Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Although my tastes have adjusted as much as they probably ever will to Japanese TV, there is the occasional gem of spasticated visual pointlessness that makes me switch on, watch for 5 seconds then wonder that strange smell is as my brain disintegrates. One of my favourites during times like these is when there are amusing re-enactments of random events, during an otherwise normal chatshow. One such skit showed a chronically depressed man who wanted to commit suicide. His chosen method of killing himself was to collect up all his farts in plastic bottles, then to create an elaborate pulley system to allow him to rip the lids off the bottles all at once, after which he quickly lit a match, causing a massive, bomb-like explosion, destroying him and his apartment. After the dust settled, the skit then showed an alternate scenario - what apparently had actually happened. We joined him at the point where he was just about to pull the lids off the bottles. He pulls- lights a match- and all we hear is a tiny “parp” sound. He is shocked for a second, then smiles, and realises how stupid he has been and start to laugh. He then gets up, walks across the room- trips over on something accidentally, falls out the window and dies.

Anyway, this is an excerpt from the New Bibles book of Shenanigations 5:19;

And so it came to pass that the foreign scummery of the gun that was kuma decided upon that day to have a celebration in the name of absolutely fricking nothing. And they saw that it was good. The almightiester ones decreed that the place should be Avanti, and the time should be 7pm, for both were symbolic, in some contrived religious way that you will find explained in the footnotes. And lo! Baby Jesus arrived, and talked in ebonics. “whaddup mofo’s!” he exclaimed whilst poking his head out of the low-riding Cadillac - the phatmobile - he was driving”

Being the symbiotic borg-like entity that we JETs are, we had all decided in our heads that Friday would be a good time to get together. So where do we head? To the CITY of course. But oh, not the real city. Hitoyoshi.

Hitoyoshi is one of the oft-mentioned fake-cities that people like me love to loathe but sort of have to enjoy, like the clever but smelly boy you always copied your maths homework from in school.

The choices you have in a city like Hitoyoshi are extremely limited and it is entirely possible to ‘do’ everything the city has to offer (this means eat/drink, bowl and sing karaoke) in one night. Not wanting to spread ourselves too thinly, we decided on one activity for the whole night. So yeah, drinking. Bars that don’t have the same spatial dimensions as a coffin are quite a rare thing in a city this size, as are ones that aren’t the ‘territory’ of basketball-vested wannabe chinpira, or the infamous wandering-grope salaryman, so you have to choose wisely.

As I have said previously, decent bars are usually quite difficult to find in this country. The best bar in all of Japan could be some bar called “best bar” that has a sole, flickering on-and-off pink sign with a motif of an apple with a face, high up on a lamp-post indicating that it is on the 5th floor of the building opposite the street, which you would never think of going in to - so discovering a nice large bar in a city like Hitoyoshi is something of an achievement. We found that bar a while back and it is called Avanti. Avanti has a similar appeal to bars from back home, what with its pool tables, darts, varied food and plethora of foreign alcohol.

The only thing that really sets it apart from foreign bars are the uncomfortably camp-looking waiter with the corset-posture and eery, high-pitched voice, and the other Japanese patrons who, if they notice and acknowledge the presence of foreigners, can either cataclysmically ruin a night or make it rather cool. This night was one of the latter. After bumping into a group of people from a nearby board of education, we proceeded to get thrashed at pool by them, during which time one of the BOE guys thought it would be an excellent idea to highlight (and accelerate exponentially) our losing streak by buying a load of tequila’s and saying that anyone who misses a ball has to down a shot. For once, my crapness at all sports came to some indirect merit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2003 at 10:50 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.