#30 The drunken izakaya episode

Transcript

Man, a kid just went by on his bike and he's reading manga on his phone while he's cycling home.

That's a pretty bad ass. It's a beautiful night in Chiba. It's about quarter to seven, since it's mid-November. It's dead dark. And it rained earlier, so it's extra pretty out now.

I'm trying to avoid the traffic on the main street, so I'm getting pretty lost. I don't know.

This is very hard to do. All the other streets, like a lot of dead ends, but whatever I'm not actually trying to get anywhere in particular. So I thought I might end up breaking the street today, where I've done a podcast every day since I've been in Japan. It's just amazing how much stuff there is to ramble about everywhere I go. It's something that I think is interesting.

But yesterday was too interesting. Today was a fucking write-off. I woke up at noon, and it was raining out. I was like, I think I can grab an umbrella, and if I get outside, good going. That'll help me shake off my hangover. I'll be all right. And I just couldn't. I just went back to bed. I had a fitful sleep until like 5.30, but I mean the bonus is now it's not raining. But yeah, I just got some food in me and some coffee and one of those cool vitamin C drinks. Those things are fucking great.

I love those. Feeling better now, but yeah, so yesterday was the day that Nora Hiko, the guy who runs the Airbnb I met, invited me to an izakaya, which is just a, I guess you could call it a bar, just a place where you go hang out, get food, get drinks. I've definitely never been to one, because yeah, even now that I've been and I know sort of the process, there would just be, it would make no sense at all for me to roll in there with no Japanese knowledge and try to navigate those waters at all. So this was a very great opportunity to do something that I would not otherwise have done. And apparently these types of places, they're even sort of disappearing in general. These just kind of mom and pop little hangout restaurants. They're getting harder to find.

But also as I've rambled about previously, yeah, this guy, Nora Hiko, his reviews from his Airbnb are just sterling and I'm saying how I'm such a weirdo. That's a little bit of a problem for me because I just kind of want to do my own thing. A little anxious about this whole process.

But I knew it would be worth it and it obviously was. So just the coals notes, the real quick quick thing is, yeah, of course when these opportunities come up, definitely do them, it's definitely worth it. But just don't drink too much. It wasn't at all the fault of anything. The only downside to this fucking adventure is pretty entirely my fault.

I had a really clear stopping point where I should have stopped drinking, but I didn't. And then the slippery slope led to just absurd amounts of drinking.

But anyway, I'll get into it. So the idea was going to be that Nora Hiko, who is, he's retirement age, I don't know exactly how old he is. But he's going to take me to this place where he was going to meet up with one of his friends who he had met also through the Airbnb. A guy who'd stayed at his Airbnb, who now lived in Chiba. And he said, this guy lived in America. His English is good. He'll help you. You know, he'll help everything goes smooth. So we get to this place. It's really close. There's like two blocks away from his house. And it's like you slide. I didn't even really gauge the place till I left afterward. You slide open this like, it was like a corrugated steel door, if I remember right, under like a low roof, and you go into this place that had three tables in each table, could hold like eight people, and just a little washroom and a kitchen.

And like I noticed more on the way out, you know, as we left hours later, it's like I looked back behind me and I'm just like, wow, like look at that little place. Like I'm sure I've walked by a dozen of those or more. Just little places where, unless you knew what it was, you knew to go in. 5:00 You might hear sounds from inside, but it doesn't even look like a restaurant or anything. Well, I guess it did have those like curtains that they hang up to show that a place is open. It wasn't completely nondescript. But for me, it's just a guy walking around. It's like, yeah, this is so neat where that's exactly the kind of thing I would have just walked past. And now I get to go in and see how it all worked and stuff.

So inside what made it incredibly super foreign or unfriendly, but was very cool, is the menu was just handwritten stuff hung up around the walls. And just tons of it, like all the walls all around had just all kinds of different stuff with the amount. And most of the prices were pretty low, you know, things would be like three dollars or whatever, because you were mainly getting like a dish, a dish that you would share with the people you're with. And they're pretty small. And you just get a bunch of them. You get a bunch of different stuff. And there was sort of a baseball theme, the Tokyo Giants.

So there's pictures of baseball stuff up and around as well as all kinds of different. The place was real busy. A lot of stuff going on. It was hard for me to absorb at all of just like ancient looking like scary masks and statues and weird stuff all over the place too.

