San, Shi

Days 3 and 4.

First real day of work.  That kind of hit hard.  The 2 and 1/2 weeks of vacation and easy work was over.  I walked to work; I’m still not comfortable with the layout of the base enough to bike around.  Did work.  Lunch was cool though; they had bento boxes.  I got oyakudon with rice (pork, egg, and onion mixture).  The initial plan was to hit the gym right after work, but I ran into the guy I met back in September.  He invited me on a trip to Yokohama, but the thing is they were leaving right after work. The trick with Yokosuka is that we have to travel with the train system.  The last train out from Yokohama is midnight.  So party early  to get the most of it.

Eff it, I’ll go.  We made a quick stop at the hotel room, at which point I was going to change, but neither of the two guys who were going were dressed down, so I decided to keep the pretty boy fits in the closet.  Finally, I was getting on a train.  It’s a pretty damn neat system.  You get a prepaid card that can stay in your wallet and operates with RFID.  You just press your wallet up against the reader and it realizes where you started, then you do the same thing at your destination and it automatically deducts it from your card.  After that, you just load thee card every week or so.

The trains weren’t too crowded, but it was a fairly uneventful ride going to Yokohama.  Getting off the train was awesome though.  Once we walked out and into Yokohama station, I hit a point of nostalgia.  I remembered walking through the station as a 13 year old, and when I walked through it again, I half expected to see the same break dancers that were at the corner.  They weren’t.  However, once you walked up and out the station, “real” Japan was here.  A busy, crowded, and lively city surrounded.  There was no longer a base and it was a real city.  So I was slightly disappointed to be walking into a British pub themed bar.

But only slightly,  the drinks were roughly 300 Yen for mixed drinks such as Long Islands, Vodka Crans, Jack and Cokes, and other staples.  Each only had a shot, though, but whatever.  Hint, captain morgan and Ginger Ale is pretty good.  Or maybe it was SoCo.   The place was really nice and clean and was filled with people.  After about 10 drinks, I was still not feeling like my socialable self.  I blame the jetlag.  At this point, one of the dudes suggested a Red Bull Vodka, and I said why not, I wasn’t really, really enjoying myself at this point.  Afterwards, I also drank beers, and suddenly, it was my normal liquored up self.  I noticed, that while people dressed nicely, nobody seemed to be turned off by our non-pretty boy fits.  An outgoing attitude got you further than pretty looks and nice clothes.

We got a group of three, (2 girls, 1 guy) to sit with us.  When I say we, I mean the one guy who could speak Japanese was liquored up enough to go around and start chatting with every group with a girl in it.  The nice thing with these themed places is you usually meet Japanese people that are a) wanting to meet English speaking people and b) are willing to try and speak English themselves. Apparently, it was the guy’s birthday.  I wanted to buy him a shot, but didn’t know how to order shots at the bar (i just point at pictures).  We sang happy birthday to him, and everyone cheered.  Then some folks in our group and their group exchanged business cards.  I learned in class this is what they do. Cool.  After this the night became a blur.  I will say, I found out the only thing that stuck from the Japanese classes I took this fall were “Hello, my name is”, “what is your name”, and “What is your cell phone number”.  Also, as I drank more, I became more willing to try it out.

We rode the train with one of the folks we met, walked her to the car, and called it a night.  Japan’s fun.

The next day, I worked, and went to the Commissary.  The highlight was eating some oyakudon.  I ordered it from this vending machine that gives you a paper with your order.  You hand this to the waitress and she gets it for you when it’s ready.  No confusion here.

Sorry no pictures, but the next blog should be picture filled.  (visited a temple).  Later dudes!