Iguana Sake and Einstein

Friday the 26th was one of the most interesting nights I’ve had in Japan. Me, Jace and two other friends of ours headed out to a place called Jin’s Place (or something). I’d seen the place before, since it was right by the gates to Kansai Gaidai, but I’d never gone in. The place looks rather shady, you have to admit. But one of our friends had been there before and invited us to check it out. So we did.

It was an izakaya (居酒屋)–a Japanese style pub. And in many (most?) izakaya, you take your shoes off at the front, just like in any Japanese home. Then, barefooted, we stepped out of the entrance and found an empty table. However, after not even a minute of sitting there, we decided to move to the bar counter, just for fun.

At the bar, we each started out with a beer. The owner chatted us up in fairly decent, but still broken, English, and asked each of us our names and where we were from. Then he gave us each a slip of paper, a pen and a pin, with which he asked us to write our names and pin on the world map hung on the wall. For me and the other American friend of our group, he pointed at a map of the US on which he asked us to pin our names. (I was the first person from Texas!)

After the guys did a round of something called a “shotgun” (not the American kind with beer involved–this was a double shot made of soda water and vodka, vodka which was apparently 95% alcohol, which I would argue, is not vodka anymore), we were all prompted to try a free shot of the most bizarre drink I have ever tried, and probably will have ever tried, in my life. Don’t worry Mom and Dad, this was an actual item on the menu and not some creepy concoction made in the back for unsuspecting foreigners. The owner brought out a clear bottle filled with a clear liquid. Also in the bottle–I shit you not–was a dead iguana. All four of us were handed a shot, though it was not one you were supposed to down in one go. So we sat there, sipping our lizard sake. Actually, it didn’t smell or taste like anything. It didn’t sting either, and was really quite smooth.

Through out the night, we also became friends with the staff. Of course we chatted with the owner quite a bit, as I mentioned, but one of the waitresses was first year student at Kansai Gaidai, and she was great to talk to. She was also quite pretty, and at one point in time I remember an older guy waving her over so that he could ask her, in English, “May I have your name?” After she told him, he asked for her “second name” (her last name), and she replied back in Japanese “I don’t have a second name,” and walked away. First time witnessing rejection in a foreign language! I thought it was hilarious.

As the night went on, the older guy sitting next to me, too, started talking to us, in horribly broken English, but mostly in Japanese. He asked us the usual, where we were from, but when he heard that Jace was from Australia, he suddenly got very excited. He asked us a question, which kind of baffled us. He asked “You know how the ground in Australia is red? Why is that?” We told him we didn’t know, and wondered why he was asking. He began to explain to us that mukashi-mukashi (a long long time ago), due to a large amount of iron and bacteria in the ocean, the tides turned red. The water level rose and rose until it covered Australia. When the water level sank, it left the residue on the ground, turning the earth red. This he explained in Japanese.

For some reason, this guy (who we later learned was called “Tsuu-san”) went on for another hour or so explaining various other scientific and historical phenomenon. We still have no idea why he did this, and I occasionally exchanged glances with the owner, who was listening in on our conversation a bit, and would always give me these “What is this guy smoking?” kind of look. But he was great fun, all the same.

As the night went on, we discussed how Japan came to adopt Chinese characters during the Han dynasty (It’s pronounced “Han” in Chinese, but in Japanese it’s pronounced “Kan”–this is the “kan” in “kanji”), as well as why Australian animals have pouches, John Nash’s Game Theory (think “A Beautiful Mind”), and–I am not joking about this–Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. All in Japanese.

When we left Jin’s Place, it was pouring down rain, but it didn’t bother me. It had been a great night.