I think there was smoking. I think I saw cigarettes in an ash tray from the table behind us as we were leaving. But I never noticed that at the time. It's weird because usually, usually I find smoking just brutal. Like yesterday I was standing outside of a 7-11 near a little ash tray thing. And a guy came over to smoke, so I moved way to the end, the other end of the 7-11 and like around the corner and I could still smell the smoke. So I don't know what kind of magical ventilation was going on in this Izakaya, but I didn't notice the smoke at all. And that thing with the handwritten menu items all around on the walls, that reminded me of the best sushi place I ever went to in North America. It was this little place in Vancouver near Davy and Granville. Got a block away from there that was only open for, I don't know. I mean it was there in like 2005. I remember when I moved back a couple years later. It wasn't there and I think I heard that the guy moved to a bigger location and then I don't know what happened from there. But I realized now that that guy in Vancouver was extremely traditional in his approach because he had the handwritten signs and he said he didn't want to spend money on, I became like buddies with this guy because I went there every goddamn day because I worked at the blends at Davy and Granville. He would let me skip in line and stuff when it was busy. It was pretty cool. But he told me he didn't want to spend money on stuff like fancy pants signs and graphic design and stuff. He just wanted all the money to go into the ingredients and he was the only one who prepared stuff and he had like a helper kitchen helper but he did everything himself and he didn't want to let anyone else do it. And they were open six days a week and then the seventh day was when he went and bought ingredients for the upcoming week and what he specialized in at the time there was this thing called Futo Mackie that was popular in Vancouver that was shit. Where Futo just means big I think. So they were Mackie rolls but they were bigger than normal. But you just get a lot of filler and a lot more rice than his really lame. He did the opposite. He made these tiny little rolls so you'd get a tuna roll, a cucumber roll and a like tempura yam roll. And the three rolls would all be really small and the whole thing was like four dollars. And it was so stupid good. It was still like the best Mackie rolls I've ever had. Where the hell am I?

Maybe I'll head toward Inage seaside park. I'm not too far from there and I didn't make it yesterday. I went to Chiba Park instead which was also pretty nice. Big pond lots of swans so even though it's dark as heck out you can still get a bit of a vibe for this particular park.

We had this guy in Vancouver. It would always be I had a hard time deciding what order to eat stuff in.

Did I say there was a cucumber roll? I think maybe there wasn't. I think that he had a veggie option. I think it was actually chicken teriyaki tuna and California roll. 10:00 And I could never decide which one I wanted to end off on because each one was so delicious in its own right. Like if you want to end with the best one I would just shift it all the time because it was just so delicious. So we were there pretty early at like 4.30 or so because it gets real busy as the day goes on. So he said it was good to get there early so we could just easily get a table and have no no worries there. And the guy and his girlfriend were already there. They are both I don't know late 20s early 30s pretty young probably late 20s. And I don't remember their names unfortunately although I am Facebook friends with the guy. I meant to look it up before I left the house but I don't have internet. I know it started with an SH. So I'm going to call him Shota after the wrestler Shota Umando. His name isn't Shota though but and Shota's girlfriend was Japanese with a little bit of English. I'm not sure. I think her and Norahiko pretty similar. I think Norahiko's English was actually a little better. But Shota was just 100% American. He is technically a Japanese citizen. He moved to America when he was nine and yeah he was just completely 100% totally American. So it was very easy. You know kind of I mean it did make the focal point of the evening almost always be on me and him because that was the conduit. It needed to go through him to make sure everyone is understanding that I understand what they said that they understand what I'm saying. Though there were some points where the three of them just talked Japanese for a while and I just drifted off and just stared at the place and whenever they would apologize I was like no please please go ahead. I just want to soak this place in because it's so visually overwhelming. And this is so different from my other experiences in Japan that you know it's going to be like I told Shota at one point like you know this is going to seem like a dream to me later on. And I'd be like was I really there? Was I really in this place? Did I mention there was a a sumo wrestling match on TV? But yeah it was kind of funny too that Shota told me he's like you know they're complimenting my English that I can talk to you so easily and I was saying like yeah that's actually kind of funny because you know they can infer that your English is really good but they don't actually know they can't really say for sure what level of English you're at. I don't know if they actually know how good it is that you are just 100% totally a plus fully English. You're just a you're just an English guy you're just an American dude. An American Japanese dude. Oh shit what's happening? Big wind just kicked out that I'm feeling raindrops but I'm not sure if it's raining or if that's just blowing off of the trees.

