A very Niigata weekend

On Saturday I, along with about 20 other Niigata JET girls, attended an "English Day" at a nearby Women's College. It was organized by this British guy David who is the head of the English department there. He's married to a Japanese lady, has been here for 14 years (good lord!), has lived in Tokyo and Nagano... and it all started when he did JET on Sado Island. Crazy. Anyway, this event basically consisted of 5 straight hours of chatting in English with Japanese girls (Yellow fever dudes, hold your comments). We got paid $100 for it, which at first I thought was a bit high... until about halfway through the day when I realized just how exhausting it is to be patient and chipper and smiley for that long! Phew!!

It was obviously quite different talking to college aged girls rather than my rowdy junior high schoolers but there were a lot of similarities as well. Such as, well, boys. My personal favorite was when a girl asked me "How many boyfriends do you have?" (perhaps a bit of translation trouble here) So I said, "Well, at any given time, I usually have around 5." To which she and the 3 other girls in our group shrieked like only J-girls can and then asked me "How do you make boyfriends?" Then I confessed that I am really not the girl to ask. And of course they all asked me if I liked Japanese or American boys better, oy.

After that, Kate and I went into Niigata to meet up with Nuria, Kristi and JP for dinner and drinks. Eventually Aaron met up with us and dinner and drinks turned into an all-night booze-a-thon, which I haven't done in about 4 months.

But first, we did Print Club!

In Japan, Print Club (or, PuriKura in its katakana-ized and shortened form) is all the rage. EVERYONE does it - not just 14 year olds. And I now understand why... it's freakin AWESOME. You get to take like 10 poses then you can choose which ones you want and THEN decorate them. And every machine is different, so you can never get bored.

Anyway we started the night at Shame, one of the more western-style bars in Niigata. There's usually quite a few foreigners there and um, bolder Japanese folks. 11:30 is when the last train from Niigata leaves and by then it seemed that the night was just beginning, so everyone but Kate (lame!) decided to stay out.


We had a long night ahead of us so we bellied up to the bar and started mingling.


I ran into Pru, this wicked Aussie who I used to b.s. with when I actually used to go out. She's hammered in this picture, but trust me, she's awesome.


A highlight of the night was when this guy, Daisuke (on the left), started chatting me up. He was hammered but kind of cute and wearing Dolce and Gabbana pants, so I played along. Eventually, in typical, self-conscious Japanese man form, these dudes started arm-wrestling. I'm fairly certain it was over me, but actually I think they forgot I existed once the testosterone started raging. Have I mentioned how random J-dudes are? Awesome.


Around 4:00 we hit a wall which kinda sucked since we still had an hour till our morning train, so we all passed out at our table at Shame. Good thing the owner there isn't a creep about people sleeping in his bar...


All in all, it was a good time but granny's been paying for it all week at school!