Karaoke overdrive

I've kept my loneliness on a long leash the last few days. In fact, I've been so social, it's hard to remember why I'm lonely in the first place. Both Friday and Saturday nights, on this beautiful and mercifully extended three-day weekend, I stayed out late, singing my guts out until late in the morning.
Friday, I met with some fellow English teachers in the nearby city of Higashimatsuyama. We ate at a great Korean restaurant and then went to my favorite local bar (not local exactly...but, the next town over), The Blue Lagoon. It's a bit of a Gaijin bar, with a number of foreign English teachers and a number of Germans working at a Bosch plant in Higashimatsuyama. The upside is that I'm picking up a little German, though it's just the bad stuff that you shouldn't say. On a lighter note, I've been enlightened as to the nature of the German custom of sitspinkel (spelling is definitely incorrect). Basically, I guess it's generally accepted that men have to piss sitting down. I have so far refused to participate in this experiment - and not because I'm a chauvinist pig. I aim for porcelain, and generally avoid backsplash. Anyway...
We met with some of my new Japanese friends - the fixed-gear enthusiasts - at the Blue Lagoon before heading to a nearby karaoke place. Karaoke lasted until about 2, and then all of the Gaijin went home. I felt a strange sense of accomplishment sitting in a room full of my new Japanese friends, with no other white people to translate or comment in slang English with. I felt like they were really my friends, and not just an interesting form of scenery, or something. We were actually talking about real things that I care about, which is incredible. I'm really glad that I memorized the Japanese word for Capitalism - Shihonshugi. I'm sure I caused some confusion, but we all had a laugh, and my new friend Saiko-san even drove me home at 4 am! How nice is that?
And the next day, I woke up and hung around the house for a little while before visiting my old friends Josh and Shannon, who as I've mentioned before, just moved to Tokyo. This fact single-handedly destroys any possibility of loneliness. I'm just so happy that, though I can't see them on a weekend night for dinner or something, I can always visit on the weekends and stay over. If I don't snore too loud, that is.
Anyway, we all met up with my new French-Canadian friend Martin. Besides bearing a passable resemblance to Will Moffitt, Martin's a really funny guy and has been teaching me some Quebecois French slang. He's been here for a number of years, and has been studying Japanese and Japanese culture pretty seriously, so he's also a great guy to help explain Japanese history and things. We ate at a traditional Izakaya, which is an old-style Japanese pub, sort of. We ate some great stuff, including grilled squid, and I even tried a natto omlette. Natto is fermented soy beans, and it kind of tastes like feet...and the taste sort of lingers and the smell permeates. Live and learn.
One of the most amazing things about Tokyo on Saturday was that Martin showed us an AMAZING record store, tucked away on the 8th floor somewhere, and while I was perusing, I got quite a shock. I found a Bluesanct Records cd on the shelves. That doesn't sound that impressive in itself, but Bluesanct is in fact my ex-boss MKL's basement-based record label. I nearly shit a brick, seriously. How amazing is that. Something recorded and packaged and sealed a few blocks from my house in Bloomington is now residing on the other side of the world with me. I really like I ran into MKL himself in Tokyo, or something. It was like finding an old friend there, among the Will Oldham records. I also have a much-increased notion of how famous MKL probably is, on the international scene, and of what a pleasure it was to get to know him and work with him at the record store.
After all this, we went to Josh's favorite bar in the whole world - Bar Plastic Model. I grew to love the place during my time there. It's an 80's themed Otaku bar, with great Japanese new-wave music and anime and VHS tapes of Japanese commercials and stuff. It's also about 8 feet wide by 15 feet long. It's amazing.
And to top it off, we decided to stay out until the first train 5.41 am. So, we went to karaoke, and managed to run into some really drunk Japanese guys that were really nice. They paid for most of the bill, and we drank a lot and sang all night, and I even managed to keep up singing in Japanese! The guys were totally crazy, and kept shouting that we needed to "Keep drinking!" By the end of the night, one of them was passed out cold, and another guy just kept on hugging us. It was really, really, really fun.

This post is going to remain positive. It was an amazing experience. I really love that I can be with Josh and Shannon here. I remain really worried about what my job might be, as I have been, and as I will be. But, for the present, I'm gonna have some tea, read a good book, and just smile and be glad that I've stuck it out, and I have friends here now, and a social life to go to when I'm feeling down. Thanks for reading.