Oh I got an umbrella with me but umbrellas are so bad when it's windy.

Okay, Sally Force. Yeah, it was also kind of neat where there's so many, you always hear about double entendres in Japanese. You know, there's all kinds of hominem zora ways that a symbol that they use to write a word has a double meaning that even if you study Japanese a lot, I think it's tough for non-natives to keep up with. And for me, I can't, I don't know any of it. Like, if you ever watch a fan subtitled anime where they try to actually explain every cultural reference and every joke and every fun, it's a nightmare. You have to just fucking pause at every screen and read a screen full of text. It's insane. So it's kind of neat that me and Shota had to, we get to have our own little English one. We get to have our little weird English joke that only we would get. Where later on, once the place was totally full, he said like, hey, look at that, you're the only white guy here. And I mentioned like, oh, there were a couple other foreigners earlier. And he said, oh, I didn't notice. And I was like, oh, yeah, I got, you know, I always can, can feel the other ones that feel, feel the other foreigners. Guijin radar. And he's like, oh, yeah, you've got Guidar, which is obviously a play on Guidar, which is, you know, the idea that if you have Guidar, you can tell if somebody's gay. But I had Guidar. I could tell if a foreigner was around. I mean, it's a dumb joke. But it's like, hey, look at that. I got to have a word pun joke. That ain't going to happen again while I'm in Japan.

Ooh, this wind is getting crazy. This can't be good. Does this mean doom is imminent? What is going to come of this? But yeah, when you first go in, you get like a little, a little bowl of like appetizers. And it was nice to the shoulder to just walk me through because he also knows 15:00 what's culturally different between America and Japanese. He's like, yeah, this is like, he's little like welcome dishes that you get. And it's a little bit of a strange custom because you do have to pay for them. They're not free, but they're not optional. You just get them.

But you could also tell that he was Japanese at his core because I didn't really recognize anything on this plate. But there was just like a, a little octopus, you know, like the, the squid tentacles, the whole thing, which to me is certainly still a kind of weird thing. But he said, like, I don't know, none of this stuff's that weird. This is all pretty standard, right? And I was like, I mean, I guess you're right. I did eat octopus and squid tentacles and stuff from like 7-11 the other day or new days or whatever. So I guess it's, I guess you're right. It is not that weird. Just eat it. And then we got around of Sapporo beer and basically just tried a whole bunch of different stuff. Let me see if I can remember. There were so many different little dishes. There was a yakitori just just meat on a skewer. I think it was mainly chicken, but I'm not totally sure, but super duper delicious. I don't know. It's all kind of a blur, but basically as things went on, it kept getting a little, a little more and more unusual because I was kind of guiding things that way as they were looking around at all the stuff on the walls and they're like, what else should we try? And I was like, I don't know. Like, what do you get that I won't, I won't have anywhere else. Like, let's do this. So like one of the things was, it was like a little mound of ground up Daikon radish, kind of like a wet watery Daikon and a bunch of little tiny fish. I don't know what kind of fish it was. They look like little teeny tiny viper fish, kind of, without the horrifying teeth. It was like a hundred of them. And you just take a scoop and it was actually not especially good. All this stuff was fine, but that one in particular was probably my least favorite because it did just taste like watery Daikon and the fish didn't have much taste at all. But that was the one thing I put soy sauce on. They're like, oh, you probably want to put some soy sauce on that and it's like, oh yeah, okay. And then, you know, mostly then at that point just tasted like soy sauce, but I had eel, which I've only had eel like once before, maybe twice in Vancouver and I didn't really like it, but whatever they did different here, this like barbecue eel was real good. It was fucking real good. I think it was the most expensive thing we got too. And there was like a stew, like a beef stew. I guess if I think of anything else, I'll tell you, but just just a shit ton of different little items that are all just sharing and it's fucking super cool and delicious.

And as the place got more and more packed, you know, it's just a real nice boisterous atmosphere. And that's one thing Shota said is he's like, yeah, I think I think Japanese people, they just like this feeling. They like the feeling of just being close and everyone being all packed in.

