japan is probably the best part of this experience. I like meeting people anyway, but it seems to be pretty easy here. For one thing, a lot of the gaijin (‘foreigner’ in Japanese) are in the same situation, and so it is easy to chat it up. I wish I could make friends with Japanese people, but that is a lot harder given their general lack of English combined with my lack of Japanese. The people that I have met, though, have been great.