Yuki's Birthday

A couple weekends ago was probably the craziest, out-of-control party experience I’ve had so far since I moved to Japan. It was Yuki’s birthday. What more legit reason can there be to celebrate and have fun than a birthday, not to mention the birthday of a person who is close friends with all of us. What can I say besides, “We love kaichou (kaichou is Japanese for president/boss and is Yuki’s nickname due to his personality)!

Disclaimer: I want to write about all the crazy and embarrassing incidents that happened on this night more so for my own memories than anything because it really was just an all out fun night I don’t want to forget. Please remember that this was all in good fun. The evening was completely light-hearted, and everyone was fine the next day…except for hangovers. :P I know that some of my family who reads this may be concerned about my drinking and partying, but I assure you that everything is going fantastically for me these days. All through school I studied very hard, and I hardly ever drank or partied. I feel like I am just beginning to understand this culture that is out there. I’m beginning to understand the hype that I didn’t really understand when I was in college. Now I am just making up for lost time. The only responsibility I really have is work. I love my job, I always try to set a good example for the students, and what I do on the weekends has never interfered with my job. It’s nice not having homework or extreme amounts of pressure from school. I think that now is the time for me to live this kind of life before I have more responsibilities like a husband or children. In all honesty, the shenanigans we pull are not really that bad anyway, just silly. So here we go..!

On Saturday November 2^nd, the day after Yuki’s actual birthday, we held a big party for him. You could feel the excitement in the air. Everyone was in high spirits and ready to enjoy the night. We gathered around 7:00pm, and went to the izakaya we always go to called Kyushu. Yuki was the last to arrive, and we all cheered when he entered. I would say that there were around 16 of us. More people came later in the night. With that, we did our initial “kanpai (cheers)!” I was sitting at a table with Andrew and Joe. We can put away drinks like it’s nobody’s business (particularly Joe and I)…must be the American in us haha! Before most people had even a few sips of their first drinks, we were on our second round. We were crabby because we ordered a bunch of food, but none of it was coming out or they were bringing it to other tables. The three of us lunged at our tomato slices when they came to the table. We looked at Shawn’s table next to us with envy. We decided to put out dirty dishes and cups on their table as punishment…if that makes any sense. As Andrew put it, “We like our table pure.”

At the beginning.

Food came out slow, but drinks came out fast. Drinking games broke out at tables. Losers of the games were forced to down multiple cups of hot sake. I never lost a game, but I willingly drank the sake anyway. One memory I have from the night is Akira pouring me a cup of sake, me drinking it, and then him saying, “Oh wait, I didn’t pour anything. Let me try again.” I’m not sure how many cups he poured for me repeatedly saying that line haha! It wasn’t long before people were up and walking around everywhere chatting with each other and switching tables. Conversations were silly. For example, a wonderful conversation between Andrew and I consisted of this:

Me: "I have some boob sweat."

Andrew: "That reminds me of a DJ. DJ Booty Sweat."

We all handed Yuki his gifts and watched him open them. We bought him a cake too. It looked like a teddy bear! We sang happy birthday to him as we handed him the cake.

Probably the cutest cake. ever.

My birthday present to Yuki.

Drinking games.

After the gift opening, things began to get a bit rowdy. We were told to quiet down a couple times by the staff…and I don’t blame them! Akira bumped into me causing me to spill wine on my tights and floor…to which I began laughing at hysterically because there was a piece of lettuce or something near the wine spill, which I thought was the funniest thing ever (no, that isn’t supposed to make any sense). At that time, with tears in my eyes, I said, “I’m going to cry tears of joy forever,” and in that moment, I believed it to be true. Another incident involved me, Yuki, and I think Shinya walking to the restroom together. Shinya and I were helping Yuki walk, plus I had to pee. As we approached the restroom in the back, there were two or three guys standing there. They saw the three of us stumbling to the restroom together, and I guess they assumed that because I was arm in arm with two Japanese guys, that I would want to interact with them as well. They started asking me for kisses and trying to kiss my cheek. Looking back on this the next day, I thought these guys were creeps (even though they were drunk too), but at the time, I was also drunk so I just laughed at them and said, “No, no, no, no.” Yuki told me he has no memory of this, but I was really thankful because in his drunken stupor, his true character came through, and he pushed those guys’ faces away from me. Unfortunately, I didn’t really think it through before I left the restroom, but when I exited, Yuki and Shinya weren’t done, and those guys were there waiting for me. They followed me to the table (which wasn’t too far away) while putting their arms around me and grabbing my butt. I told Rachel that the guys were bothering me, she saw them touching my bum, and she said, “What are you doing?!” to them and shoved their arms away from me. They left after that. I don’t know why, but usually I’m too polite in these situations and need someone to help me out I guess.

