Izakaya in Tokyo

So apparently our classmates in Shanghai had a wonderful time at dinner with the people from Meiwa. I was not able to make it because I had plans to travel to Japan for a few days during our break.

A significant part of my mission on exchange is to establish contacts in Asia, so I of course checked in with Yoshi to see if he knew anyone Tokyo who would be interested in eating/drinking with a random gaijin. It just so happened that a few of Yoshi's co-workers from Nippon Oil were interested in such an encounter, and so we arranged to meet for izakaya on the very same night that our friends were meeting with Meiwa in Shanghai.

Our hosts sat us down in a restaurant that we never would have found as tourists, and began to review a menu that looked as though it may have had about a thousand items on it. I was instructed by Sakuto-san that we first were to order a nama-chu, or a medium-sized beer which didn't seem so medium-sized to me, as our hosts took care of ordering food.

The first of the many small dishes of food that came out to the table was a platter of raw horse meat. I'd eaten horse before on my trip to China, so I was not so taken aback, but the expression on the face of the Canadian guy from Pepperdine who was traveling with me was absolutely priceless. Our hosts laughed at the pause we took when the horse arrived and we had a few pieces. It was quite delicious actually. After that there were probably another 15 dishes that came out, all delicious, along with bottles of sake and shochu. By the end of the two hour parade of food and drink I felt like I had great friends in Tokyo.

After izakaya it was time for the second party. We left the restaraunt and walked a few happy blocks to a place called Kennedy House. By this time it felt like the language barrier that was clearly present at the beginning of the night had faded away. It's very interesting how this happens after a few drinks; I've experienced it a couple of times now, and I think Jeri refers to it in her previous post. We arrived at Kennedy House to find an awesome 60's cover band. I was blown away by their Beatles renditions, and when they played the Beach Boys' Kokomo I almost jumped out of my chair. The finale was a well-known Japanese song called Cherry Blossom, which was sung with sign language by a women with an incredible voice. It was so beautiful. Seriously. I almost cried.

And that was the night. Thank you Yoshi again for arranging cultural exchange that was 100x more authentic than anything we could experience in a classroom. Having been through this a couple times now it was very interesting to be able to pick up on the tradition and structure that is embedded into these sorts of events. Watching my Canadian friend attempt to go through the whole experience out of context really helped to show me just how much I have learned over the past year about building business relationships in Asia. These lessons are invaluable, and when the Tokyo/Shanghai contingent gets back to the states I think we all owe Yoshi a.. NAMA-CHU!