April 8, 2002
Went to a gaijin bar last night with Miles... Mercedes, one of my co-workers, invited me to come under the pretext that she might be able to waive the cover-charge (she was unsuccessful). I should probably give some background on the gaijin bars... There are plenty of drinking spots in Japan, the Japanese ones include the little mom-and-pop places where you can buy huge bottles of beer and nosh on stuff like sliced cabbage or shiokara (salted fish guts). And karaoke places, where you can drink all night for a flat fee while getting your eardrums run-through with drunken wailing. I've been told that drinking is one of the national passtimes, and nothing goes better with Japanese food than a beer... Now that I've been here for a number of weeks, I find it impossible to have beer without Japanese food or vice-versa because they just go so well together.
But gaijin bars are a different creature... Essentially, they are bars run by foreigners, for foreigners. As a result, they highly resemble western bars, but with a few Japanese-like touches here and there. The menus feature stuff like hoagies, burgers and things like Japanese curry dishes. The bar in question was called Bernie's (like, 'weekend-at'). Bernie's looked like an American sports-bar, with wood-paneling and various sports memorabilia on the walls. The staff were either English-speaking Japanese or foreigners who were there to make an extra buck (like Mercedes). There were a number of theme-nights, of course... ladies' night, Hawaiian night... well, you get the picture. Oh, and there were also a pair of pulchritudinous, comely Japanese lasses in these skin-tight spandex get-ups who were obviously there to distract people as part of a promotion to exhort patrons to pour Bacardi rum down their throats. (Not just any rum, mind you- it must be Bacardi. Or something horrible will happen to you if you drink an inferior brand, I assume.)
I'm sitting with Miles, and we notice that the clientele seem to be mostly Kiwi, Australian or (oddly enough) west African. I think that I won't pick-up much Japanese if I spend too much time around other foreigners... I mean, it might be fun to drop-in once in a while, but I don't think I'd come here regularly. As we were talking, I was asking Miles a few questions about the differences between Australians and New Zealanders.
"Americans always assume that New Zealand and Australia get-along together... well, we don't always get along-- stop peeking at the Bacardi girls, ya horny bastard!"
"Huh? Oh, sorry." I turn my head to look back at him. "Well, isn't there some kind of mutual-defense treaty between the two? I read somewhere that there was."
"Um... that's true, but... Turkey and Greece are in NATO, but they don't get along all the time."
"True... okay, what kind of jokes do Australians make about New Zealanders?"
"Sheep. Sheep jokes mainly."
"Sheep jokes?"
"Yeah, they make fun of our big sheep population. We all make love to sheep. We all wear velcro gloves to hold sheep still while we rape them. That sort of thing."
"Velcro gloves?!" I laugh and swig my drink. "That's pretty funny. Okay, well how do Kiwis make fun of Australians?"
"Assholes with stupid accents. Basically, we joke that they're a bunch of assholes with dumb accents who make fun of our sheep-raping. I mean, I rape ewes all the time. It's not nice for them to make fun of me and Fluffy Edna..." He laughed and shook his head.
Anyways, work at the office is proceeding apace... I hope to post some interesting new stories within the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
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