And I was saying, I reminded me a bit of being on an airplane, like if I got to go pee, I got a squeeze past a bunch of people, but I had to go pee. So in the bathroom, they had a squat toilet. So I mean, that was something we could yammer a bit about too, just like who likes squat toilets, who doesn't, turns out nobody really likes them. Shota hated them. It's like these fucking things. But what was kind of funny there is they had a squat toilet, but it was also like carpeted in there, which just seemed like a bad idea. There's just bound to be a bunch of people hanging out drinking a bunch of pee splash, but I guess if you just clean the carpet every day, but I've never seen a carpeted bathroom before, where you're just pissing into a hole in the floor. It just seems like a bad mix, but it was also just full of weird baseball stuff and all kinds of cool shit. That was the one spot, too, where I had to watch it bump in my head because it was far below my height to get into the washer. Oh, we finished off with like the head of a tuna, where they barbecue the head. It wasn't like a full head, but it was some parts of the head, just like still on the bone, and you had to pick them off. Oh, I did well with my chopsticks, too. That was nice. I managed to maneuver through everything with chopsticks, no problem. And it was really good because it reminded me of there's a roll you can get in Vancouver called an Alaska roll that is barbecued salmon skin, and it's really good. And this reminded me of that because there was some barbecued skin as part of the stuff on the head. Oh, I think we got some yaki soba, but it was yaki soba made with udon noodles, and that was two at that point. I was feeling pretty full, so Noriko was like, hey, you want to get this fucking yaki soba thing? And 20:00 I was like, I don't know, I'm pretty full. I made some joke about training to be a sumo, but he said, like, yeah, you think you're full, but once it's in front of you, you'll eat it. And man, he was right. Because yeah, once it was in front of me, I'm delicious. And then the tuna head was the final thing we had. I think we didn't quite pick it clean. I guess that's a good sign that that's what we were done. It's like starting to get a little tough to pick flesh from the bone with chopsticks, so we just kind of gave up. It's like, okay, that's the sign that we're done. However, alongside the food side, which was just the best, I mean, honestly, the best part was just the yakitori. It's just so fucking good. But everything was good in its own way, except maybe the daikon fish mound, which was just not bad, but just like, hmm, like I think they were just trying to freak me out with that one. Blat the drinking. I have let this be the day. Well, what day is it today? I guess let yesterday be the day. Today is November 17th, so November 16th, 2023. Let this be the day that Keith has just done with drinking. Fuck drinking. I mean, I'm still not much of a drinker anyway. Back home, I would drink with my cousin, maybe, if we were watching a movie. Here in Japan, I've gotten a couple of little strong zeros or whatever, but literally like twice, I think. And that's the kind of thing that that's fine, you know, whatever, a little drinker in there. Socially, if everyone's just having a drink, just have a drink, that's fine. But it'll be easy for me to follow through on this, because I just don't drink that much anyway. And the excessive drinking is over, because I have never, I feel like I've been more drunk in my life, but that's only this worse. I've never been more sick in my life from drinking, but I was unpleasantly aware. I wish I was just fucking all fucked up and I'd blacked out or something. I was very aware of this whole proceeding and it was awful. So again, this isn't on them at all. This was a wonderful evening. Oh, I guess I should say too, the whole thing. I spotted when the bill showed up. It was $141 for all the stuff that we got, which is, I think, so split between us. So does that, like, 35 bucks each?

Which seems pretty incredible, because, you know, we were there for hours. And beyond the food, we drank too excess. So that's not a bad deal at all. I guess it's because with each item, you're not getting four of them. You're just getting one, and it's not that huge of an item anyway, and we're just splitting everything. So it felt like a massive food adventure. An hour's long, try fucking everything for 35 bucks a person. That's not bad at all. And Noriko wouldn't let me pay. I would have been more than happy. I would have paid for the whole goddamn thing if they would have let me, but, but no, he insisted and I mean, what could I do, but let him. I'm not sure how much his Airbnb was. I should check. But basically, at least my first day in the Airbnb was just, you know, he just bought me stuff. I basically stayed for free. He really is the nicest guy in the world. I'm gonna leave this guy a hell of a review. Actually, I guess before I get into drinking, I'll talk about the Airbnb thing a bit too, because that's one of the things that Noriko and Shota talked about a lot is just Airbnb philosophy and how it was going with his Airbnb business. Because he's retired, pretty much Airbnb is all that he does. Man, just by the way, I'm walking down just every random street, just taking random turns, just trying to avoid the major streets. Like right now, I'm just walking down, down a pretty steep road down, curving around all these cool, weird buildings. Beautiful night out.

