Sunday, May 4, 2008

Golden Week: Let the Games Begin

This week is Golden Week in Japan. What is Golden Week? Damned if I know, but whatever it is slides me a couple extra days off so it's all right in my book.

Me and my friend started our evening at my apartment. We drank some cocktails made from manly unsweetened lemon soda and watched the technicolor brain molestation that is Japanese television. My friend has the restless need to be productive encoded in every Japanese person's DNA, so he found some scissors and some paper and made paper Godzilla characters. Turns out he's pretty damn good--as many Japanese people seem to be--at any task that requires precision and manual dexterity.

Here's a couple of the paper monstrosities:

This one is Ghidora, Godzilla's 3-headed nemesis.



This is the big man himself. I asked my friend why Godzilla was looking backwards. He said "This is Godzilla's style."



This is a shark. Note the millions of little teeth. Constructed with a few drinks under his belt using dull kitchen scissors, mind you.



We moved from my apartment to a bar downtown. They had a big snake in a case, so my friend demanded that they allow us to play with it. The staff said yes, because Japanese employees always say yes to any request, no matter how ludicrous. My friend stuck his hand out towards the snake, which immediately coiled around his arm and tried to kill him. Luckily, the snake was too small to do much killing so we just laughed at it.

My friend pointed the snake at me and told me to take it. The snake instantly reared up and sort of leaned back, while staring at my eyeball, which probably looked like some fat, delicious bird egg or something to it.



I was assured that the snake was the "kind that doesn't bite" but remained suspicious. I took it anyway and it promptly tried to constrict me to death. All of the attempted killing made the snake tired so we put it back in the cage and played billiards with some Japanese girls.

One of the girls was a hostess at a neighboring bar, which, near as I can figure out just means that lonely salarymen pay to talk to her. She and her friend marveled at my shoes and insisted that I let the hostess try one on. I obliged. This is what a 100-pound Japanese girl looks like in a size 13 skate shoe. Is there an internet fetish site for this yet? Sorry the picture is sideways, I can't be bothered to deal with blogger's sucky uploading system at the moment.



After billiards we decided to call it a night. Hilariously, my friend and I had almost no money, so I walked to an ATM down the street. Guess what? ATMs are apparently closed for Golden Week! The situation has just gotten trickier. I walked back to the bar and we pooled every last bill and coin into a small pile and hoped for the best. We just barely paid off the bar, and when we got outside, both checked our pockets to see if we had anything left over.

My friend had 2 yen and I had 1 yen. Cutting it a little close huh?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I see you have started a new fashion trend. The concept will be improved, however, and morph into skater geta.

It would seem everyone visiting Japan has had this experience: running out of cash and finding no ATM at hand. We certainly did! Is it because they haven't embraced the concept of "float" yet? Perhaps another good business (besides the shoes) would be to put ATMs in every bar...