Enoshima Island Cookout

Recently I've been spending a lot of time in a place called Fujisawa. It's the closest large city with a decent amount of nightlife, has a great Katsudon shop, and it's only a couple stops on the train from my station. About a month ago, we found a bar called Mattari's and made it our default spot to go to since it's bigger than other bars, they always play old-school hip-hop, and the drink prices are reasonable. While at Mattari's in Fujisawa the previous weekend, Rory and I met a dude from New York named Mitch who told us about a big cookout the following weekend at Enoshima Island.

Recently the weather has been terrible so we weren't even sure if it was going on. After countless text messages between the crew, Andrew, Eric, and I met at Fujisawa and went to meet Rory who went ahead on bike to make sure everything was still happening. All day, the sky looked like all hell would break loose, but we managed to get through the cookout with no rain.

The food there was great. Even though I love all kinds of Japanese food, it was such a relief to eat proper American style hot dogs and burgers. There seemed to be an even mix of Japanese, Australians, and Americans. It was pretty odd for me to see Americans completely fluent in Japanese. For some reason it just doesn't seem right to me, and in some respect I hope I don't turn into a lifer over here even though it's a great place to live.

If I remember correctly, I don't think that Ria (Mitch's girlfriend) and her friend had ever heard of shotgunning a beer before but they did like champs.

As the beer ran out and the sun set, a group of about 10 of us went to go to Karaoke. The place looked very cool inside, with each floor a different fruit theme with more neon paint than I've ever seen. Most of us thought that the price was 300 Yen ($3) for a half hour and all you can drink, however we soon realized that it was 3,000 Yen ($30) for 2 hours.

After Karaoke, we lost Andrew, Eric, and most of the women. So we headed back to where it all began, Mattari's. As soon as we walked in I started talking to this white chick from South Africa who was kind of cool. Her slightly overweight British friend who claimed to be her girlfriend was not so inviting however. It was quite a shock to me since everybody over here is so nice. It was pretty funny to see actually; they had only been in Japan for two weeks, spoke no Japanese at all, and acted as if we owed them something.

Needless to say, I wasted no time in bouncing to the next table where I met the head boss, or Shachou, of a landlord company who bought me a beer and wanted to me to work for his company. He spoke a little English and wanted me to teach him. The best I put together at that hour was to teach him "Yo, sup man!?" Between the beer he bought me and the English lesson he received, I'd say I got the better deal.

At some point we left Mattari's and Rory and I made the long trip back to his apartment at about 5am. Halfway to his house we met some teenagers at the convenience store who all had scooters. They humored us as we struggled to make conversation and eat our Onigiri and then we headed back on our way.

I'm still recovering from the day and luckily I have today and tomorrow off. I'm supposed to go to Tokyo tomorrow to see Kabuki for the first time.

Laterz - Brad

I may edit this post later to throw up a video link if I can get the files from Rory.

Music: Myspace.com/TheNationalPool
Email: thenationalpool@gmail.com
Pictures: Flicker/TheNationalPool