Japanese bars

Went to a friend's 30th birthday party yesterday with my wife.

She overdid it a bit on the drinking (Rum cocktalsi, Sake etc etc) and started to talk a lot of nonsense. Then she puked. After that she was totally nocked out and I had to carry her to the car.

 

thats exactly how i want my 30th birthday to be.

 

Can the whole thing be more strange?

I mean, do you really have to go to the back streets to go to a bar? passing through mafia guys? And the bar is in a building where you can only enter with an elevator?

WTF

I'm still trying to "digest it" as we say in Spain :moody:

Anyway, very cool video mate, and the place looks so charming!

 

There's also stairs to the bar. I was just lazy and used the elevator.

 

That sort of thing is what confused me the most about Japan, mostly about Tokyo. Everything is in a third or fourth floor from a small door in a hidden building inside an alley. Ikebukuro especially was crazy like that, but really, it took me like an hour to find god damn Don Quijote in Akihabara. Hell, I was never able to find 16-shot in Shinjuku, at all.

I suck at finding my way to places. Had I not been guided by people who had already been there before, I don't know what I'd have found, or where I'd have ended up.

I came back with the idea that for every thing I actually saw, I probably missed many, many interesting places that were inches away, but also hidden completely from the uninitiated, like myself.

The road to the bar itself, as is probable with every interesting place, is an integral part of the experience.

 

Finding obscure places has been made a million times easier b/c of Google maps and smart phones. The first iteration of the iPhone was worth the price of admission for that alone. You also need to really embrace Japan's excuse of an addressing system.

 

Address system? You mean to say there is some logic to it? Hehe he, yep the address system here can be crazy in many parts of the city.

 

Lol I remember when I was teaching directions in English to my Japanese class, I mentioned we have street signs that tell us what street we were on and they said, " Oh so you mean you don't have to say things like turn right at that mailbox or look for that creepy school kid statue and turn left?"

 

It makes sense when you explain it: Each building gets a sequential designation. Then you explain that tearing down a building and building a new one means that it gets the next iteration. :| Biggest pro tip is if it's during working hours find some type of courrier guy. They know the building numbers like the back of their hands.

 

I hadn't even bother with addresses in Japan. I haven't got a clue where my work is in address terms. I know what city and area but that's it. In fact that goes for most places I know in Japan. If some one asked "Where do you work?" I d have to say, "it's in Moji opposite Trial, just up from Moji Station" could I hell tell them the actual address I like the western way more.

 

Only time I give the full address (other than for shipping goods) is when I'm talking w/ other people that live really close to me. As it turns out, there are quite a handful, although I rarely if ever run into them.

 

Ah yeah, in that case I'd say "the area" + "#chome". It is funny but not actually knowing the real address here in Japan doesn't seem to make life any more difficult what with the navigation systems and maps they have on everything.

 

Man I remember the days before google maps and such.. Such a pain in the ass to get around unknown areas, always with those big map books and the numerous times I've had to go into the kouban to ask them to point me to the exact place when looking for some obscure hidden shop or restaurant.

 

I recently got an email from the local ward office telling us our area code was changing. It used to be 1-52-6, now it is 1-34-40??

I have to call up the bank and such places telling them my address has changed although it hasn't changed....weird!

 

Odd, never heard of that before.

 

Me neither, and it sounds like a fucking nightmare. Hope you don't have a company registered at your address. That will set you back about 40,000 yen.

 

I was in Tokyo in 2005 and I second this. My friend and I found this pizza place, Shakey's, I think, where it is somewhere 1000-2000 yen all you eat pizza and all you can drink beer. The pizza was terrible, but when you are going out to get drunk, beer is beer and food is food...

Compare this to the sports bar we found (to watch Bob Sapp get picked apart by Choi Hong Man and then good old fashioned MLB baseball) where the half-head draft beers were 1000 yen each!

I didn't stay in Tokyo very long, but I never got the night life there. I would have loved to have found a bar like this one in the video.

 

1000 yen per drink is 6.47 in GBP thats pretty much double the price of a pint of beer here, for half the drink lol

what is it like for spirits, eg Vodka, Whiskey etc

 

That's Tokyo. Tokyo doesn't count since you always get ripped off in a capital city. Beer cost 500yen in a good bar. I spend about 3000 to 4000 yen when I go drinking which goes a long way.

 

Can't remember, but I think it was slightly more if not the same price. I'll admit, I didn't do any research in terms of which bars to go to, so I'm sure I wound up in mostly tourist traps