Boozin' and yakuzin'

Karen, I'm sad to say, is leaving Japan this week and going home to Australia. Before going home, she wanted to try all the millions of interesting-looking izakaya in Shiroishi that we'd never got round to. So we came up with the...

1st Annual Shiroishi Crew Izakaya Crawl! (a.k.a. "わかんない tour '07")

Present were yours truly, Karen, Kim, Chantelle and Wako. We also randomly bumped into Ewan halfway through.

For the first time on this blog, I'm leaping boldly into the realm of Web 2.0 by embedding some videos for you.

So, let's get started...



Pretty soon Wako finishes work and comes to join us.



While we wait an age for our dinner to arrive, Wako entertains us by trying to eat a lemon.



That was our first izakaya, Sasaki, taken care of.


Picture of frowning proprietor taken, time to move on! I'll let Wako tell you where we went next...




After that was Shimai, a very cool Korean izakaya. Here we bumped into Ewan, and the owner gave me a free can of Korean aloe drink with weird lumps in it.


Next up was Dream's Heart. This place has a certain sleazy charm. Very film noir - you could imagine a washed up journalist/private detective coming here to get drunk on cheap whisky and forget the woman who betrayed him. From the outside the place looks like a strip club, so we were relieved when we walked in and discovered it was in fact a bar.

By this time some of us were getting a little drunk and emotional...



OK, this is where the night starts to turn weird. There's a mysterious building called Latin Quarter where we've always wanted to go, and we decided this would be the night.


Given the name, I imagined it would be Shiroishi's trendiest not-refurbished-since-the-80's nightclub, filled with mirrorballs, smoke machines and desparation. But the place was actually the complete opposite - a very traditional Japanese-style nomiya. It was decorated to look like the inside of a samurai's house, and even had a fake thatched roof.

While we were in there, in walked this friendly old man wearing a traditional yukata. 'How quaint!' we thought, and we went over to say hello. He shook our hands and we took our picture with him.


Only later did we discover that he is the most dangerous man in Shiroishi. We had been drinking and bantering with the head of the local mafia! In fact, Latin Quarter is apparently the local yakuza hangout and everybody in there apart from us foreign idiots had been a gangster!

'Cool!' I thought, when I found out. Some of us, however, were not so happy. Here Chantelle is obviously the only person who's worked out what a perilous situation we're in. At this time, the rest of us were still blissfully ignorant.



Chantelle ordered a beer out of fear, even though she hates beer. Karen drank Chantelle's beer a little too quickly and is now rather merry. (Sorry the video is sideways.)



Kim, however, is more worried because she made the mistake of ordering water.



[Shiroishi scandal! STOP PRESS! See that bloke in the top left of the picture above? That's a well-known Shiroishi politician. Wako was on his campaign team during the elections earlier this year. Here we have photographic evidence of him drinking with his yakuza buddies!]

Next up, Kyo-zan. Dig that concrete windowless chic!

Not much to say about that, so let's move on to Run-run, the only place in town that was still open after 11 on a Monday night. It was tiny and looked like a portakabin. We walked in to find the cringingly stereotypical aging divorcee proprietress (on the right in the pic) getting quietly drunk on her own. She then proceeded to grope and molest both Karen and myself until we left.

The final stop was, of course, 7-11!


And so we come to the end of the 1st Annual Shiroishi Crew Izakaya Crawl. Let's hope next year is as much of an adventure!

Tsuruha Drug

A few days ago I had the chance to spend quite a long time in my local Tsuruha Drug store. This is one of several chains of 'chemist superstores' that are very popular in Japan. The existence of these stores just reinforces my view that Japan is a nation of hypochondriacs.

Wako spent ages doing something to do with makeup and so I was left to kill time by wandering around the store taking pictures with my phone. It really is quite a surreal place.

First, to give you a sense of how huge this place is. This is one aisle...


And here is just one pile of washing powder...


OK, now let's move on to the insecure and gullible women department...



Next, the mysterious or improbable products department...


Interlude: Wako standing under a giant kokeshi doll...


Next, the sexiest man in Japan. This is what all young Japanese men strive to become. I'm deadly serious.


And finally, the silliest item in the whole store. An official willy-measuring device...


The red label says, "A self-check you can do at home." The writing down the side says, "To check(confirm?) the phenomenon of night-time erections."

Usually I like to finish with a witty one-liner but I'm still reeling from that last picture so I'll just leave it there.