Izakaya

I wrote last time about the common ground that almost all of us foreigners here in Japan share; a mutually-understood foundation upon which it seems very easy to build friendships. This has definitely proven to be true, and I’m thrilled about it. However, I’ve been surprised and delighted to find out that this extends to not just us filthy gaijin, but to the Japanese as well. Since we’ve been here, I’ve been absolutely astounded at how accommodating and friendly the Japanese students have been to us. There’s a student group here called Nakama (the name means ‘friendship’, or ‘group of friends) who set up events and “parties” (usually a card table with a few 1-liter bottles of tea and soda set up in a function room, but hey, what are you gonna do?), and they’ve been just absolutely fantastic.

Approximately 99% of Nakama is comprised of incredibly nice, enthusiastic, clinically insane girls. They seem so excited to meet and hang out with us, and have already started planning Halloween and Christmas parties for everyone. They ask all sorts of questions about where we’re from and what we do in the US, and seem to know absolutely nothing, but in a very endearing way. Last week they invited us to a “drinking party”, which pretty much everyone was on board for. Meet on Friday, they told us, near Fuchinobe station (our local train station), and bring 2000 yen, the equivalent of roundabouts 18 dollars.

And so it was that Fuchinobe Station became crammed with 40-50 confused foreigners on that night. Mingling about, we started quizzically asking each other if anyone had any idea what the hell was going on or if anyone knew what we were doing. Rumors of bowling, of karaoke (oh my), of dinner, and of simply going to a bar circulated, and it seemed that anything was possible. Soon, the Nakama girls arrived and informed us that we were going to an izakaya. Not wanting to be the unwashed, uninformed foreigners that we most certainly were, we took delight at the suggestion, insisting that we make haste at once! “To the izakaya!”, we shouted. “Who doesn’t love an izakaya? Not me, that’s for sure!”. Subsequent to this we immediately began asking each other in low tones what the everloving hell an izakaya is.

We soon found out. An izakaya, it turns out, is the best thing ever. After paying our 2000 yen entry fee, we were brought into a wonderfully traditional looking Japanese restaurant, with low, chairless tables, cubby holes to put your shoes into, and fantastically loud waiters and cooks barking orders to each other in colloquial Japanese. Then, to improve the situation, we were taught two of the finest words that Japanese has to offer: tabehoudai, all you can eat, and nomihoudai, all you can drink. For two hours.

The casualties were severe. Not an artery left unclogged, not a liver left uncirrhocissed to some degree. The highlight of the night was a seemingly goofy but honestly touching taste of home: after having eating Japanese food that either the school or our friends have provided us the entire time we’ve been here, the cooks at the izakaya laid before us an absolutely enormous tray of what the Japanese call “poteto”. In English, these are better known as Tater Tots. The crowd went wild. I have never seen so much food devoured in such a short amount of time. Not to say the teriyaki, katsu, and sushi that we’ve been eating hasn’t been delicious, but they can’t hold a candle to tater tots offered to a displaced American like myself.