Nightlife

Friday one of the people in the program (also from my same college) was celebrating her birthday by putting together a group to go out for ‘yakiniku’, which I’ve described before (where you get the meat raw and grill it yourself?). It was a lot of fun, especially as it was my first experience with something called ‘tabehodai’, which means essentially ‘all you can eat.’ The rules are this: everyone at the table has to order it if anyone does, and you can order as much as you like from the tabehodai menu in 1.5 hours for a flat rate. I believe that if you leave a lot behind you get charged extra, but this did not come up. I don’t know how much beef, kimchi, and various other things I ate, but I think that I most certainly got my money’s worth. I think that the waiters where a little scared, there were 22 of us Americans and we were all pretty rambunctious. And hungry. After dinner, most people broke off to continue their evenings, but since I was for once in the Shijo area on a Friday night with no other plans, I decided to see if I could see any maiko heading to engagements in the nearby Pontocho geisha district. It was a very festive atmosphere, but I didn’t see any maiko or geisha, just groups of rather tipsy salary men. When I decided that I wasn’t going to have any luck there, I opted to head over across the river to the Gion geisha district to see if I could see any there. I did have more luck, and was able to see at least three different maiko, though I felt too embarrassed to take pictures of them, and I didn’t really want to bother them while they were working. So I have no photos, sadly. This done, I decided that it was probably time to head home, only to realize that I’d already missed the last bus back home. This was a nuisance, but there was still the subway, though it is a little more expensive and doesn’t drop me off as close to my house. Well, I usually get to the subway station by taking an underground tunnel from underneath the very conspicuous Hankyu department store in a straight line straight to where I need to go. Unfortunately, sections of the Hankyu tunnel close after a certain point in the evening, forcing one to attempt to follow its route from street-level, which is more difficult than it sounds when one is tired and the streets are crowded with Friday night revellers. So, after several wrong turns I finally got on the subway home a little more tired than I had anticipated.
-The buses don’t run nearly as late as I seem to think.
-This all-you-can-eat beef place was only 2100yen for women and 2200yen for men, which is quite a steal, especially considering how expensive beef is in Japan.
-Pontocho maiko must be sneakier, because the streets are narrow with few side-streets, and yet I saw no one. Gion’s streets are wider, so I guess that it’s harder for them to hide?
-An alarming number of taxis go through the main street of Gion at night.
-Most all shops appear to be closed by 9, only the bars, clubs, and restaurants stay open late.