Japanese Only

Kizu-cho, Kyoto

Last few days have been weird specially yesterday, ok let me tell you why. Here is the story, Justin and I were kind of sick of just staying at home so we decided to go bar hunting around the area, so as soon as we got home we went straight for the train station and we were passing by this bar called Kushi Raku (I think I told you about it), anyhow, we were passing by and there were this teenagers (around 13) dancing on the streets so we were just looking them perform when this guy comes to us and show us his police badge (Police is called Koban here), and so there is this Koban saying something in Japanese which of course we didn't understand, and he asks in english for an ID, since I don’t carry my passport for security reasons I got kind of scared, a little tempted to start running but I didn't and instead I showed my ATR Library card, and the police took it!!! and he said that was fine, it was hilarious, anyhow Justin did likewise and he told us that he is asking for ID because there is like a crime wave or something around Takanohara area (which I think he was liying), specially by Chinese foreigners, anyway at the end he let us go and we headed towards Shin-Omiya station.

When we got there we started hunting for bars around the area and we found fairly easy this sort of sports bar which was pretty small but well was our first guess, thankfully the waitress (there was only one) spoke fairly fluent English, not that mine is perfect but I have enough skills to communicate, anyway she was telling us that she was in Canada for like 10 months and that’s why her English was so good, she was hot but she was the type of foxy, high heels everyday girl. She recommended us this couple of clubs around the corner, which was really kind of her considering the fact that we wouldn’t get drunk in her bar.

So we went walking down the street and we found the club, outside, this waiter/ballet was just hanging out, so we approached him and showed some interest on entering the bar, in reply he tapped Justin in the bar, crossed his arms in an X and said “Japanese Only” …. WTF? … what do you mean Japanese only?, so we started to walk down the street a little confused of what just happened and we reached the other bar, we went upstairs and again “Japanese Only” was the answer of the waiter, on the way down in vengeance I peed on the stairs (I have to say I was a little tipsy) and we went back to Vancuba’s bar (vancuba is how Japanese say Vancouver if you were wondering)

After a couple of beers a couple of darts match and frustrated for our failure of search of good bars we went back to Takanohara, in our way back we stopped by Kushi Raku which is this restaurant/bar we went the first Sunday with Yanagida-san’s family and we ended up having some beers there, and guess what? We enjoyed it!, Kushi Raku from now on is our base, we found a family and a home.