There is a little bit of a lack of pedestrian stuff here in Chiba. It's definitely a little more car-based, but there's still enough. And yeah, just it's the best. I love just wandering around Japan, which I guess is what I'm going to be back to now. This was a one-off.

Is he going to hang out with humans tonight? Now we're back to just wandering, but man, I just love it. I love fucking walking around Japan is the best. Be as they talked about Airbnb stuff, Noriko was wondering if he should be raising his prices, because apparently he started doing this Airbnb stuff in 2016. Basically, he just converted the bottom floor of his house into Airbnb stuff, and him and his wife just live on the top floor. So I mean, that's kind of cool. You got the space, and he just loves meeting people, and he obviously makes friends from Airbnb. I mean, I feel like if I come back to Japan, I've got to come back to Chiba, right? I've got to stay at this guy's place again. He's the fucking best. I'm all turned around on this hospitality thing. I should really just go for this. You know, it's obviously a more interesting experience than just me being purely 25:00 by myself the whole time, even though that is my inclination is just to be by myself all the time, and it makes me kind of uncomfortable to be thrust into new social situations. But I mean, the proof is in the pudding. It's obviously the right thing to do. It's, uh, although on the other hand, I guess because I'm so fucking wiped, I mean, I feel pretty good right now. I just felt like shit all fucking day. So I guess we'll say I'm fine with either. This is not going to turn me around into all of a sudden seeking out Airbnb hosts that'll take me on wild adventures. But if it should go that way, it's clearly good to spice that in a little here and there.

I think I'm getting near the point where I got to hang the left if I want to get to this park. So I think I might have to have a little traffic.

Man, this is like a mega one, two, three, four, like eight lane super highway, four and four. Overpasses and all this crazy shit. I don't know where to go from here. This is getting a little confusing on the map. I don't look like I'm at where I'm at, but I must be because this thing hasn't failed me yet. So I don't know what that was going on. Okay, I think I know where I am. So it's going to be a little bit of traffic noise, but not for too long. But yeah, so this dude, I mean, clearly, his house is gorgeous. Everything's set up amazingly. He definitely could and probably should raise his prices. But they were asking me my advice and I was like, yeah, I mean, I guess obviously I would like you to just keep them as they are, but I can't deny that. But then they asked like, yeah, but is that why you're there? I was saying like, I don't exactly remember. I knew I wanted to stop on the way to the airport. And I do always sort by cheapest. So I probably, probably, wow, it drive through Starbucks. Yeah, we're definitely in car country right now. I remember the first time I saw a drive through, I mean, I guess Tim Hortons technically. Is a drive-through thing. But you don't always see fancy pants, coffee shops that are set up for drive-throughs. The first one I saw was in like a Tobico in Toronto drive through second cup. Whoa, wind. Yeah, it's always quite a clear sign that you're not in pedestrian country. Oh, geez, yeah, in the place where I'm supposed to turn to get to this park. It's like a giant overhead thing. Can I even get out of here on foot with the hell? What the hell? But anyway, another interesting Airbnb wrinkle is this guy showed a, he, again, that's not his real name, but it was something like that. I mean, I just like bad with remembering people's names when I first meet them anyway. You really do have to make a point of it. Like, you really have to dedicate in that moment. You really gotta be like, I'm gonna really remember this guy's name. I'm gonna have a phonetic trick or something to remember. Generally, the first time I meet somebody, I do not remember their name. And when it's Japanese names, I double, don't remember. Man, this is weird. There's this big elevated thing. So do I walk up there? Or can I stay on the ground? I'm gonna try staying on the ground and see what happens. But theoretically, if I just walk this way, I'll get to this park. Yeah, big towering overpass. Over me. Big buses park down here.

Cars going by. This is not where you want to be walking.

But yeah, so this guy showed a, he, uh, he has kind of an American job and a Japanese job. He had a pretty cool setup where he was complaining that he lived kind of in the middle of nowhere because his house is in Chiba, which is already, you know, not Tokyo. But it's also away from what transit there is in Chiba. So he has to take like a 20 minute bus ride. And it's extra bad for his girlfriend because she works in Tokyo. So she has to take like a two hour ride with nowhere to sit down half of the time to and from work every day. And it's like, ah, there's a classic Japanese commute. Yeah, that must suck.

