Monday, October 29, 2007

10/30/07 This is Halloween

I had been looking forward to the Halloween bash for some time. Halloween is definitely one of my most favorite holidays.. so much fun. Its exciting for kids to run around and get candy, and its fun for me now to dress up and act like an idiot. I was still in the middle of speech contest season, though, so I didn't have the energy to put a lot of thought into my costume. Tung came through with a nice little hat for me while he was in Tokyo though. I would have been stuck with something super lame otherwise, I'm afraid.

My costume consists of a pretty funny looking beetle head and a black shirt. During the night, I heard the word for beetle so many times that I finally learned it. Its kabutomushi. Quite an interesting word, I think. Mushi means bug, no big deal there. Kabuto, though, is the word for the big helmets that samurai used to wear.

So anyway, we started Saturday night off with a boisterous trip to the local Karaoke joint. See, there's a magical thing in Japan called nomihodai, or all you can drink. This particular karaoke joint has nomihodai, so we often go there for fun times. They figure that they can still make money because the Japanese don't generally drink a whole lot anyway, plus maybe you will be too distracted with all the singing to realize time is passing. But we frequently go in there and ruin all of their days.

This might be a good time to explain the karaoke situation in Japan. Karaoke in the US usually consists of just one machine, a couple of mics, and a performance in front of a whole smelly bar. In Japan everything is different. We show up with a group of five people or whatever, and we get a small private room to ourselves. So a Japanese karaoke place is more like a honeycomb of bad singers rather than just one at a time. You pay by the hour or half hour usually, and for 2 hours of karaoke plus all-you-can-drink, it costs a little under $20, which is awesome considering one beer at a restaurant costs $5 usually.


Here we are getting warmed up at Karaoke.


When we were finished singing, we headed over to the party. It was an unassuming little club on the second story. One thing that I have noticed about Japan is how hard it is to judge a place from the outside. More often than not, businesses here have no windows, and not being able to read many of the signs leaves me with few clues about an establishment. Quite a large portion of my foreign friends in town were present, along with even more Japanese people with whom I had a good time meeting and chatting. One English guy in particular had an excellent costume. He simply wore a suit and tie with the shirt partially unbuttoned and open at the top. Showing was the Superman t-shirt he was wearing underneath. So ridiculously easy but still so impressive.

As the night passed, several bands took turns making the place vibrate. Several times the random person I was talking to one minute was up on stage the next. Halloween is so good.


2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:42 AM

    the people demand more Halloween pictures!!! my camera broke or ran out of batteries or both before you guys even got to the party, so i am DEPENDING on you for my MEMORIES.

    also i am glad you had fun :D

    --babs

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  2. I'll have to see what I can do. Yeah, if you are really having fun, other people will take the pictures for you. The party was awesome, thanks for the invite!

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