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Hi chaps sorry for the uber-late post but in May I met resident French surrealist and bi-lingual superstar Charles in Japan!
I was heading over there with a workmate for three weeks of blessed R&R touring the sites at Osaka - Nagasaki - Fukuoka - Kyoto and Tokyo along the way! Before I left I decided to hit up Charles and ask if he would be about for a few drinks and knowing how expensive Japan may be he offered to show us some cut price short-cuts to a good **** up.
So we met up by this dog statue by Shibuya station next to the big intersection where millions of people cross that you always see on TV reports on Tokyo, etc. Its a popular place to meet as there were tons of Japanese people hanging around looking cute yet shifty and highly fashionable. Luckily neither I, my mate Andy or Charles looked either Japanese, cute or fashionable and we found each other with a minimum of fuss.
Shibuya & Harajuku is the nexus of cool and young which usually means that it is pretty expensive but not always if you know where to look. So Charles took us round the corner and into a side street off the main strip but a few meters from the station to this three or four storey building.
Inside it looked like a packed narrow-ish but long beer hall. Loads of guys sat at tables smoking profusely and drinking beer. Beer machines similar to those at the Millenium Stadium (but were actually efficient rather than the PoS crappy bars manned by Wales' not so finest) dispensing Suntory beer worked overtime and dumb waiters disengorged a constant stream of cheap but redicously delicious food. The staff also were running around here and there delivering beer and food to punters with two way radios and headsets for communication across the building. The operation was slick and highly efficient yet also slightly chaotic in a controlled sense if that makes..er..sense?
Charles cooly got us a table on the 2nd floor and instantly introduced us to the drinking options: Suntory beer for peanuts or a Suntory highball: a combination of cheap Suntory whisky and lemonade/soda/whatever and if you finished it? 50 yen but if you didn't finish it? Something like 250 yen which is still just £1 I believe. In other words: dead cheap drinking.
The night rolled on and on with more beer, more highballs and lots of chatting about Charle's experiences in Japan and it was so amazing to get such a firsthand insight into an ex-pats' life in Japan.
We all had a great time and after we had settled our criminally small bill headed out to a corner shop where we got something I can only describe as lemon flavoured alcohol at about 7 - 10% which was awesome. After we picked up lots of this we did what any self-respecting European would do and thats hang around in a playground in the dark getting wankered. Good times.
Sadly the spectre of work and no trains after midnight haunted us and reluctantly we had to go home. It was pretty good that we left when we did because me and Andy in the end caught the very last train back towards Eastern Tokyo which terminated three stops before Asakusa where we were bedded up meaning a 30 minute tramp back to the hostel.
All in all a great night out and I'd reccomend anyone visiting Japan to hit Charles with the might of thor for a great time!!!!
I was heading over there with a workmate for three weeks of blessed R&R touring the sites at Osaka - Nagasaki - Fukuoka - Kyoto and Tokyo along the way! Before I left I decided to hit up Charles and ask if he would be about for a few drinks and knowing how expensive Japan may be he offered to show us some cut price short-cuts to a good **** up.
So we met up by this dog statue by Shibuya station next to the big intersection where millions of people cross that you always see on TV reports on Tokyo, etc. Its a popular place to meet as there were tons of Japanese people hanging around looking cute yet shifty and highly fashionable. Luckily neither I, my mate Andy or Charles looked either Japanese, cute or fashionable and we found each other with a minimum of fuss.
Shibuya & Harajuku is the nexus of cool and young which usually means that it is pretty expensive but not always if you know where to look. So Charles took us round the corner and into a side street off the main strip but a few meters from the station to this three or four storey building.
Inside it looked like a packed narrow-ish but long beer hall. Loads of guys sat at tables smoking profusely and drinking beer. Beer machines similar to those at the Millenium Stadium (but were actually efficient rather than the PoS crappy bars manned by Wales' not so finest) dispensing Suntory beer worked overtime and dumb waiters disengorged a constant stream of cheap but redicously delicious food. The staff also were running around here and there delivering beer and food to punters with two way radios and headsets for communication across the building. The operation was slick and highly efficient yet also slightly chaotic in a controlled sense if that makes..er..sense?
Charles cooly got us a table on the 2nd floor and instantly introduced us to the drinking options: Suntory beer for peanuts or a Suntory highball: a combination of cheap Suntory whisky and lemonade/soda/whatever and if you finished it? 50 yen but if you didn't finish it? Something like 250 yen which is still just £1 I believe. In other words: dead cheap drinking.
The night rolled on and on with more beer, more highballs and lots of chatting about Charle's experiences in Japan and it was so amazing to get such a firsthand insight into an ex-pats' life in Japan.
We all had a great time and after we had settled our criminally small bill headed out to a corner shop where we got something I can only describe as lemon flavoured alcohol at about 7 - 10% which was awesome. After we picked up lots of this we did what any self-respecting European would do and thats hang around in a playground in the dark getting wankered. Good times.
Sadly the spectre of work and no trains after midnight haunted us and reluctantly we had to go home. It was pretty good that we left when we did because me and Andy in the end caught the very last train back towards Eastern Tokyo which terminated three stops before Asakusa where we were bedded up meaning a 30 minute tramp back to the hostel.
All in all a great night out and I'd reccomend anyone visiting Japan to hit Charles with the might of thor for a great time!!!!
