one more saturday night...

Well, three nights of adventure, or two really. I spent friday night tagging along with mike (aka. Black Dragon, from NYC). We started friday night at the usual izakaiya, then we went to shinjiku, stayed at a karaoke bar for 30 minutes (I lit up the house with my rendition of baby got back, hell yeah sir mix alot), after which we went to another bar, I had an "oki biru" which was about 4 beers in one mug, the kind of portions beer was meant to be served in. Played a drinking game with some japanese friends we met there, and after that we all wandered to this little jazz club that was tucked underneath a railroad bridge, basically a door into the concrete pileing, but was a very good jazz band and it was nice to get some dancing in, even if my partner was 5'1". Saturday I stayed in my hotel, mostly in my friend Don's room watching the olympics. We watched the first round of Judo, women's 48K and men's 60K. Tani-san and Nomura-san from Japan won the gold in both (Tani-san beat a french women in the finals, we were all quite happy about that) and that Iranian who said he was going to back out of the running in honor of Israel ended up wrestling, and ended up losing to a Georgan. Most likely because he bit him on the hand and pissed him off. Good to see Japan winning Judo, having invented it and all. The women's basketball team from here didn't do so well though, losing 62-128 against Brazil. I wish I could say that I've seen one competition with Americans in it, but the onlything played here are the sports with the japanese competing in it (which is more than fair enough). Japan killed the Italian men's baseball team, gambare nihon. Last night was a boisterous night at the izakaiya, Brandon and I sang many rugby songs, in honor of the Japan National Rugby jersey that I bought earlier that day.I go home in three days. Trippy.I've been here so long, I'm starting to forget some faces from home, nice to know I can uproot myself that well. It's going to be strange being away from this country, and I'm certainly going to miss it. -J