Going Out

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #20, 2009)

A night out in Osaka can be a mind-blowing experience. As with restaurants, there is a virtually endless selection of bars, clubs, and karaoke joints, ready to pull you in with in-your-face neon signage or subdued back-alley sleaze. For a small-town foreigner this can all be a little too tempting, and I know a few people who do irreparable damage to their bodies and wallets on a regular basis. This problem is compounded by the fact that the trains stop running at midnight and most people live too far away from the city to make a taxi ride home viable. Thus, if you are in town and accidentally cross the midnight threshold, a few quiet drinks can quickly descend into a long night of sleaze, vomiting and shame.

There is a large community of foreigners, or gaijin, living in Osaka (‘gaijin’ is a vaguely offensive Japanese term for ‘foreigner’, though the word is often used ironically by foreigners themselves). There is a huge number of establishments aimed at the gaijin community: Irish bars, traditional English-style pubs, and the like. There is even a whole district called Amemura, or ‘America-town’, complete with a tacky replica of the Statue of Liberty. It’s definitely nice (and often important) to hang out with other English speakers who have a shared cultural heritage (read: ‘can quote The Simpsons at length’). However, the danger is that this community can become too insular: there are people who have lived in Osaka for years and still speak no Japanese, who just hang out at the gaijin bars with other gaijin. Sad. Rather than try to forget I’m in Japan, I prefer to be smacked in the face with it. I’m a big fan of the traditional Japanese-style bars (izakaya), where you sit at Japanese-style low tables, eat Japanese-style snacks and listen to, uh, Japanese-style muzak. I also love looking for tiny bars down dimly-lit alleys, the kind with a seating capacity of about ten, a quirky owner and a supporting cast of foul-mouthed regulars.

Once you’ve had enough with bars, the two main choices are clubs or karaoke. Most clubs are horrifically overpriced (you can drop up to $80 just for entry and a poorly-mixed drink in a plastic cup). Still, if you like cheesy house music and sweaty white guys looking for Japanese girls, it’s one way to pass the time. Otherwise, karaoke is the way to go. In central Osaka there is a karaoke joint on almost every block, and karaoke employees on every street corner loudly reminding you of this fact. Karaoke bars also have the intriguing concept of ‘nomihoudai’, where you can drink as much alcohol as you want for a certain length of time for a fixed price. This is actually quite common in Japanese bars and restaurants, and it’s often coupled with an all-you-can-eat buffet. I’m pretty sure that in New Zealand, these places would be knee-deep in vomit and in financial ruin within hours; Japanese people, on the other hand, seem to know their limits. For the naïve foreigner in Japan, it’s yet another way to fall deeper into the black hole of excess.