070126 – From empty spaces to a full pub
I don’t know where to begin or where to end, we’ve been in Tokyo for three weeks now and it feels like we’re discovering new things every day. Hanna and I are doing great in school, well … sort of. ^_^ The teachers are some of the best I’ve ever had, if teachers in Sweden behaved like they do here, all pupils in Sweden would get good marks. I’ll just tell you about last Friday and write more about the weekend later on this week.
Even though we’ve been here for such a short time we already have routines. Usually Hanna, Camilla and I start the day with a walk next to the big river in Matsudo. Hanna has a cold so this Friday morning Camilla and I went by ourselves. After that we got to school and the day seemed to be an ordinary day … well, what I was thinking wrong. After school we splitted up. Hanna went with Magnus and Joakim to Shibuya to get an iPod while Camilla and I went to Akihabara to buy two digital cameras (Camilla was looking for a webcam and I was looking for a digital camera). It ended with that neither of us bought a camera. Instead, we went home to Matsudo, ate some great food at a local restaurant called Arashi. I don’t know the name of the dishes we ate but what you get is a really hot plate (no hands, no hands!) with a lot of rice, some pork, garlic, a raw egg, some butter and … a lot of other ingredients. Then it is up to you to decide whether you want to eat it the way it is or using the spoons you get and mash it all around and then eat it. Delicious dinner for just around 500 yen/30 sek/3.5 euros/4 dollars. After that Camilla and I went to the food store and bought some ice cream and candy to cheer us up just because we didn’t found any cameras and to make Hanna’s throat better. Hanna hadn’t got home so we went to Camilla’s room and after eating the ice cream and some candy I went up to my room to skype some friends.
At the same time as I thought it felt good to be lonely in an empty space, it felt bad to be lonely. Some minutes later Camilla sent a message on MSN asking if we were to grab a beer at a local pub with Henrik and Rickard … of course we did. We went to a pub we’re passing twice every day; the name of it is “Pub House”. The look of the people’s faces when we got in is impossible to describe. This night there were two women working and they were shouting something when we got in, I can’t remember what they shouted though. The local was about 15-20 square meters big and it included a small bar, at the bar there were six chairs, unfortunately they were occupied by the regular customers so the four of us sat down on some sofas. We didn’t knew it then but when you choose to sit on a sofa in a pub (well, we didn’t have any other choice) you have to pay sort of a servant amount. That means that they treat you like a king or queen, you’re not aloud to pour up beer/sake/whatever to either yourself or others, if the staff discover it they stop doing whatever they do and run to your table to pour up some more liquid into your glasses. Speaking of drinking habits in Japan you shouldn’t pour liquid in your own glass; instead you have to keep watching your friend’s glass so it never gets empty. In other words, if you want to get drunk, keep on drinking, if you don’t want to get drunk, just sip.
So, let’s get back to the pub. We ordered a beer, thinking that we would get one beer each; instead the staff served us four ice-cold glasses and then poured the beer into the glasses. So, one beer shared by four people definitely led to that we ordered in five more beers during the evening and every time we ordered one more the staff got more and more exited saying “OOOOOooohhhhh!” every time. The customers and the staff wanted us to sing karaoke (what else?!) so we did and not just one song but pretty many songs. The evening ended up with a lot of karaoke, shocho (which seems to be sake) and laughing. Life in Japan is … great!