Happy New Year's

After passing out at 8:00 pm and missing new year's in Thailand two years ago and living through the L.A. riots-looking new year's eve fires of Ecuador last year, I was up for anything this year and Japan did not disappoint.

Taking the train into Tsujido, a small surfer town just outside of Tokyo, I met up with Hooper. We dropped by his apartment first and I was shocked by how tiny it was. It was like living in a closet! We quickly downed a bottle of champagne and headed out for dinner and some drinks.

Wyeth folks will be proud to know that I had some raw horse meat at dinner. It was actually good, so I am fairly certain that it was imported from Brandon, Manitoba. Mmmmm...tasty and helps to keep the symptoms of menopause in check.

After dinner we wandered in to what I can only imagine is the Japanese equivalent of the Broken Cue in Nepean - a local bar frequented by people who grew up together in Tsujido and have known each other since Junior High. Being Hooper's local bar, we were immediately warmly greeted and grabbed a seat at the bar next to Erico. She was a cute and stylish Japanese girl who had a habit of laughing and hitting me (as if I had just said the most hilarious thing) any time I said anything, even though I don't think she understood half of what I was saying. She shared some of her new year's noodles with us and tried to teach me a bit about Japanese new year's traditions.

Being the only foreigners in the place, we seemed to be at least a little interesting to most people. Hooper was especially interesting to the ladies, who kept asking if he was my boyfriend. He tells me that some of the guys called me "cute", which is supposed to be the highest of compliments, so that was a nice ego boost. I did try talking to a few of them, but their English is obviously limited and my Japanese even more so. One guy told me that he liked the Teriyaki Boys, a Japanese hip hop group that is supposed to be quite big. Hooper told me that these guys went to school with some of the guys in the Teriyaki Boys. I listened to a little bit of their music on someone's I-Pod.

Just after the countdown, which I didn't realize was even going on because I don't speak Japanese, a large new year's stew was brought out for us to eat. After a few more drinks, we narrowly avoided Karaoke, despite my initial drunken pleas. Glad that we skipped out on that and instead stumbled back to Hooper's at about 2:30. It was an amazing night of fun, weirdness and cool people. I don't imagine that I will have many more new year's eves like this.

Happy New Year's!