Japan

Japan is amazing. A beautiful, friendly, polite, crime free, karaoke laden, bizarre, sushi filled land of fun with really cool, really fast trains. I had an awesome time.

My two favorite evenings were the first night we got there in Nagoya and a night at the baseball in Tokyo. For our first night we went out for a couple of beers before walking down a street full of bars and restaurants to find somewhere to eat. A lady standing outside a restaurant beckoned us in and although the menu had no English writing on it, there were pictures so we would have some idea of what we were ordering, which was not always the case. We sat at a table next to the stage, which was being used to show a John Wayne movie on loop with the sound off. The music was a selection of cheesy Western love ballads. We ordered some drinks and a selection of food to share and were generally having a good time when the Japanese man sitting at the next table along decided it was the right time to start masturbating. From my angle all i can see was his hand making a mastubatory motion, but the people on the other side of the table confirmed there was flesh on display. One of the waitresses noticed his tumescent condition and politely asked him to stop. As his fun had come to an end for the evening, the man got up to leave but was so paralytically drunk at this point that he fell forward flat on his face. Again, no fuss was made. Two of the waiters helped him up and out of the restaurant. I don't think the same behaviour in the UK would have been treated in such a friendly manner. The evening's entertainment didn't stop there though. We continued eating and drinking and to finish the evening off the bar ran a bar wide rock paper scissors competition, led by one of the waitresses up on stage. By virtue of not really understanding what was going on we won the first round and were rewarded with a pen. And then on to the karaoke box place just down the street to finish things off with a couple hours of drunken singing. Masturbating man, rock paper scissors competition and karaoke... It was a great evening.

The baseball was the most enjoyable sporting event i have been to in ages. It was the Hanshin Tigers (Apparently Japanese baseball's best fans) vs the Yamuri Giants. I decided to support the Tigers because they had a good headband, which i sported throughout the game. It got me some good interaction with the Tigers fans. The atmosphere was brilliant, like a football game because of all the singing going on. It was a great game too, the Tigers won it 9-7 in the 10th inning. (That means it was very close to anyone unfamiliar with baseball parlance.) And you could bring beers in from outside so it was a pleasantly drunken experience. There was a lot of high tenning with Japanese people towards the end of the game.