horse in the wine
I’m going to try out my skeptical, cynical, sarcastic voice with a vernacular twist. It’s been a while.

So I don’t like to go out like every night, you know, but my friends have always taken it personally when I don’t want to go out. Teaching really takes it out of me, so sometimes I just need some time to myself to recover, but I swear, some people don’t understand why you would not want to be in a crowded restaurant with a bunch of obnoxious, near-drunk people asking you why you haven’t finished your beer yet.

Like last Thursday when one of my better friends here keeps emailing my phone (that’s how we communicate in Japan), asking me why I’m not at the bar, after I’ve already told him I don’t want to go out. First of all, phone emailing (like text messages) is annoying as hell—you can convey short messages, but when you want to explain more complex reasons, it just leads to a trail of about 10 messages back and forth, and each message is a minimum 4-minute investment to typing. As a side note, Japanese people are ridiculously fast at writing on their phones. I think I saw some dude writing a term paper on the train on his cell, which is possibly the coolest thing I can think of right now. Except maybe the rock group Kiss. They’re definitely cooler, even though I don’t like their music. When I do go out when I’m tired, I usually just kind of sit their and nod once in a while, and then people get angry with me.

“Dude, what’s the matter with you? You’ve barely said anything. Say something funny,” someone will say.

“I slept with your girlfriend.”

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about.”

And other times I like cut loose and just make an ass of myself, which I’m not very proud of either, but it feels good. And it doesn’t help when my friends encourage it.

So after refusing to go out all week, I went out to someone’s birthday party in Osaka. We had our own room reserved in a nice Japanese Italian restaurant, not an Italian restaurant. In a Japanese Italian restaurant, they have Italian dishes, but they’re Japanified, like squid pasta or octopus lasagna and stuff.

There were a lot of other people from the teaching program I’m on, so they were mostly assistant language teachers in Japanese public schools plus some of the Japanese friends they’ve made. One guy, who is not at all attractive with an equally annoying personality—okay, so he wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t the coyote-like laugh he lets out at inappropriate times—walks in with three modestly good-looking women. Only in Japan, I guess.

On the other hand, the biggest asshole (and I don’t bust out profanity unless it’s very, very well-deserved) I’ve met in Japan, Mr. E, walks in with two ridiculously hot women, who I’ve met before, but I have to throw it in here as continuing evidence for the age-old theory that women like ass holes. I don’t know what it is. Women are always—and I mean ALWAYS—complaining about how bad their men treat them, but I honestly am starting to believe that they like abuse. Okay, maybe some women don’t, I don’t know, I’ve never been a woman, but at least there’s a good sized population of jerk-seeking women that simultaneously say they’re sick of winding up with jerks. I could go Freudian and speculate that they’re trying to recreate the abusive relationship they had with their father, but I’ll leave that up to readers to decide.

So, like I was saying, Japnaese Italian restaurant, hot women, stupid guys, and me and my buds Mr. M and Mr. N.

Then this good-looking girl sits down next to me. I’ve know her since my first day in Japan, but I barely see her. She’s a pretty dull person, and not very smart. She dumped her long-distance boyfriend to sleep with Mr. E, whom just had her as a vacation from his other Sunday girlfriend. This was the subject of some gossip among my friends, as we don’t really have anything else to talk about. It sparked a big debate about dating ethics, which will someday be added to other great philosophical works, I’m sure.

So anyway, she sits down, puts her bag between us and says, “This is my boundary, and I want you to respect my boundaries.”

I’d already had a couple of drinks, so my mouth was on autopilot, and my autopilot happens to be pretty honest. Without hesitation, I said, “Hey, don’t flatter yourself, honey. I just came for the beer.” Realizing what I said, I tried to divert her attention by reaching for my friend Mr. M on the other side of me, saying, “And to make sure this guy comes home with me. Don’t want him getting too chatty with the local girls, you know?”

“What do you mean, ‘flatter myself,’?” She asks?

“What?” I said.

And then, taking the cue, Mr. M says, “Whaaaat?” in high falsetto.

I was pretty entertaining the rest of the night, either intentionally or unintentionally. I have a habit of not caring what other people think of me, so I basically talk to entertain myself, which is a pretty obnoxious thing to witness.

There were two birthdays, officially, although at least four other people claimed it to be their birthday, or at least in the vicinity of their birthday, of which I was guilty of doing at some point. One of the birthdays was a Japanese woman in her early thirties, who I was meeting for the first time, and I was later explained that she had been hanging out with JETs like us for some time. Each year, some would go home and she met the new JETs, so her original friends on the JET program were long gone. It seems really sad to have to say goodbye to friends every year.

As we were ordering, I heard her say, “chotto matte,” a very basic Japanese phrase, but in my contented state, I felt compelled to explain it to the girl next to me.

“Chotto matte. That’s Japanese for ‘wait a sec.’”

“Really?” she feigned interest.

“Yes, it ah, it’s a very informal expression so you have to be careful.”

“So I should only say it to my friends.”

“Sure, sure. It’s actually a very old expression.”

She nodded.

“Yeah, if I’m not mistaken, it, ah, comes from the French saying, “chou matwah. And that actually means, ‘kiss me, you fool.’”

So the evening continued with my ridiculous lies and people pretending to be interested in them. On the other hand, as I was pretending to be interested in the girl next to me, Mr. N had slipped an iron horse ornament into my wine. They were originally set on the table as chopsticks holders, but he had somehow collected everyone’s iron horse, and put one in my wine. My response was very rational.

“Horse in the wine,” I said to the people around me. Then I said it over and over as though I were speaking in conversation. “Horseinthewine horseinthewine? Horseinthewine horseinthewine.”

Then the horseinthewine gag evolved into a contest to see who could say it the loudest. It wasn’t long before there was a horseinthebeer and everyone shouting horseinthewine. Later in the night, someone got up to make a birthday toast, and after saying something like, “to our Japanese friends,” or something, I had enough audacity and beer in me to say a resounding “horseinthewine!” which was met with an answer from everyone.

When we left the restaurant, the Japanese birthday woman found that Mr. N had stolen several of the iron horses as a souvenir, at which she visibly upset. But the Japanese don’t show negative emotions well, so she smiled and shook her head. Then she went back to the restaurant to pay for the horses. It seems like every time we go out, we find a new level of obnoxiousness to rise to. Or sink to.