Days 22-32: The Roller Coaster that is Drinking

Day 22

The day was calm, mostly studying, chores and errands; Before hand we were able to hang out more with the Ando’s. We went with Papa to what we were told was a “FREE MARKET”. Eva and I assumed this was some Japanese type of Japanese sale where everything would be cheap. But as we found out when we pulled into Donkey (a massive store that sells literally everything and is as colorful and wild as a pachinko parlor), it was nothing like we thought. The Japanese pronunciation of ‘Flea Market’ is apparently very close to ‘Free Market’. That was fine though, at the ‘FLEA market’ we walked around a bit and found some good things for really cheap. I even found some great gifts for friends that I am pretty sure they’ll be excited about.

When we finished shpping we went with papa and his mother, Obaa-san, and we went to a local Denny’s like restaurant called “CoCo’s”. Not to be confused with the American “CoCo’s”. This place was known for its curry and mix of Japanese and Western food. I had a quesadilla and some curry rice. Lunch was fun, and we able to talk to Papa and Obaa-san a bit. It wasn’t long before me and Eva had to return to do studying and papa had to drive to Beppu for his job.


The Night however was a completely different matter. We planned on going to celebrate our friends Peter and Mickey’s Birthday. That night was anything but dull or calm.

We all met up at about 7:30 to walk to Izakaya* because Peter had reserved a few rooms there for the occasion.

(* Izakaya is a general term for an establishment that allows patrons to reserve a room and eat and drink freely there for a specified time. You can be as loud as you want and bring a lot of people too and its always a lot of fun. Usually the drinks and food are pretty cheap but of good quality and they also provide deals. An example, drink as many alcoholic drinks you’d like all night (nomihoudai = drink all you can for a flat rate) for 30$ and a required 2 orders of food. The food was cheap between n2-10$ depending on what you order and theres no requirements as to what you order. So if you bought two 2$ orders of food plus the 30$ flat rate you can drink any and all of the alcohol you want. They have a huge selection too, so there’s nearly no limit as to what you can drink. In short it’s a cheap way to drink, party and eat with your friends for cheap. )

We grabbed other friends at the train station who live on campus and we headed over to the place. It was huge and multiple stories. The 40 or so of us in the group fit between two rooms. And after 15 mins of taking drink orders and food orders, the party started. It was amazing to watch how quickly people changed as the alcohol started to flow. I got inivited into the other room I wasn’t sitting in multiple times to down warm sake shots ( usually 2-4 at a time) by very boisterous friends. Peter, being one of the two birthday boys was most drunk and decided my participation in drinking copious amounts of alcohol was important. I did what any American would do, I kept drinking with him, all else be damned. It was a lot of fun!

Throughout the night I had beer, a number of mixed drinks, khalua and milk being the best of those, Gin and tonic ( which I now have an interest in) and a number of other things I took sips from that were offered by friends. I made sure to kept eating and had some Japanese style fried chicken, Karage, along with some spicy fried cartilage ( I know you probably just internally gagged at the thought, but it was really good, honestly).

By the end of our 4 hours we all stumbled out in a huge group and attempted to take a group picture when some Japanese pedestrians offered to take our pictures for us, and we obliged. We stumbled home afterward, filled with liquor and good times, to find our beds and fall asleep.

Day 23


The day after drinking and I felt pretty damn good. No hangover or anything. I had counted way over 15 shots the night before, but I guess living in this country has really built my tolerance for the sauce.

The day agenda was to get our Alien registration cards ( the real ones) and to help John and Zack get their wire transfers to work so they’d have money. We got it done after 2 hours or so and thank god, cause we were pretty bored and hungry by the end of it. We all decided to go get lunch immediately finishing the bank stuff and off we went to the shopping arcade. By we I mean Eva, Zack, John, Nora and Riika. We decided on Mos burger after not too long and it was an excellent choice. The burgers are delcious and much more variety of toppings than I’m used to. Plus like I’ve said before, the fries are so so much better than “In n out”. The food was heaven. I tried out the chicken pack and large fries with large melon soda. It was wonderful, and I definitely will come back more.

Afterward we returned home for naps, a quick grocery run and relaxing. I found some very nice speakers for my computer. My computer without the speakers isn’t that loud, especially on videos on-line and DVDs. These speakers have really change dthat, and they were cheap too, so I’m very happy. Me and Eva could finally watch “That 70’s Show” and hear what was going on. The day was once again very good.

Day 24

School again, we had Japanese 3A with Sakai sensei and she was genki as usual. She had us work with pictures to help describe situations and people to others. Example:

“ Who is that person with the glasses sitting in the car?, Oh, I remember him from ____ but I cant remember., Is he the one from the reunion?, Yea, is it Gorbachov?, Yea, it is!”