The wine spill and a piece of lettuce or
something...HAHA!

Anyway, before I move on to the second part of the party, some points of interest were as follows: Yuki kissed almost every guy at the table. The most memorable one was the one between Akira and him. The reasons being that Akira was in the middle of eating chocolate cake when Yuki kissed him, I told them to keep kissing long enough for me to take out my phone and take a picture (which took a long time), and when they pulled away, Yuki had chocolate on his face from Akira’s mouth…sick! Haha! Akira got his pants pulled down by someone, he fell on the floor face first, and near the end as people were starting to head out, he puked in the empty cake bag but continued to drink more!  I’ll hand it to Akira, he is a trooper. If I ever throw up from drinking, I am 100% done for the night. No more alcohol! However, Akira just keeps going and going! After we got our bill, the Caesar salad we ordered in the very beginning came out. We demolished it! Later Joe said something like, “That was the least amount of food I’ve ever eaten at an izakaya,” due to the fact that hardly any of the food we ordered came to our table.

Yuki attempting to kiss everyone, willing or not haha!

Poor Aki-chan...who did this to him?!

Get your sh*t together Akira!!! XD

Part 2: We started walking over to the HUB so we could hang out there. I was helping Yuki walk along with someone else (Yusuke?). I’ll admit, although I remember the events throughout the whole night, some details were a bit fuzzy. As we were walking, Yuki kept saying, “遠いわ!　遠いわ!　ハブどこ？(Like, it’s so far! Where is it??)” I kept saying, “It’s not that far! It’s really close! You can see the sign down the street, see?” However, as time went on, it started to feel far even for me haha! Perhaps it took a long time because we decided to stop and have drunken slap fights along the way. Shawn and Akira started it. Basically, Akira said really loudly, “I want someone to slap me!!” Shawn said he was happy to oblige. So we all stopped and gathered around them, not caring about people passing by. Shawn slapped him the hardest I’ve ever seen anyone slap anyone before haha! What the heck?? Yuki saw and thought it looked fun, so then he asked someone to slap him next. So Akira slapped Yuki in the face. Then we went to the HUB.

Slap fights?

Yuki's turn!

People filtered in, but me, Kentaro, Yuki, and someone else (perhaps Hashi or Yusuke?) took a long time to go inside because Kentaro was saying that he had to go home because his last train was soon, and he had to work at like 5:00 am! So he and Yuki were saying a long goodbye. One of them noticed the time. It was only 10:30. Kentaro was shocked (he was pretty drunk and must have not realized how early it was), and said, “Oh! I can stay longer! Let’s go inside!” Haha! So that long goodbye was in vain.

When we got inside, the first thing I see is Akira standing at the bar ordering a huge pint of beer. He takes the full glass of beer and then accidentally drops the whole thing on the floor. The glass didn’t break luckily, but there was beer all over (and on my tights again). It was so pitiful lol! Then Yuki took a tiny little wet wipe and was trying to clean up the massive spill. I don’t know how that all panned out because I got distracted because I ran into two of my girlfriends unexpectedly and was chatting with them.

The spilled beer.

