First Night

After 22 hours of eating plane food and our gross breakfast at Chili's (so gross in fact that I needed some Imodium afterwards), Lydia and I were hungry for some real food, so the both of us, along with Kyle and his friend Will, headed over to Kokubunji and had some tempura and rice bowls. I must say, they were really, really tasty.




One of the things I like about eating out in Japan is the lack of tipping. In fact, from what I've read it's actually offensive to tip your waiter. I much prefer that to the North American custom where you're expected to leave a generous tip for even the crapiest of service.

Anyway, after dinner Lydia and I decided that 48 hours without a good night's sleep simply wasn't enough and that we would attempt to push the limits of our sleep deprived and jet lagged bodies even further. So instead of sleeping, the four of us all headed out to take part in one of Japan's greatest cultural experiences ever invented: Karaoke.

When Will and Kyle had first suggested karaoke, I was expecting a large bar with a stage, and drunk people on top of it singing to even more drunk people in the audience. Kyle said that he hadn't seen anything like that here which leads me to believe that that setup is actually an Americanized version of karaoke. Instead, the karaoke bar we went to was actually very similar to the one that I've been to in Markham. We got our own small private room with couches, a TV, a karaoke machine, and unlimited access to free coffee and tea (a privilege that we completely abused) and we were left to ourselves to sing our little hearts out.

The evening ended up becoming the most intense session of karaoke I've ever been a part of. In fact, I wouldn't even call it a session, it was a marathon. We were there from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. the next morning--that's 6 hours of singing--and surprisingly, even when our time was up, we left wanting more. Our final song was an energetic cover of everyone's favourite 1980s song, Ghostbusters.

When we finally exited the karaoke bar it was daylight outside and we stumbled back to Kyle's house to get some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, all the caffeine I had drank earlier turned out to be a bad idea and it took me until 7 a.m. to finally doze off. But all in all, it was a great start to our trip.