The exercise was silly and fun, but very important practical use for us. We always learn something practical with Sakai sensei.

After class Eva and I went looking for a kanji dictionary, being in drastic need of one, and took a little walk from campus to the second hand book, videogame, DVD, and CD shop in Shikido called “ Book Off”. The walk was only about 15 mins or so, and along the way we some some strange things along with a cute little green frog and a migratory locust. The nerd in me was excited over these small things, lol.

Along the way we stopped at a chain restaurant of greasy spoon type of establishments called Sukiya. Sukiya serves its food fresh, fast and Hot. Its delicious, cheap and there is a wide variety to choose from. I had the Niku-don, which is rice with sautéed beef and caramelized onions on top and them a hand full of cheese sprinkled on top of that. What more could a guy ask for if not meat and cheese?

When we did get to the store after lunch, we were told the jisho we were looking for wasn’t there, so, a little sad we headed off in search of it. The dictionary we had been looking for was on the DS and allowed you to practice kanji and also look up unfamiliar ones by writing them onto the DS’s touch interface. But it was an older game and therefore hard to find. Japan in its ancient and complex world of simplicity, it is hard to find traces of the past with the future and present overshadowing everything. The speed forward for Japan leaves the past out of sight and soon out of mind. This strange dichotomy would not have been around 60 years ago in Japan.

Me and Eva went back to Oita City and tried a few local game shops to find the kanji jisho but with no luck. It was a little frustrating if nothing else, but whatever. I’ll find one eventually. Me and Eva got back home and just worked on homework till dinner.

At 7:30 new got hungry and hit up a nearby udon shop for some delicious food. I got the suteiki-don. Suteiki-don was deliciously grilled steak, chopped up and placed atop a bowl of rice with caramelized onions. It is indeed a rarity in this country to not eat something delicious. After dinner, it was incredibly easy to fall asleep, full and satisfied.

Day 25

Wednesday was a lot of class, starting from 10:40 until about 4:20. It’s a long day. Afterward all Eva and I wanted to do was sleep. We were told by our friends Jesse and Surugi that we could use a free online kanji dictionary that they reccomened, so they gave us the URL and we hoped that this might be the solution to our problems; only time would tell though. As we were returning home that night after classes, we met up with an acquaintance from SFSU, Raymond. Now its not the Raymond Eva roomed with, but one in his 40’s-50’s who had already studied Abroad in Oita and was back for his masters. We talked with him awhile and he helped us out and pointed us toward both cheese shops and a Mexican restaurant. So me, Zack and Eva went over to find both.

We went to the first basement floor of Tokiwa, One of the huge local department stores. We not only found cheese ( which I bought a chunk of cheddar cheese) but a HUGE selection of alcohol. We three decided to come back again for the alcohol another day.

We went looking for the Mexican restaurant next and after some walking around found it. It was tucked in a back alley and near a pig shaped sign. It was put in a strange place so it was no wonder it was harder to find. The place is called “ Ethnic Brothers” and it had been around since 1989. Raymond had told us it serves the best Mexican food in all of Oita, but we would have to try it out and make sure. The menu on the outside said it was open 6pm-12am so we decided to come back, especially after seeing it had a selection of American and Mexican, Mexican food like burritos, chimichangas and nachos. This was another big moment in my Japanese stay, finding a Mexican restaurant. Walking back to the kaikan we found a large karaoke bar and a theatre. This too was exciting, because we could now watch the occasional film. They were playing some Japanese films, The “Astro Boy” movie and a Japanese made version of “Sideways”. “Inglorious Basterds” and “Up” were coming in November and December respectively and we decided we need to go and watch them both.

When we returned to the kaikan I tried out the online dictionary jesse recommended and it is perfect. With this we can look unfamiliar kanji pretty easily and it wont cost a single cent. I was excited that I could finally do my Japanese homework for Kanji. It wasn’t long though before we grabbed some of our friends and went off to try out the Mexican restaurant.

The restaurant is amazing. It looks and feels like a taqueria back in the states. The food is excellent and the atmosphere very laid back. I was even given a free drink because it was my birthday, and I chose a margarita. This was the final test to certify this place as a great Mexican restaurant ,and they passed. Not only was it delicious, it was served to me and a mug shaped like a woman’s mammary. The whole table found this very amusing.

When we finished we returned home, elated at our new find, and vowing to return again soon.

Day 26

The longest day is always F&%^ing Thursday! Early class at 9 and it goes till 4:20. The best part of the day is when Eva, Jesse, Riika and myself go to AmPm, the conbini, and have a mid morning lunch. Today though, we invited one our classmates, Lulu from China, to join us.

It was fun talking and eating with people, and during the conversation, Lulu said she could give us a microwave that no one was using. Me and Eva jumped on the opportunity for a free microwave. This was like the holy grail of cooking appliances, and we had been looking for one for a few weeks. It was feeling like today would be pretty damn good.