At the HUB, some crazy things happened. I took a few shots with people. Al, and his girlfriend who I met for the first time there, showed up, so I took a shot with them. Yuki was super excited when they arrived. I bought a shot for Yuki, but when I was about to hand it to him, I realized how drunk he was and decided to give him a glass of water instead. So I took his shot for him. I remember just chatting with friends and whatnot, but here are the three most surprising events: First, when I was chatting with Akira, he bought me a rum and coke, turned to me, said “You are f*cking awesome and heavy metal,” and then smooched me on my mouth!! WHAA??? Haha! He does not remember doing it. It was all in good fun, though. Next, I took this one a little more seriously...I don’t even know how this started or happened, but I remember standing in front of the bar where everyone could see (I don’t think anyone was really watching except maybe Rachel and/or Shinya), and Yuki and I started kissing! Like a real kiss… O.o I heard one of our friends make like an “Ohhh!!” noise when it was happening, I think at our expense. After the kiss, Yuki fell on the ground lol, and I just put my hands on my head and asked the world what had just happened?! I think I said something like, “He’s not even going to remember this tomorrow, but I will!” And it was true… Rachel later told him about it before I said anything to him, and he apologized and said that he kissed almost every person at his party too so not to take it seriously. It’s not that I was mad at him about it, but it was more serious of a kiss than Akira’s. >_< In any case, it’s water under the bridge.

At the HUB.

The last incident of interest at the bar was the thing that led to us getting kicked out. I want to point out that I was actually the only person who knew that we got kicked out. After the incident with Yuki, I walked over to a table Akira was at. He was talking with some people we didn’t know, and for whatever bizarre and stupid reason, he decided to take an empty glass and smash it on the table repeatedly until his hand was all bloody. All the while I’m grabbing his arm and tell him to stop. After he stopped, I asked him why he did it, and he said, “…because it was (heavy) metal.” Sigh….lol…What an idiot?! So I apologized to the people around us and escorted Akira to the restroom. Yuki saw the blood and decided he would go help him in the restroom since I couldn’t go in. Pfft, yeah, because Yuki was going to be a whole lot of help. :P I waited for them to come out. When they came out, there was blood on Yuki’s shirt, probably from them hugging in the bathroom or something. Akira’s hand was cleaned up, but still bleeding a bit. That’s when a staff member came over with some bandaids and told us that we had to leave because they couldn’t have a person getting blood all over their bar. So, we gathered up the remaining crew and left.

I’m not sure if Yuki had been sick at all in the bathroom up to this point, but once we got outside, he stumbled over to the bushes on the curb and began throwing up. We all knew that it would happen at some point in the night, it was just a matter of when. Yuki has a weak stomach and always gets sick when he drinks a lot. So, I took his glasses for safe keeping and a few of us helped Yuki stand and rubbed his back as he threw up. At this point, the story seems kind of grim, right? However, the atmosphere was quite the opposite! Even Yuki was laughing and smiling between bouts of sickness. We kept saying stuff like, “Don’t worry Yuki! You still look sexy!” The funny part about this was that it was only like 11:30 or 12:00-ish. While Yuki was being sick for a while, some people caught their last trains and went home. Raz showed up during this which was unfortunate because Yuki was already at the point of no return. Some guy who I apparently talked to at the bar from England came outside and talked to us more during this. He was blatantly hitting on Rachel. It was awkward.

Yuki blowing his nose after being sick.

Eventually Yuki said he would rather just take a taxi home. Akira decided to accompany him which was good. I put Yuki’s glasses back on his face. Then we gave him a plastic bag, a water bottle, his gifts, and our well wishes and sent him on his way. From then, people kind of split up, but a few of us decided to go dancing at my favorite place, JAWS, since we still had a lot of time. It was me, Yumi (I have no idea when she showed up in the night!), Joe, Lisa, Kohei, and Hashi. Yumi had forgotten her ID, but they still let her in which was awesome! The second I walk in the club, I see a guy with the craziest light up glasses. I asked if I could take a picture of me wearing them (or maybe I just took them from him…I don’t remember). I gave them back to him after I took the picture. He was nice and cool! Actually, when I ended up leaving the club, he said bye to me on my way out.

