Dec
26
Unorthodox 25th of December
Different kind of day, I slept until 3:30 before people called me enough times to wake me up. It wasn’t a bad way to waste a Christmas day, actually. At least I was well prepared for what was going to happen later in the evening. We started off with a huge yakiniku party followed by two hours of drunken karaoke and a trip to Taka’s place in downtown Osaka. Personally, I would never have thought to be spending a Christmas night in Japan watching Eurotrip but nothing can really surprise me anymore.
Let's enjoy us!
Sayumi had reserved a table for 11 people at a Yakiniku tabe- / nomihodai near the Hirakata station so we all gathered there around 6:30. That’s when the party started. The setup was 5 Finns (Tiina, Lauri, Joona, Tommi and me), 3 Japanese (Taka, Yuzuru and Sayumi), 2 Germans (Knuth and Tim) and 1 American (Ryan-chan). We had two hours to eat as much barbecued meat as we could and drink ourselves into oblivion. In a way it was more of a race against time than a civilized dinner. Once the game was over Sayumi and Ryan left and the rest of us moved upstairs to the Ring to sing Karaoke for a few hours, although none of the songs were really Christmas related, the pièce de resistance of the show being Dschingis Khan’s Moskau. From the Ring we made a train trip to Taka’s place, bought some more booze as well as ramen and snacks on the way and had a late dinner in a nice room in his attic. That’s what most likely happened anyway. I have to rely solely on witness reports and photos on my camera as I had developed a bad case of blackout by the time we left the Ring. According to the legend I was very talkative on the train to Osaka. I came back to my senses around the time we started watching Eurotrip, though. Once the movie was over people were beginning to fall asleep and morning trains had begun running so we collectively decided to head back home.
Ze Germans giving it all they got
The fun stopped soon thereafter. After a double McDonalds breakfast and strenuous train switching I got back to the Seminar House only to realize my worst nightmare had come true. As stated in the last entry, I was supposed to have my room inspected at 9:30. That is only half the story, however. I also had to move all the stuff from our current room (including Henrik’s belongings) one set of stairs up to a perfectly identical room on the second floor because of a vague reason I tried asking for in Japanese but couldn’t understand the answer. Thus, after emptying the room and having it inspected I had to wait patiently on the lounge sofa for a few hours as my status slowly shifted from drunk to hung over. When they finally gave us the green light to move to the new rooms, around noon, I lugged all the miscellanea upstairs and went to sleep on a half-futon, the only sleeping material available at the time. Exquisite. I think some people came in to change a few of the tatami mats while I was sleeping but it could not have bothered me any less. While the partying was very enjoyable as a whole, I might opt for a traditional family Christmas next year.
Getting sleepy at Taka's mansion. Or well, except Joona.
-Antti