After making a Costco run to stock up on meat and cheese, I met Steph for our monthly Mexican night. Before we headed out though we stopped by a beer vending machine to give it a try.
After making our way to Motoyawata we headed for the restaurant. Getting there proved to be a little challenging since I had us take the wrong exit, but we saw that there were people setting up for some kind of street party (more on that later).
We finally got to the Crazy Cactus and had some delicious Negro Modelo and Sol cerveza for 399¥ and "free" popcorn. Nothing is really free though since they hit you up with a 300¥ (about $3) "seating charge". The food there is crap though, so after getting our drink on we headed down the road to another, completely unrelated Mex restaurant called Crazy Cactus (I don't think they are too original when it comes to naming things here). This CC has much better food but not much atmosphere nor air conditioning apparently.
Following that we decided to check out the street festivities that we had stumbled across earlier. We were met with ladder acrobats and kids running everywhere. When trying to find a better and less hecktic vantage point a light-baton wielding, armband wearing old man pounced on us. I thought we had wandered into some restricted area because he began pushing us away and saying something in jibber-jabber. He then started shouting "Japanese juice" and he rather forcibly guided us to a stall giving out juice. He instructed the juice pouring women to give us a taste by shouting "Japanese juice!!!" at them again and again. J-juice is what the rest of the world (including 99.999% of Japanese) apple juice.
Before we even had a chance to taste our juice the old man lept from out of nowhere with a bottle of "Japanese beer!!" He had us down our juice, thoroughly shake out any remaining apple taste and poured us both a drink. Within seconds he was back demanding that we "one-shot" the beer so he could top us off again. He came back a couple more times much to my delight and Steph's dismay. It also appeared that he was having a few drinks himself.
Here is the man of the hour on the right. Not sure who the other guy is but our man really wanted him in the picture.
Over dinner we were talking about the Japanese (as one tends to do when living in Japan) and if they are a friendly people or just very courteous. After last night, I'd say they are friendly when not in train mode.
After the dancing an old kimono'd woman who had been dancing approached us and asked if we enjoyed everything. Lucky for me my "J-juice" partner has been studying the local language a bit harder than I and was able to communicate quite well. Yay for a fun night!
Below are some pics of the evening and a video of dancing that went on for too long. Didn't bring my camera so you have to gawk at crappy phone cam shots.
No comments:
Post a Comment