These glasses are so awesome!!

So, the place was packed! We got our first round of drinks with our drink tickets and proceeded to dance. I noticed Kohei wasn’t around so I searched for him. He was standing by the bar. Maybe this is when I took the picture with the glasses. Either way, whatever. I chatted with Kohei a bit and coaxed him onto the dance floor. He danced with us a bit before disappearing without a word lol. I believe he went home since he came by bicycle. I rejoined the group and started dancing with them and everyone around me. I was dancing with this one guy for a bit until he touched my boobs. I told him to go away after that and avoided him the rest of the night. It never ceases to amaze me how often I get touched by people in Japan. Not just in clubs either! In trains, izakaya, and pubs, too! Japan is always publicized as such a safe place with no crime, but I definitely been grabbed by more men here than in the U.S.! There are other reasons though why Japan is overall a safer place than the U.S. Remember how I said before that I am often too polite when it comes to guys touching me? Well, at the club, I was a lot stricter. At another point in the night, a random guy grabbed my butt. I immediately shoved him and yelled at him (I hope it was the right guy lol! >_< It was really crowded.). Finally, I found a nice boy to dance with, Sho. I say boy because when I asked him his age, I found out that he was only 20 years old! I’m about to be 24! Made me feel kind of old… Anyway, he was a cutie pie and nice to dance with. He was there with his friends. One of his friends was wearing a Chicago hat, so I got really excited!! They were excited about it too, haha! Unfortunately, Sho had to leave. From then I just danced with Hashi. It was a good time. J

Throughout the night, I didn’t have to buy my own drinks except once. Random guys kept paying for my drinks when I went up to the bar…it was AWESOME! Lol! The weird thing is that these random guys didn’t want anything from me. They were just being nice. Some were interested in knowing where I was from or just having a short conversation, but that’s it. It was great! The only time I bought a drink was when the shot girl came around with her tray. I handed her 1,000 yen. The shots were 500 yen each. Instead of giving me 500 yen back, she gave me a shot and then took one herself! Apparently I paid for that…unwillingly… Oh well, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Around 5 am, we left to ride our trains home. Upon leaving the club, we met the comparatively quiet outside. Our ears were ringing, and our heads were pounding. I’m not sure if our heads hurt because the music was so loud or because we drank a lot (or both). Joe and I live in the same building, so we always go home together. I was super tired this time. We sat on the platform and waited for the train. We were both so crabby and complaining a lot to each other. I told him that I wasn’t sure if I could stay awake this time on the way home. Usually I’m the one who always makes sure we get off at our stop since he always falls asleep. We made it to our first stop, but when we transferred to the train that takes us to our station, we slept through it…even though he set an alarm on his phone to wake us up! Luckily, we only passed our stop by four stops. This was the second time for me to miss my stop on the way home after an all nighter. The first time I was by myself, and I rode the train all the way to Kyoto! D:

We made it home, grabbed some snacks at Family Mart like we always do after staying out all night. It’s funny because it’s always the same young guy, Matsuoka, working there in the morning when we go. I said, “Thank you, always,” to him in Japanese this time haha! We got back to our building, and I took a shower and went to bed. I was not sick in any way, but my head was pounding. I seriously could only sleep for 3 hours (from like 8:00 am to 11:00 am). My head was hurting too much to sleep. I just chilled out, texted people, and played on Facebook until I could fall asleep again at 6:30 pm. I slept for like 13 hours straight after that. It was wonderful! I had no work on Monday, so it was great! Looking back on all the drinks I could recall drinking, I definitely broke my record for the most I’ve ever drank in a night…I can’t believe I didn’t get sick!

Over the next few days, we all shared our memories of the night with each other and informed Yuki of everything because he hardly remembered anything. It seriously was a blast! Although we had hangovers the next day, everyone looked back on the night fondly and had a good time. My birthday is coming up soon, and I only hope that my birthday can be half as cool as his was!