12-26

12-16 – 1:45pm

Well, that was an interesting Christmas.

After a rather pleasant day cleaning, doing laundry, and straightening things up, I went out to 新松戸 Shin-Matsudo to meet up with Greg and company. When I got there, Greg was with Katie, his half sister, and her fiancé in front of the station, talking to two of Greg’s former students. We chatted for a bit, and I was told I bear a striking resemblance to a Japanese film actor. What a surprise. Not the actor part, but the Japanese part. I get that all the time. Mom? Dad? There something you’re not telling me? I’m starting to think that the further back in my dad’s family tree you go the further east you’ll go as well. I mean, our last name means foreigner basically, so.
Anyway, we walked out to the, yes, you guessed it, the one, the only, Red Lobster. Where did you have Christmas dinner? Red Lobster. We enjoyed a mountain of crab, apparently a Bethell tradition. We also ordered to plates of crab, which wound up being rather more expensive than I’d have liked. This whole night was rather more expensive than I’d have liked, but, what can you do? Greg’s sister and her fiancé had just arrived in Japan, and they should be shown a good time. They seemed to enjoy my company.
So after Red Lobster, we decided to head to the 南柏 Minami Kashiwa to go bowling. Bowling was fun, and Katie began her long descent into silly drunk. Then again, so did I. Greg bought me a 2 liter jug of Asahi Super Dry for Christmas, which I essentially drank last night. Hallie had to leave after the first game to catch her last train home, and after our second game, in which I dominated just a little tiny bit, we decided to do something different. That’s when it happened.
Enter the ‘roke. Karaoke. Ugh. We somehow got conned into some absurdly expensive drink/snack package that we thought was just beer 飲み補題 nomihodai but was, in fact, not. So the four of us paid 9,000yen for 90 minutes of karaoke with a couple beers, a bottle of some Korean liquor, and a bag the size of my torso full of little tiny individual snack bags. Except they’re things like fish jerky, and rice snacks, and occasionally peanuts. And these little tiny squares in foil wrappers which I actually think were just fish stock, and lots of other things. They’re much tastier now that I’m hungover.
When the ‘roke finally ended, we stumbled outside and tried to decide what to do from there. We were all pretty well lit at that point, and Katie still wanted to go do something, so, Greg and I decided to kinda aim her in the direction of drinking games at my house, and we tossed her in a taxi and we all went back to my place. I kinda felt bad showing up with three guests that late, but, eh. We played drinking games in my room and we broke out the rice wine and the whiskey, and …. Ugh…. So much drinking….eventually we piddled out and fell asleep, and they took off this morning around 9, despite wanting to get up at 5 to head home on first train. Now all I have are empty pockets and what’s left of a giant back of random snacks. Woot.