So when we were done at the Izakaya, she, she had to go home. So she left and we continued on.

But he has like an IT tech type job from America where just for like an hour a day he's got to log in and do like a conference call and then everything else he does online. But on top of that he also has a gig as an Airbnb you know he's called it like being a chambermate. Like when 30:00 somebody checks out at 10 a.m. and then the next person is coming in at four you got that window of time to get the room ready for the next person which if you just run one Airbnb it's probably not so bad but if you've got a bunch of them he said it's really tough getting everything done in time it's quite demanding and this was one of his theories about why Airbnb prices have gone up so much is that people's expectations have gone way up like all the places I used to love where you're just in somebody's weird little hole in the wall corner of their house you know they just set something up for you like the one in Vancouver where I stayed in this guy's mic mansion where literally I was just in the hallway under the stairs between two rooms and he just locked off the doors so that it became a little room and I loved it because there was no windows it was the darkest place in the world but I was literally just in whatever little corner of this guy's house you could set up but it was like $18 a day I loved that shit and he was saying stuff like that doesn't exist he thinks because people want a hotel level experience with Airbnb now it's you know completely not the couch surfing routes anymore now everybody wants the towel and the shampoo and the soap and the fucking every little thing everything to be just right just perfect which is making all the prices go up and I can't argue that seems to be true you know it is very hard to just if I just want to spend no money and have you barely give a fuck about me and just give me somewhere to sleep it's just I mean I haven't been able to find places like that so he's probably right it does seem to be that way we're being hoisted on our own us Airbnb people we want more and more and more so we're paying for it but yeah it's for drinking so we had a beer that was all good then I had a show choo which I believe is a wheat wine which I don't know what percentage it is but probably higher than the beer and it was in a big tall glass it just looks like water it's very easy to drink and at that point that's where I just should have stopped two drinks that's more than enough to mess me up I mean I had even told show to the little anecdote that the first time I tried strong zero one strong zero I was like feeling blitzed and he's like well that thing you're drinking right now that's only nine percent this thing you're drinking now is worse than that so at that point they were like do you want any more to drink nor Hiko's gonna have more but you know nobody was forcing anything on me at all and I was gonna stop but not because of drunkenness because I guess I just haven't been fall down horrifyingly drunk in years I guess I forgot how awful it is I was more concerned about just having to pee all the time with my legendarily small bladder I didn't want to be the guy who's always having to go pee look at this Georgia coffee only 100 yen it's pretty rare to find these 100 yen machines at this point let's do it do I want emerald mountain blend I'll go with this max coffee the right way the wrong way and the max coffee way oh that's fucking hot but then the next thing that tipped me over was uh showed on his girlfriend got rice wine and how they do it is it's so cool you get like a pretty small glass but the glass is on a little saucer so the glass is filled with wine and then the the saucer has liquid in it I thought maybe is it like that the wine is hot because I know you can get Japanese wine hot sometimes and then the there's like cold water I didn't understand what was going on as like I just give me one of those sure I'll take that too and that was the point where I just stopped being mindful of how much I was drinking I don't know just the switch flipped in my brain is now she's like yeah it's just okay it's fine just drink whatever everyone else is drinking it's all different stuff try new things just keep on going terrible terrible terrible idea man this is confusing this is reminding me of when I walked from the airport in Montreal and just walking through this big crazy industrial part of town where everything was enormous and huge and looming overhead and confusing as shit men have definitely have to find a different way home that is not this but it turns out what was in the little dish was just more uh this sucks it's so loud but 35:00 I won't be out of here for a while so it turns out what was in this dish was just more wine and he said the idea is normally or how this started is that they would pour the wine in front of you in this case it was a little different because they just handed it to us this way but it was to show not only is your your glass very definitely full but they fill it and they just keep pouring until it also fills up the dish to show that your glass is 120% full it is fuller than full we have gone above and beyond with our hospitality you get a shit ton of wine and like what a neat idea so that as you drink when you're halfway done you just pour the extra from the dish into your glass and you have even more rice wine delightful but yeah I had the beer I had the big glass of show two I had the rice wine oh then after there what should we get should we get another drink and I was like oh I noticed these