Core Japan experiences: 2nd week

Nagoya:

I met my Japanese friend: Rieko, at the station and she helped us check into a capsule hotel in town: one that was right next to the action we were seeking for the night life.

Capsule hotels:

Nagoya:

I met my Japanese friend: Rieko, at the station and she helped us check into a capsule hotel in town: one that was right next to the action we were seeking for the night life.

Capsule hotels:

This was quite an experience! It feels like the hilton, except its 3,800 yen a bed [about 22 Euros]. You get a very skinny locker and its men only. Guests walk around in hotel-pijamas everywhere. It feels like I am either entering a swimming pool, or a military pre-processing plant before you board a spaceship… On the lower floors: a parlor with beds all spread out on the floor with video screens for each man, a massage room and a bath house with no less than 12 baths: each with a specific digitally tracked temperature and mineral color, water falls, jets, and a snooze room. In the halls: erotic video games. Your actual room is a capsule like spaceship pod which you can only lie down in, but you have a TV screen mounted in the wall. There are a few channels you can watch, of note: the 24 hour a day complimentary porn station with everything crystal clear except the most smallest important part of the genitalia is lightly pixelated.

Reiko dinner time:

So, here we were, in Nagoya, and we had a change of cloths while Rieko was waiting for us outside as she was not permitted in the hotel [being a woman, she did not even feel comfortable waiting in the lobby for us, as it was not a place for women…hmmm] – we had this bottle of Sake, but no natural place to drink it; so we pulled up our stool and had a few glasses at our clothing locker.

Reiko and us went for Dinner and Reiko insisted on paying for our meal! She was so generous and kind, we talked about our plans and journeys in Japan, and her times in NZ. She couldn’t stay for the night out with us, unfortunately. So after she left to go home, we popped back into our capsule to drink some sake again at the locker and plan our night escapade.

Dodgy services:

At the hotel, one of the staff came buy, we thought to tell us we cant drink in the locker area: but instead he wanted to make sure we knew there were nice facilities downstairs. Paul and I asked him if he knew about nice local bars to drink [not foreigner bars which is what the guide books try and get you to see]: but instead he did hand gestures that were unmistakable: open mouth, hand moving back and forth… two hand grabbing something in the air at chest height… Paul and I were speechless, so he did the gestures again… then said “wait a minute, I get you book” and went off…

A few minutes later he came back with a book that was bigger and thicker than the biggest yellow pages I’ve ever seen: and it was just page-after-page of various call girls, escorts, special services, some pages had each girls profile, photo, info details and specific number to call or quote to request, girls who were “shy” [hiding their mouths], some girls with pixelated faces, pick-and-choose: half hour, multi-hour prices, themes, costume girls, special services, speciality girls… you name it. We had another few shots of sake and flipped through this book in a stunned and laughing state: this world is crazy. We thanked him and returned the book and headed off to the bar we had originally in mind. The concierge looked confused that we didn’t require anyone form the listings, I think he was wondering if we understood he could arrange “activities”.

Rugby bars:

the first place we went was an english bar, cause it was close, packed, half full of japanese, half of foreigners, and it had rugby [paul likes that] – it was nice to be in a bar! We had a few drinks, met a sleazy french guy who was trying to hit on all the girls, and then walked in the rain to another bar down the road. The second bar was poor in atmosphere so after a drink Paul and I decided to go to a night club we knew was *not* a hostess bar [as the majority are…]. We left the french guy and his prey and got to the club only to find it was closing already… great, its pouring rain now… where do we go???

Da undagrawn:

Another club was called “da undagrawn” [spelled: the underground]. But no taxi driver knew where it was… eventually we tricked a taxi driver to bring us to a hotel we knew was close to it, and ran around asking locals where it could be. A girl in the street slapped our faces when we asked but didn’t give us any information; eventually we found a sleeping girl in a miniskirt who held a mobile phone in her hand before her face, as stiff as stone. A man who stood next to her as if nothing was wrong said “you are here, this is the underground: 4th floor”.

We went up the stairs to the fourth floor and there was a bar called “soul ground” next to the entrance, we went in there for a look and, as it turned out, never made it any further than here.

Really cool vibe, very nice bar tenders, filled with hot-cats who were here because it was a cool-cat place, and cool because they were cool, not trying to be cool – like I often find is the case here in japan-land.

Next to me were two women, and after a while we started talking to them. The one closet to me, her name is Raina and she was beautiful, I can’t remember the other girls name. Raina is half korean, half japanese – and she spoke near perfect english. I had a really nice conversation with her, and a good connection. It was really nice to talk to someone in english, a language we can both understand; instead of the broken japanese/english I’m dealing with all the time. Raina discussed with me her life with her children and an unhappy marriage. And the “please pamper me mommy, dear wife” male attitudes that exist. I sensed strength, sadness and beauty in her. It was also educational. The quality of the exchange was special, and this I took home with me.

That night, in the capsule hotel I had a dream that I was dancing through a kind of choreographed trial; a trial normally for japanese. In my arms was a japanese woman, and through various levels of tatami I had to move in a dance, while casting spells to protect our progression. For example: dragons would breath fire and to prevent burning I would blow freeze spells to cover us in snow. A special dream.

Ayumi:

The next morning, we had only slept a few hours, Reiko and Ayumi met us for breakfast/lunch. Ayumi is a friend of Reiko, and she wanted to hang out with these foreigners called Paul and Seb. We went for a little lunch, and then to the castle of Nagoya before heading to Ayumi’s home. Ayumi and her parents invited us over for dinner – an offer neither of us could refuse!

A few hours out of town we went by train and car until we were welcomed most fully with gifts, drinks and a feast of many-many dishes. We brought them top-Sake and Japanese cake as gifts. They showed us Japanese guitar, sword fighting and Origami! I was terribly tempted by the Sashimi – they had a service of about 8 different fish cut out to try… yellow tail, salmon, sword fish… you name it. But the situation was not 100% right, so I passed. [for me to even consider trying fish this was quite a big deal]

We played them some music, made some CDs for them and had a really wonderful sleep. It was so cool seeing how life is like in a Japanese family, I was really taken back by how welcoming and kind Japanese people are.

Ayumi is adorable, kind, generous and extremely bubbly – I have a theory, which is that since there is so little physical contact between people in Japan, people develop extremely cuddly personalities. Ayumi jut made me want to cuddle her every time she got excited – but instead I knew that any kinds of contact are faut-pas in Japan… which makes saying good bye in particular very weird for me to just bow and say ‘saionara’ – its terribly unsatisfying.

Paul, the saint of Patrick:

At this point I didn’t know how long I was going to be with Paul – but I was enjoying my time with him greatly. Very easy going guy, sweet, gentle, charming, social, smart, into photography and following his dreams. Paul wanted to go to Hiroshima next – I was thinking of going to Osaka and perhaps leave Japan a week sooner if I was bored. But fate had it that my friend in Osaka did not reply to my email soon enough – so instead I went with Paul to Hiroshima: which sealed us together as travel companions for a further week.

One thing which I find interesting is that Paul is Irish. Now out of all the people I know, there is one person, a dear beloved friend of mine, who loves Japan the most… Lucy, and she is Irish! So here I had a little piece of Ireland [and thus Lucy] following me around in physical form! I couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t Lucy professing her strong magical powers…
😉

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