After class, and keeping her word, Lulu brought us the microwave at the station and we thanked her many times over, deciding Lulu must be our newest companion in our group on foreigners. How nice do you have to be to give away a microwave? Very nice indeed.

That night, with help from mike we humped it back to the kaikan and put it in Eva’s room. After cleaning the apparently VERY dirty thing ( eva looked traumatized from the experience). Mike and matt sought us out and we ecided to get some pizza. There wasa special for medium pizzas, 3 for 10$ a piece so we decided to have pizza that night. Matt made the call and picked them up on his bike, In 20 mins from ordering we were eating and very happy. The place we ordered from was called “ California Pizza”. Whatever, the pizza was good. We got two meat pizzas and a basal/garlic/tomato one. Oishikatta. (it was delicious). When we finished eating matt brought out his TV and we watched a Japanese movie called “Summer Wars” which is REALLY cool, and is a contemporary view of Japanese cyber culture and its influence on the world. It was a very good movie. We tried to watch it originally on the hue TV in the lobby but it has one problem; a big black box that obscures the screen. Now, we can watch TV, but any time we insert a DVD it does not work what so ever. This is incredibly lame, and we have no idea why we cant watch DVDs in the lobby we all pay 20$ a month for. Its complete Bullshit.

After the movie, despite the crappy TV, we went to bed full and happy.

Day 27

Friday is a day I have class, except not today. Nanri sensei was away for a conference of some sort so we had no class (until the following Monday at 9am). I spent the day getting all the homework I could done and then I went with Eva to MaruKyou for groceries.

At about 5:30 we went with Charlotte to Meiji Sushi fro dinner. Someone she knew from Korea had come visit her, and she wasn’t too happy about it. This guy that been hitting on her for awhile invited himself over to Oita. Charlotte only found out the day before when he surprised her with the news. In short this guy is a douche bag, and we, her friends planned to help out.

When we saw him that night, he was tiny, mousy and looked like a high schooler even though he was supposedly 25. This would be too easy. When we got to Meiji, I directed the tables and put myself, Eva, John, Zack and Charlotte at one table, with Mike, Nora , Matt and Ass-face at the other. Charlotte thanked me and seemed to relax a little bit at the distance between herself and him. The whole dinner though, he threw many sad looks her way. Dinner was good, but most of were still up for hanging out, so after we got back downtown, we decided to hit up an arcade and we left Charlotte to return home because she was ‘busy’ and ‘couldn’t hangout with Ass-face.

The rest of us went to an arcade and dicked around with the games and things for awhile. Zack and I played some Silent hill shooting game and Eva with help from matt managed to score a claw game stuffed animal. Eva couldn’t stop cooing at it, so I guess its pretty cute. We finally got to taking puri kura* and it was a lot of fun, if not confusing.

We eventually got home and went to bed though, we had spent way too much time in that arcade, but it had been fun.

(* puri-kura are pictures taken inside a small booth with various backgrounds you choose. When your done with the pictures, you can decorate them in a number of elaborate ways and them print them out and/or have them sent to your Japanese cell phone to be used as a background. The total cost is only 4$, i.e. 400 yen)

Day 28


At 6:30 I was awoke by a loud series of bangings that sounded as if someone was bouncing a basketball off my door, hard. So I stuck my head out, and the noises seemed to stop. I was pretty agitated though, and stood near the door, waiting, and sure enough I heard them again. I stomped outside, all fire and brimstone and stared at the culprits with a look akin to death incarnate. The perpetrators were tow chinses girls caring down a piece of luggage down stairs to a friend’s car. Why you ask? She was going on a trip, or so she said. But instead of caring the god damn suitcase they had decided that dropping it down each and every step through 3 flights of stairs was the way to go. I glared at the lead one and she bowed , explained herself, and apologized. Her freidn started laughing, perhaps because I was in a tank top, shorts and sandals with touseled hair, but I was in no mood for that. I glared at her with a look that said “ Bitchm what are you laughing at? Am I funny to you right now? Like am I ha-ha funny? Am I here for your amusement?”. She quickly stopped and backed away a little. I stood there for 30 secs or so staring them down, and them I went back to my room. Grumpy as…. Well a bear I suppose.

Later around 11 am I went to Eva’s room where she made breakfast and we talked, it was definitely an improvement in my morning. The eggs, sausage and bacon were great!

Around noon a number of people went to a large home necessities store called home wide and got a few things. But when we got back we had only enough time to drop off our things before we went out to another place with Charlotte called “Joyfull”. This restaurant is a cross between a Denny’s and a Diner. The food was good and the drinks had unlimited refills so we sat awhile talking and having fun.

