Friday Night

Friday, myself, gareth, adam and hisa (adams girlfriend) decided to go out locally for dinner and a few drinks. there isnt much in the way of nightlife where we live, but there are a few restaurants and weve found a pretty nice bar nearby. we went for ramen for dinner, which is one of my favourite japanese dishes, its basically noodle soup with meat and stuff in it, really nice. well, after a few beers and a couple of shots of absynth, gareth and adam pursuaded me to go into town. we got a taxi in (i fell asleep...already!) and went for a few beers in the 'immigrants cafe' - the most popular ex pat bar in niigata, then onto Hotspot for a few beers, and nearly a disagreement with a couple of russians..there are quite a few russians in niigata, they come to niigata, buy cheap second hand cars and export them back to russia. anyway, after that we got a tthe axi to a club/bar called shame, which had about 3 people in it so we turned straight back around and left...at this point it was about 1am, so the only sensible thing to do was to go to karaoke of course...doing karaoke in japan is something you have to do here before you leave...its tradition. unlike in the uk, here, you have a separate room all to your group, so you dont have to sing in front of strangers. the places themselves look like dodgy hotels with people disappearing into small rooms...but great fun. the one we went to had the most bizarre eclectic mix of songs, really random bands/songs, but great ones. its amazing how you can like a band that no one has ever heard of and see their songs on the karaoke list... was such good fun. hisa is a great singer and sang loads of japanese songs...me, adam and gareth were awful...and i have to say, that i am catagorically the worst singer in the world, truly truly bad. i mean, you think you can sing, you put a cd on in the car and sing away, and you are the greatest singer in the world...but when its just you, and a mike and backing track, my god, thats a humbling experience! jeez, i used to sing in a band also...and you wonder why im an engineer! the funniest thing was trying to sing to Slipnot...who's idea was it to put slipnot on karaoke...?? well, me and gareth soon killed that one... we left around 4.30 and went to royal host. royal host is by the train station and is famous for late night revellers to get breakfast there and wait for the first train home in the morning, ours was 5am (which we missed as we fell asleep). royal host is like a late night kebab in the uk, but without the fights and the drunks. we eventually got the 6am train home and rolled into bed at 6.30am.