people behind me were drinking high balls that's one of the things I got from a convenience store now I remember I was like let's get high balls they're like fuck yay gumpai high balls so that is my extra my fault I'm the one who fucking suggested it so four drinks that's way too much for me already quite big drinks all high alcohol content you know besides the beer and even beers more than enough to fuck me up I am not tolerant of alcohol but then as we left and showed his girlfriend had to go home I should say I guess you know I'd make little little attempts of like I don't know is there any inroads to what little I know about Japan that anyone else will know but probably not because I just like a bunch of real dumb shit so like with the sumo wrestling on TV I was like hey you know one thing sweet in Japan is pure oresu fucking pro wrestling okada to see it I tell you guys know them famous Japanese wrestlers they did not you know yeah the average person doesn't give a sweet fuck about wrestling we did talk about video games a bit I was saying like I do I am into some anime stuff but really it's way more video games and Norahiko and showed his girlfriend who were just fully Japanese they were kind of under the impression that Japanese stuff wasn't really very popular in North America so I had to say like I mean it isn't it isn't like it is it absolutely is everybody's into some something from Japan but again it is probably not like your average person it's still I had to I was like to show it was like what does that word you know the you know the obsessed fanboy and he's like oh otaku it was like yeah that's the one now like oh otaku so I was like yes I mean we have otaku in North America as well so yeah maybe generally your average person walking down the street might not necessarily be big into Japanese pop culture but everybody's into some kind of video game when they're a kid or into some kind of Pokemon cartoon type shit and then there's a good a good chunk of nerds that really stick with it hard and I can't quite remember exactly how it came up but this was the the super obscure reference of the day that actually worked it was something about counting and numbers and stuff of like just what pathetically little Japanese I know so with counting with the number Nana I said they go I know Nana from the manga Nana and showed his girlfriend was like oh iiazawa and I was like fuck yeah iiazawa that's like yeah so we had a that was our one little bonding moment we both know the works of iiazawa who was a super super cool manga artist who developed a mystery illness and just stopped stopped working no one quite knows exactly what it was or what happened Nana is her most famous work it's these two girls both named Nana which means seven but my favorite of her stuff is called paradise kiss it's shorter as well it's only five volumes Nana goes on and on it's like 22 volumes but paradise kiss is like five volumes and it's really good it's about this girl who gets roped into being a model for the fashion students at her school because she's very tall and it's very good so yeah I don't know I guess I won't belabor all the drinking stuff I guess because it's just drinking but basically we went back to the Airbnb us three lads and Nora Hiko pulled out the fucking 35% whiskey that was almost entirely full and like I just don't even know how it happened there's whiskey there's seltzer ice cubes 40:00 and just through the course of the evening there was no more there was no more whiskey and shota was really feeling it he like basically slumped over at one point so I was like ah help you out buddy so I just drank the rest of his even that was just ridiculous amounts of drinking fucking out of control but the weird thing about it is like I didn't feel very drunk like even as we were hanging out Nora Hiko he stayed out of it and he's like he knew he had had enough but he was being a good host and I was not paying attention anymore to what I was drinking let's crack open this coffee I think I'm almost past all this traffic almost at this park oh I never finished that anecdote either so the reason they live a 20-minute bus ride away in Chiba is they knew a guy who had a house like a spare house he wasn't using that had been empty for like seven years so even in the super mega-lopolis of Tokyo and Chiba in the surrounding areas sometimes there's just houses that just no one has gotten around to doing anything with so they kind of took stewardship of this four-bedroom house that message was next to a spinning orange light because that warning me of danger I don't know what that said so yeah the rent was about $600 Americans so 300 each for an entire house and I was like man that's a pretty sweet deal dude and he's like yeah I mean I know it is but it's just wearing me out being so far away from everything and you know I guess it is the grass is always greener or whatever but yeah he was also asking me my kind of Airbnb philosophy because he was saying like with with properties like that like what would be would that be a thing he could do like what if he did get some properties that are much cheaper because they're out of the way and set them up you know maybe even have some weird program where if you have somebody who's kind of a handy person let them stay super cheap if not for free and help fix up the house you know stuff like that and I said I thought it was a great idea because I love being on the outskirts like to me that's better like for instance what is east of Nareda I'd love to go east of Nareda but if there's any Airbnb is there I didn't see him but