Oh what a night. It went from cheap to really fucking expensive quite quick, and it all started when I messaged Mark and asked what he and friends were doing…

At about 9:15 I got a response that he and Chet were heading over to Kenji’s, a very small local hangout that’s literally under the parking garage. We go there to pretty much drink relatively cheap alcohol and talk with the locals and each other. I met up with them there, ordered a nihonshu (known as sake in the US), and listened the to conversations going on around me to practice listening to Japanese. All was well.

Mark was doing his general thing of practicing his Japanese by talking to the locals, and as I’m yet not confident enough to do so I just did my best to listen and follow along with what was being said. Within this time period, some other Japanese guy sitting on the opposite side of the bar joined in our conversation about what a man who thinks he’s a woman but likes women is called in Japanese. Or something like that.

Anyway, this guy who I’ll call Mike, because he said he looked like a Japanese Michael J Fox, moved over and sat down with us. After some time of general chatting Vinnie joined us, and we decided we were done there and ready to move on to the planned next location–the local bar we know as the ‘Beer Bar’, as it carries quite a bit of specialty import beers. Mike had other plans.

On the way to the beer bar he got a call from one of his friends, and he told us that we were going to go meet his friends at a different bar. Eager to try a new place, we followed him… into the red-light district. It didn’t really hit me yet where we were going.

We went up to a particular building, he led us into the elevator, then we got off and entered in a bar. It was nice, qutie nice. Actually, it was the nicest bar I’ve been to. Mike fired off some words to an employee, and we were seated at a counter near the entrance but separated fromt he rest of the place via a little wall and given comfortable leather seats to sit in

As we sat down, I noticed and grabbed the menu there and immediately gasped at the prices. The cheapest item on the menu was a Coke at a cool ¥800 ($7.50). This was followed by beer, Asahi (a common, cheap brand) for ¥1,000 (about $9.50). After that the prices for drinks skyrocketed from about $40 to $1,000. Once I shakingly put the menu down and actually looked around the bar, I noticed something.

I stood up and glanced over the wall, and realized that everyone else seated in the bar was sitting boy-girl-boy-girl, etc., with the boys being older salary men and the girls looking to be quite young and very made up. Then it hit me, and it hit everyone else–this was a hostess bar. We tried to explain to Mike that the drinks were too expensive, but he retorted that this was the ‘waiting area’ and the drinks were free here. We were all ehhh…, but Mike was insistent. We asked him what about after the waiting area, and he merely responded, “Happiness.” We gave in.

After waiting for about ten minutes, we were led to our seats on the nice, comfortable booth-couch in the back. Once we got seated, the girls came out. I say girls because that’s what they were. During the course of our ‘conversations’ we found out that out of the five, the oldest was 23 and the youngest ones were 18. Anyway, each of us got our own personal highly made-up girls with extremely fake mannerisms who laughed far too easily and acted far too girly.

To make things worse, mine failed at conversation. I figured that if I was going to pay this fucking much money I was going to use it to practice some Japanese, but unfortunately my conversation-initiation skills are slightly lacking in English and almost non-existant in Japanese. If it makes Beth feel any better, the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “First of all, I have a girlfriend. She’s a student here.”

It also didn’t help that pretty much all four of us knew more Japanese than English, but the funny part was that the English they used was literally straight out of the textbooks. We know; we work in schools and teach out the textbooks. Going even deeper, their English skills were lacking even by the standards of my middle school students. It was like paying money to have a conversation with one of my lower students. And because they were paid to act like giggly Japanese immature girls, it was just frustrating the whole way around.

Mark was faring slightly better, as like all of us he was getting agitated at the situation (and Mike for bringing us there), but thoughMark’s combination of drunkeness and Japanese ability, he managed to offend the first girl who switched out with another whom he then proceeded to also offend. How did he do this? He talked about their job and asked why in the hell they’re being pets for guys like this. He also found out that the first girl had only been working there for eight days.

My girl apparently had graduated college with a degree in Child Development and has a day job (doing what, I don’t know), then at night she moonlights as a hostess. Unfortunately, she sucked at conversation and probably wasn’t used to situations like having four gaijin come in. Actually it threw all of them off.

Eventually Mark got a call on his phone and left the table to get it, much to the playful protests of his girl. Shortly thereafter both Chet and Vinnie individually got up, talking on their phones, once more to the confused protests of the girls. Finally it was just me and four girls…

I talked about a minute longer then said I was going to go talk to my friends to see what was up, so once again, to the protests of the girls, I got up and left. Unfortunately I forgot my coat.

Near the door we all decided that this was bogus, useless, expensive, and most certainly not where we thought we were going. I went back to the women, grabbed my coat, and said we were finished quite matter-of-factly. Then came the damage, and realize that by this time all I had drank was a glass of the Asahi beer we were given when we first walked in.

We asked for the price and were given a price of ¥7,000 yen (about $65). Each. I just paid ¥7,000 to drink one glass of crappy bear and have a boring patchwork conversation for half an hour. Fuck. That.

Anyway, we all reluctantly and annoyingly paid the man and left.

And then we went to the Beer Bar and finally had a nice small glass of some decent beer.

We didn’t know we were going there, and once we realized where we were going it was mainly out of the curiosity of going to a hostess bar. Soon we found out that unless you have a huge bankroll and like ditzy girls, it’s not the place for you. Overall it was cool to have the experience, though I most certainly don’t plan on doing it again

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