We decided after dinner to go back and play some poker at the kaikan. Which was fun except between Hun and John, we all lost our chips. Thankfully we weren’t playing with money, lol.

Day 29

Raining and dark, That is how Sunday was. Eva and I were supposed to meet our friend Ryohei at the station at 1pm, but the weather made us feel like abdicating that plan. We went though, but with Ryohei we decided not to go to the festival we had planned. Instead we went to have lunch at a local hole in the wall. The food was excellent, I had Dango-Jiru which is big thick noodles made of rice and served with a hot broth and many diced veggies. It’s an Oita local specialty and a damn good one, one that’s incredibly filling.

We finished, and Ryohei dragged us around for awhile to a far away building where he tried to get us to join his English/Japansese conversation group. Me and Eva by this point, cold tired and wet were a bit annoyed. Especially when Ryohei didn’t exactly explain himself till we arrived at the place.

We returned to the kaikan afterward and dried off, trying to et more homework done. That night me and Eva drank with some people from the kaikan. Whisky was involved and I remember only parts of the evening. This was not a good idea, as I would find out the next day…

Day 30

Class was at 9 and I woke up at 6am still a little tipsy/ hungover. Shit!

It was this moment in time I decided to take a month off drinking to de-tox. I couldn’t manage to eat anything because I was nauseous, but at the same time I was hungry.

Getting to and sitting through class was a trial of will, but I managed. When Eva and I got home, we made some Ochazuke which is great for hangovers and not to mention delicious. Making it helped wake me up from my stupor and feel a lot better.

At 1:30pm though we had to stop and go do the mandatory fire drill orientation. This included a lecture on fire and earthquake safety procedures , use of the fire extinguisher for practice and the earthquake-mobile. We each took a trun at the extinguisher and yelled “kajida!!” which is Japanese for ‘Fire!!”. It was fun, and a little silly. The earthquake mobile was good too, we got in and bounced around and laughed. John managed to look bored through both experiences and we all thought that was incredibly entertaining.

Afterward me and eva separated for homework but connected again that night. We made pizza and watched some DVds and relaxed, this was a lot more fun than getting as drunk as we did the night before, especially me. A good end to a miserable experience.

Day 31

Class and then lunch. We started to plan for the upcoming weekends festival and the American food booth we had to run, the planning was in progress with Matt at the helm. We decided to make hotdogs, grilled cheese sandwiches and Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches. Why so easy and cheap? We had to make big amounts of them and use our own money. Plus some key ingredients for American foods are unavailable, Not to mention we haven’t found a single oven we could use.

Lunch over with, Eva, Zack , Ashely and I went back to town and Got some necessary home items at Daiso. Then from Daiso we went to cheap and fashionable clothing store called Uniqlo, which is like the Japanese version of Gap, but with that unique Japanese fashion sensibility. Eva and Zack got a few things and we left. The rest of the night was used to study for Kanji and grammar because the next day I had a large Japanese test to study for.

I finished studying with a lot of confidence. So having finished early, I went on youtube and stumbled across a music video. It was beautiful, both the song and video. I was touched, and blown away by the song and replayed it several times. I couldn’t get it out of my head. The Artist name is Enomoto Kurumi and the song is “Anata ni Tsutaetai”. The song name translates out to “I want to tell you” and its gorgeous. The plan for the next day, was to definitely find this song and buy the single.


Day 32

Wednesday was busy again. The Grammar test in the morning was tough but I felt I got nearly all the questions right, and that made me really happy. During lunch we had to go to a traffic safety seminar instead of eat, oh joy.

It was like being treated like a child, all the basic common sense stuff was explained to us and the few things we didn’t know could have been summed up in a short pamphlet. It was a waste of time.

When we finished the seminar, Myself along with others had thought our next class was cancelled. We were wrong and thankfully we as a group decided to go to class and make sure of its cancellation or not. Class was boring in Discover Oita and very interesting in Japanese Cyber Culture, but that was no big surprise.

After class Eva met with her tutors and I came along with her. We mostly shared music and talked about the festival, it took awhile for us to realize how late it was and at 6:20 or so me and Eva finally left school.

On the way home, we stopped by Tower records and I found the Cd I was looking for. It was pretty exciting. I also picked up another for a band that had been relatively unknown in both Japan and the US. They toured in SF 2 year prior and now were the 7th top selling CD in Japan. I was happy to find their music again so I got that Cd too. The artist I’m referring to is called “Scandal”. When we finished with tower, we were starving and went to eat some Mos Burger.Afterward on the way home Eva was so cold, having not brought a jacket, she had to buy a warm drink to hold to keep her warmer , and it seemed to work.

When we got home, me and Eva split up and studied for our Kanji test the next day. I felt confident again and slept soundly that night.