he didn't probably rightly so he didn't really take my advice too strongly because you can just tell like I mean you're one guy sure you like to go weird places and you like to be on some odd spot on the Tokyo map but I don't think the average person necessarily wants that and he's probably right because I would also expect it to be cheap so it's it might not be the best business plan in the world but yeah as we sat around the house drinking to other Airbnb people checked in they were a brother and sister from Colombia so the sister was living in Australia and she was basically bringing her brother along on this trip to Japan then they were going to Singapore then back to Australia and he was going to stay there for a year to work out his English her English was really good he barely spoke so I assume his English was not but even though I was drunk out of my mind like I just feel like everything went fine you know we were all just hanging out and we greeted them and they got shown around how everything worked and it wasn't one of these cases where I mean I've had times where the next day after drinking you don't remember all the stupid shit you did until later and then the gong hits and you're like oh jeez what the hell I fucking embarrassed the shit out of myself in this case jeez when does this road fucking end this is just this endless fucking mega traffic nightmare I could a store I'd be at the end by now god this sucks I picked the wrong place to try to go fuck I'm like halfway come on man this fucking sucks I hate this road so yeah I noticed though this was my first distinct sign that I'd made a huge error is when I was just hanging out in the common room talking to these folks getting their stories about Columbia and Australia and Yadiyah I felt fine but then I went to the washroom and I just sat down to pee and uh and then I could feel it's like this awful fucking strobing feeling when you're really drunk 45:00 like my head was just like moving half a foot forward and then resetting and half a foot forward and resetting and half a foot forward and resetting away as you're going whoa and I was like oh no I even felt that in years this is fucking bad but then I got up and went back and I mentioned it to the most like jeez you know this is weird when I was in the washroom there I just felt like I was crazy drunk but when I'm just sitting here talking to you guys I feel fine and I really did it was totally fine as long as I had something to focus on but yeah then poor Shoda he uh he slumped over he just slumped over on the ground and it's like oh jeez because he was quite a bit shorter than me too so we both drank about the same amount but I guess it hit him first but since uh this Airbnb I was at like the brother and sister had their own room and I was in this communal area where there's four bunks but it was just me no one was in the other three bunks so we got him into one of the bunks and he threw up in a garbage can a little garbage pale but we tucked him in we got rid of his barf gave him another garbage can to hold on to just in case And even with this incontrovertible evidence in front of me, I still somehow thought, like, ah, maybe I'm getting away with this though, maybe it'll be fine for me. So they went to bed, and then, yeah, then I was just by myself. There was no one to talk to, no one to focus on. I wonder if I could have just stayed up all night talking to somebody. Would that have kept things? I don't know. I don't know what would have happened. But one thing that is annoying about drinking for me, one reason why I don't drink much, is because I don't get just like blackout drunk. I don't pass out. I just stay awake and stay relatively aware. And in this case, I was very aware. I really didn't feel drunk. But once all the lights were off and it was time to lay down, everything just came crashing down on me. I just felt so awful. My stomach felt awful. My head felt awful. And it's just so unpleasant. I'm not even going to try to describe it too much, because it just sucks. But it was so bad that I had to literally crawl to the bathroom. Pain stakingly slow. And I was in there for like 45 minutes. And I was trying to be quiet about it. I at least had a fan going, so I hope that blocks me out some. But I think being relatively aware, relatively sharp-minded feeling with all this horrible stuff happening, I was like, angry. It's just like, how can it feel this bad? How can I feel this awful? What the fuck? And I just started eventually just like, moaning. More like, be moaning. My said faders. Just like, oh, no. Why? And the other thing that is probably a bad thing, but it's just how it is, is that I just don't throw up. I never throw up. I've thrown up from food poisoning before, but if I've ever thrown up from drinking, I don't remember. It might have been one time. But this time I threw up, that's how bad it was. It's just on the floor with my head on the fucking toilet, which I didn't even appreciate at the time. It had a heated toilet seat, but that certainly didn't hurt. If you're going to have to throw up in a toilet, an awesome Japanese toilet is the one you want. But yeah, it's such a strange feeling, because I so rarely feel it, but you just feel these contraction starting in your like, upper stomach and in your chest. And it's like, all right, it's coming. But even then, I was like, still just like, do it. It's like angry. It's like, good, fucking do it then. Just do it. Just fucking throw up like it's anger at my own body. Like, what does just do it then? Fuck. What is wrong with you? Why am I this fucked up?