Saturday we headed to Akita. It is a city on the west side of Japan. The drive was long, but the scenic view was beautiful. We past through the mountain ranges. They are the first young mountains I have ever seen. You could count the Appalachians but they are more like hills than mountains.
Akita is a beautiful city. There were flowers in bloom everywhere. Senshu park has an old castle and gardens galore. The Flickr photo gallery for day 2 shows these scenes. Akita is a place off the beaten path. Foreigners are a rare site. Unlike Misawa or Tokyo where the people see foreigners daily. In Japan, people stare at you with inquisitive minds. Some probably seeing a white person for the first time. But they are very friendly people. We walked around most of the day. Booked rooms at Castle Hotel. The rooms were small, but at least it was not a pod hotel. I’ve seen photos of those places. Talk about claustrophobia.
Ate lunch at the hotel and then passed out. Afterwards, we walked around the town some more. Took pictures with some cool statues. Even an Obama statue. ROFL! Randomly, we found a statue of Obama out in the streets. We had to mess with it. For dinner, we went to a curry restaurant and had Japanese curry. Quite tasty. There were some Japanese girls that the others already knew. One gave us free beer. 
Then, we headed down to the club district.
Club AK didn’t open until ten so we continued walking around. We found an alley with a bar called Kuru Friendly. What the hell, we walked in. It was my kind of place. A high class, clean professional bar. The bartender was a bartender gold medalist in some competition. He was freakin’ awesome. As he was pouring our drinks, he was talking in Japanese. Of course, we just go “Yea, Yea WOO!” Apparently, he was asking if we wanted oden, a japanese dish. The other bartender served us. I had trouble with the chopsticks. But kind of figured it out. Oden is not very good and doesn’t taste like much of anything. The brown, tubular piece looked like something from a squid or octopus. It was in fact a fish paste of some sort. There was a white triangle that looked similar to a pear cut. It tasted like absolutely nothing. There was literally no taste, none. Then the circular thing was just freakin’ nasty. But at least I can say I tried it. We talked to the bartenders for a while. They were both very friendly and interested in why we were in Japan. We asked another customer to take some photos of us with the bartenders.
Next we headed to the club. There were few people there. Started off drinking red bull and vodka. It was the only thing on the menu that had a good english translation. The club was uber loud. Beyond what I like. But there was a smoking area and outside rooms where we talked most of the time. The club slowly filled with people. Not a single unattractive Japanese women was present. On that note, I have seen very few unattractive woman when we have gone out. In America, there is quite a mixture of attractiveness. But Japan and Montreal are very different. It is partially due to the areas of Japan that I have visited. I know very few Japanese sentences which caused a great language barrier at the club. However, I was wearing a t-shirt that said “Watashi ni kisu shite.” It means kiss me. It worked from time to time. The difficulty of the language barrier persisted. Some of the girls we had already met and they spoke english. When they left, it was pretty much game over. After a few hours, we met Prince, a Japanese fellow interested in practicing his English. I sat and talked to him for a while. He had been all over India, Ireland, Germany… We talked “politics” for a while and he translated for his friend. Then he helped translate for some of the other girls. It was good times. The Japanese guys seem to be very friendly. Unlike Americans at a club, the Japanese won’t club you for talking to the girls. They were probably afraid of us more than anything. There were a couple of reggae artists on stage. By 5am the club was still rockin’. They don’t stop. I left out of shear exhaustion. Adam was like “Grab a cab.” But what do I do? The opposite. Adventure time.
I knew the approximate direction of the hotel, so I started walking. An hour or so later I found it. After passing it several times. I also had to stop a few Japanese and ask for directions. They are very shy and sometimes ignore you. Some are afraid of foreigners. But one elderly paper man pointed me the right direction. Then, of course, I passed it because I only understood have of what he said, even though he spoke good English. Later, an elderly guy was walking his schnauzer. I stopped and asked him. He spoke absolutely no English but walked with me a block or two until we both understood each other through hand gestures and simple terms. Interesting experience. I went back to the hotel room, passed out and woke up a half hour later. The others called ready to head back.
