Lions and tigers and bears...

A note on drinking in Japan (I’m 21 now so it’s legal for me to discuss drinking online.) Even if I was only 20 I could still discuss drinking in Japan –that’s the legal limit here. Drinking actually plays a large role in Japanese society, the extent of which I haven’t really figured out. But in Japan there is this thing called a “No-mi-ho-di” which means that you pay a stock amount per person (which can range from 5 –20+ dollars) and then you order as many drinks as you can in the next two hours. There is a karaoke place near campus where the JSP kids all love to go because no-mi-ho-di there is only $5 but the mixed drinks are basically orange juice. Most people order beer since that can’t be watered down. And if you are good at drinking beer and go in a large group you could potentially drink a lot more than $5 worth. In smaller groups the service tends to be slow in order to save the business money. Or drinks.
There are also restaurants with “I-zi-ka-ya” rooms where you can sit large parties and order a more expensive no-mi-ho-di and I guess you usually have to order food in those places. I went to one of those last night and had my first (cheap) sake experience. I had it hot and cold, hot being more alcoholic, and cold being easier to drink. Also had a gin and tonic, which is a weirdly common drink here. There is also this mixed drink called “bridal pink” the contents of which are still unclear. So drinking in Japan in restaurants is actually a much more reasonable proposition than in America. I think this also might be a space thing, since there aren’t house parties in Japan because everyone lives in tiny houses with their parents. So group-drinking outings are really the only way to drink. It’s pretty interesting.
I have had a lot of days off this September from school. I always have Wednesdays off, but Tuesday was the autumn equinox holiday or something. So my friends and I went off to the zoo and then in search of strange porn in “The electronic city of Akihabara.” We got to the zoo pretty late in the day so we only had an hour till it closed (lunch and travel took up a lot of time). The Ueno zoo is famous for panda’s. But I think all of the panda’s died so now they only have small ‘red panda’s.’ You can still buy panda pancakes and plastic masks; you just can’t see live Giant panda’s. Which was a little disappointing. I did see lions and tigers and bears…(I’m resisting the urge to sing Wizard of Oz) and gorillas. My camera is pretty bulky but the zoom power it has is pretty awesome. I could zoom up on the monkey’s faces from maybe 60ft away.
After the zoo we ventured on in search of porn and ended up in some strange places in Akihabara. I have now seen way too many naked Asian girls. The interesting thing is the porn stores really aren’t hidden. And a lot of them are five stories tall. And at one’s selling maid and cosplay costumes there were even couples. Also, in Japan they can’t show genitalia on screen so everything is weird censored blocks. My friends were unsuccessful in finding truly bizarre porn and I got my fill of porn stores for a loooong time.
I am excited about Sunday because my host sister is performing in a musical and I get to go. I get to watch high school kids sing and dance and I couldn’t be happier. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to for a while and because of language barriers it felt weird to ask. But I did and my host mom told me we were definitely going, but that I might not understand the story. Which is fine by me. I do know that my host sister plays a boy proposing to a girl who is in love with someone else.
And soon I hope to find my way to my ultimate goal. The Studio Ghibli Museum. Where money will be spent. Apparently you need to reserve tickets for the museum, which I don’t really understand. But I told my host mom that I wanted to go there and she said something along the lines of ‘let me think on it.’ So, cross my fingers.
That’s pretty much my news from Japan for the week.
As usual, lots of love.