I know it's ironic that when I didn't have internet I updated far more frequently than now when I have internet all the time. The past two weeks here in Japan have gone by so fast. I'm having a great time and school is picking up. I dropped Reading and Writing and added another English class, Japan and It's World to 1860. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that, but oh well. Today was my death day, not just because I had death class, but because I had class from 12 to 5:30 all in a row, no breaks, all subjects. I survived and tomorrow I just have Japanese, which I need to go to the language lab to hear the assignment to do. I'm probably going to get to bed in an hour so I can get up early and get that done before class.
Aside from school the big excitement is that I have officially been to a club and I've been twice. It's okay I'm so glad that I have Alex and Erica to hang out with because the way clubs work here is tricky. You see there are bars around campus, but if we wanted something that was bigger than a bar the size of a bread box we have to head into Osaka. It's easy to get into the city I used to hop on the train right in front of my house, but now I have to get on at Hirakata Shi with is a five minute bus ride away from the Seminar house. It isn't a huge deal everyone goes in a big group when we go. Anyway the last bus to the seminar house is at 10:30pm and the last trains go at midnight. This isn't conducive to going to a club and heading home at 2 or 3 am. So what most people do is go in groups and stay at the club until 5 or 6am when the trains start up again. If you get super tired you can rent a room at a karaoke bar for 2000 yen (20 bucks) an hour, which isn't awful if you split it five ways. Or you can take a nap in one of the big comfy internet cafes. There are also places in Tokyo I've heard about that are like lounges where you can read all the manga (books) you want and they have comfy chairs or cots, but I haven't seen them here.
Anyway I never went before because I was at homestay, plus the idea of being out ALL night sounds like a pain. Here's where Erica and Alex come in. Erica hates clubs but she goes because everyone goes and it's a good time either way. She also can't stay up until 5am and neither can I, enter Alex to solve this problem. Alex (who I'll talk more about later) lives in Osaka because he works for NOVA a company that has English teaching schools across Japan and has his own apartment in Osaka. We know him because he's a good friend of Erica's from home (Rhode Island) and he lets us crash at his place when the three of us get bored at the club. Erica gets the vinyl couch and Alex sacrifices a mat from his three-four layered stack of futon mats (lucky bastard, if you remember me struggling with my TWO at homestay). Anyway I get a mat from him and we all hang out at his apartment playing old Final Fantasy games on the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) until we fall asleep.
We've done this for the past two Fridays and every week Erica and I sit on the couch as people start making plans to go to Pure (yes that's really the name of the club) and promise we'll be going somewhere else. But there's no where else we know of that's as good or that anyone else is going to so we go off with Tracey, Drew, etc. and we have a good time. Pure has a pretty good set up, it's in Osaka a few blocks from Namba station and is next to location its next to a Karaoke bar (good for the afore mentioned reasons) and has a convenient (conbini) across the street, which is an added bonus if you get hungry. The layout is even cooler. You go down stairs, show your ID (for me my Kansai ID works because it has my birthday with the word birthday written next to it in Japanese) and then go to the window to pay you 1500 yen (15 dollars approx) and you get an arm band and a cup. This means you can go in and out of the club and you get unlimited drinks as long as you keep bringing back your cup. It's a sweet deal coming from the land of $6 cocktails on Nantucket.
Then you go past the little counter and through a GIANT WOODEN DOOR that would make Bilbo proud. The ceiling in the little hall way leading up to the door is low, even for me. Once you get into the club itself you're greeted with the dulcet tones of loud hip-hop and rap music. Trust me past this point things start making less and less sense. All the music is English and LOUD and there's a dance floor, but right to your left is the bar where all the staff speaks English and some of them are even Gaijin (foreigners) along with most of the clientell, which is a major reason Erica and I want to find a new place since we can hang out with Americans any damn time. Either way there are some Japanese folks and they're a hell of a lot of fun. There's a locker room where you can pay 300 yen to lock up your coats, purses, etc. I recommend taking out your cigarettes because you can light up anywhere in the club, which is awesome just for the novelty of it. Outside the coat room there's a little room across from the bar where you can play pool. This room also has a bookshelf that slides to the side Scooby Doo style to reveal a staircase that goes up to the VIP room. The VIP room sits on top of the locker/pool rooms and has glass windows letting anyone down by the bar able to look up at you like a giant fish bowl. It's a neat design and I can't do it justice with words. Anyway continuing straight past the bar there's a place for tables and straight head is the bathroom and if you go right there's the dance floor. We spend most of our time near the bar, in the pool room or in the hobbit hole. The hobbit hole is this little area where they've made a cave out of concrete and put a little table in there. It's tiny and I have a ton of pictures of us in there. On top of the hobbit hole is a stair case so that the stripper-esque dancers can go up on and dance on. You can't tell when you're in the hobbit hole, and when you're outside the dancers are just amazing. I just can't get over the fact that they get PAID to dance in the club up there for atmosphere. Yes guys, there are pictures of this on flickr. No Mom they don't get naked and NO I haven't gone up there, it's employees only and they are hiring.
Our first trip to Pure (at least my first trip) had me and Erica hiding in the hobbit hole from the loud music and sipping on our girly drinks. The entrance is a little below the floor so you have to step down into it so we were at about knee level and saw these cute Japanese girls in construction boots that were seriously boots. They went up to their knees! I thought they were so cool that I snapped a picture from our hideout. I wasn't secret squirel enough and they saw the flash and came to see what was up. They sat down with big smiles on their faces and we explained how much we loved their shoes and we chatted away for a good half hour. Alex showed up from work at some point and it was the first time I'd seen him since I left in November. So everyone was so happy to meet one another and we really hit it off with them here's a picture of Erica and the two girls (Aiko and Natsumi):
Aiko is in school to become a hairdresser and Natsumi is an English major at a college in Osaka (I couldn't remember the name) They were so nice and gave us suggestions on where to shop, etc. Erica got their cellphone addresses and we still text them back and forth. Heck we saw and hung out with them for a majority of the time we were at Pure this past Friday too! I love making random friends :) I still text Yuri (the girl I met when I got lost on the train) and I might get to go see her house in Kyoto!
The club is fun, it gives us an adventure. I'm going to leave my post here because I have to get up early tomorrow, but more on my other adventures later!
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