Osaka All-night Outing:
(October 25, 1995)
Anyways, sorry again Hans for missing you guys on Saturday (especially after
your story of those adventures!), but I was truly exhausted from the day before.
I might as well go into a little detail:
- the plan was to party a bit in Osaka on Friday. These are with some
Japanese I've met through the local Gaijin basketball group (actually it's
about 10 foreigners who've lived in Japan for years and 6 Japanese who like
playing).
- we met at the Namba kintetsu station at 9:00pm (that should have suggested
to me that I wasn't coming home that night) in Osaka, and with amazing luck
I got there on time without heading to Nagoya :)
- since Richard (another foreigner who's just got here and is working one
department down from me) and I hadn't eaten yet, we headed to the nearby
Hard Rock Cafe
- BTW, the Hard Rock Cafe has great food (the largest portions I've seen for
quite a while, but the coke is still small), however it's a little expensive
(about 1500yen for the average meal). They had a large video screen where
they kept on playing Prince and Michael Jackson and such...
- After the meal (I had a great clubhouse sandwich... the first North
American food for a while and it sure tasted good) we headed to the 'pick-up
bridge' {or at least that's what a translation I've heard of it}. BTW, this
happens to be the same bridge that a homeless person got thrown over and
killed, so there was lots of insence burning as we waited for the rest of
the group to arrive.
- We got everyone in total at about 11:00 (so 5 Nihonjin Onna, 1 Nihonjin
Otoko, and 4 Gaijin Otoko), and headed to find a bar or dance place.
- After walking for about 30 minutes (and boy was I lost) we first to this
British Pub clone (is it just me, or is half the foreign run bars British pubs?)
- then an hour later (BTW all trains have stopped running at this point), we
headed to a place another 15 minutes away called 'Someplace else', a dance
and drink place. There was one Japanese guy who kept on dominating the
floor with a prancing style of dancing (this would be the guy who would keep
the microphone all night at a Karoke place if you gave him the chance). The
DJ then said "and now here's a song for the guy on the dance floor" and
played 'I'm too sexy for my car'. :)
- another hour later we went to a random bar which I don't even remember the
name of, for another 30 minutes
- moving on, we headed to 'Bar, Isn't it?', an incredible smoky and popular
dance place that kinda looks like a modern gothic church interior (with lots
of candles). BTW, there was a cover charge of about 500yen (and almost
every drink costs 500yen too). We danced and hung around there for a couple
of hours (even though my eyes were really watering from the smoke... I'm
really amazed how much people smoke sometimes)
- at around 4:30am, we got to a cool small place (called Dave & something I
don't remember) with an efficient smoke removal system and a foozball table.
It closed about 5:00am though.
- then after hanging around at the small restaurant in front of 'Bar, Isn't
it?' we started to head to a train station, via a small ramen noodle shop
for breakfast (heavy on the garlic side I thought)
Go back...