On matters drunken...

In a desperate attempt to maintain chronological order and not miss anything out, a brief summary of an all night bender, typical of the ones us good-for-nothing JETs have from time to time, in Osaka around two weeks ago.

Well, said weekend had apparently been earmarked by someone or other as officially being Halloween. As a British citizen, Halloween means little to me besides greeting card shops making a fortune, having a few more sweets than usual as a kid, pseudo scary stuff on telly and trying to avoid answering the door to opportunistic teenage delinquents for whom the words ‘Trick Or Treat’ have virtually the same meaning as ‘officially sanctioned extortion’. For those hailing from the Land of the Free (and obviously by extension Japan, never one to shy away from the more bombastic commercial aspects of notable American holidays) it’s a time for great revelry and mischief making, preferably while wearing an extraordinarily elaborate costume.

This goes some way to explaining why it was that at 9.30pm on a Saturday myself, Sean, and fellow Brit Noel found ourselves wedged into a carriage on Osaka’s central Loop Line barely able to breathe while being squashed up against a 35 year old Junior High School student, Morticia Addams and Jason Voorhees. This was because of a so-called ‘Annual Event’ organized, I believe, over the internet (in an instance of what the media used to call ‘flashmobbing’ until about five minutes ago) whereby hundreds of foreigners in and around Osaka flock to JR Osaka station, board the loop line in possession of enormous amounts of alcohol and then proceed to have themselves a party on the train. At every one of the four or so stops between there and Tennoji in the southern central part of the city, everyone disembarks, moves one carriage down, gets on again and off they go. Why? Christ knows.

All I do know that my companions and I were able to withstand the general chaos for one stop before having to get off and catch a different train. None of us were anywhere near drunk enough to appreciate the whole thing properly, and when it emerged that there were ordinary, frightened-looking Japanese civilians going about their business on the train and got caught up in the melee completely by surprise, well, I just felt a bit bad really. Apart from anything else, a baying crowd of hundreds of drunk, noisy and disorderly foreigners in the otherwise civilized climbs of Japan is just slightly unsettling. It’s fine when there’s 10-15 of us, but you don’t want massed mobs, oh no…

Following this, we three hooked up with a slightly larger group in ‘young person’s going out place’ Shinsaibashi where we promptly fragmented, some going off to spend horrific amounts of money to get into places happily contravening every health and safety law going with the multitude of people they contained inside like battery hens, while others, myself included, took in the entertaining bar/club ‘Playpen’ (no entry charge) and upon talking to two Japanese girls dressed as sheriffs and one dressed as a French maid, following their advice, went to an insane bacchanalian techno night being held at a place by the name of ‘Underlounge.’ With very few foreigners present, a huge amount of Japanese trendy types sporting all manner of dress from impossibly cutesy costumes to what could be described as borderline fetish wear and some particularly brutal techno pounding away over the top of it all, the night ended on a high note.

Back to a capsule hotel (with incomprehensible emergency signs, see above) after that for three hours sleep, and a prolonged walk around Den Den Town the following day, where I was very good and didn’t spend stupid amounts of money on some piece of useless technology like I usually do. Ah Osaka, every time a good time…