Some of you may have heard about the "little" earthquake Japan experienced this morning - and by "little" I of course mean *big*. The earthquake measured a 6.9 on the Richter Scale which translates into: it caused some serious fucking damage. Luckily, (for me at least), the epicentre of the quake was in the Ishikawa prefecture which is about 225 miles northwest of Tokyo. (Oita is about 615 miles southwest of Tokyo). I hate to admit that I didn't even know there was an earthquake in Japan until I got home from work tonight and read it online. It's probably a safe bet that many of you probably heard about it long before I did - kinda sad really, you know, since I'm living in the country n' all... Maybe I should turn on the TV a bit more.
Moving on to lighter fare...
After having dinner at a small Tex-Mex restaurant downtown called The Rosewood Cafe, Amy and I finally made our way out to a few bars! ...I think we must've been inspired by our waitress/bartender/cook who was clearly a little more than "tipsy" LOL. Oh and by "tipsy" I of course mean *off her rocker.*
We had heard about a popular foreigner's bar called "PEI" from a fellow English teacher that we met in our Japanese class last Tuesday, so we set out to find it. Surprisingly we didn't have too much trouble locating "the Canadian Bar" as the Japanese have dubbed the place. When we got there the place was packed! We had to squirm our way in to a table at the very back of the bar. I think it was someone's birthday so there were a bunch of teachers from the same company there. (Not our's). Some of them were friendly but unfortunately most of them weren't interested in meeting any new faces. ...Perhaps because they had already downed 40 jell-o shooters before we arrived. I dunno, just a theory? We left after two drinks for a bar we passed on the way there called "OK! Kid" - a Western bar named after the 1980's movie "Young Guns".
At first it seemed really sketchy (and so we should've known from its name) because we were basically the only people there and we were convinced that the two people working were conspiring to rob us - it's a long story. Anyways right before we were about to leave more people starting coming in so we decided to stay for another drink.
...The people that came into OK! Kid were pretty interesting folk. One Japanese man maybe in his 60's and his girlfriend who looked to be about 30(?) came in. She was crazy - her voice was so high pitched and baby-like - you really had to have heard it to understand. They were pretty friendly though - and bought us a round :) After them, a large group of people came in but we didn't really get to talk to them - from the looks of it though they were pretty far gone. Another Japanese man came in and we (tried) talking to him for a while, as well as two (reject) basketball players. Okay, so I don't know for sure that they're "rejects" but I'm assuming if you come to Japan to play basketball then you're not good enough for the NBA. ...I could be wrong though?
The people who worked there turned out to be okay too, and I don't think they were out to get us anymore. The one girl was from Mexico and really friendly and the guy was from Nigeria - I think both are going to the university in Beppu. We might go hang out with the girl and her group of friends some time once their new semester starts in April so that might be cool.
Hmm... Is anything else new? Well I mentioned briefly above that we went to our first Japanese lesson on Tuesday. It went alright - but I don't think I retained any of the new words/phrases that I didn't know beforehand. They gave us/we bought a workbook with the alphabet and key words and phrases in it, but so far none of it has stuck. I don't think I'll be able to read any Japanese any time soon! ...I'm hoping I'll have survival Japanese sometime in the near future. ...I know I should go back again this Tuesday, but it's so early in the morning! I know I know - it's for the best. I'll probably be able to drag myself out of bed for it. ...It's just sad having to wake up earlier on my day off than during the rest of the week :(
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