Olga joins the crew

On Friday night, I left the office quite late and headed off back home. It was an atmospheric night:

Saw this car on the way home:

No, its not a ricer car, this is Japan. And fast cars ARE cool, driving that endangers others is not. (heh, I feel like the moralist at the end of a kids TV program)

When I arrived home, I saw the new girl in the corridor. She was going back to her room, but upon seeing that I had arrived home, she went into the kitchen. I went upstairs however, to see Ivett. When I came back down the new girl was gone, but I saw the kettle was on. I thought to myself “she must be lonely”. Basically she had only came into the kitchen because she thought thats where I was going and she wanted to speak to someone. Well, that’s my hypothesis anyway.

I had made arrangements to meet David, the Czech guy, in a place called Kinshicho, at 8:00PM. I thought it would be nice to ask the new girl so I knocked on her door and asked. Immediately she agreed. I had to wait for her to get changed and then we went.

I saw a comical sign:

We arrived in Kinshicho, and David took us to a bar that he had visited the night before. It was an interesting bar:

The last guy told us that he used to sell fake watches. I don’t know if this means he was Yakuza or what. I guess that would be pretty low level lame Yakuza. Anyway, he got caught and fined 300000, which is about 1500 quid. He doesn’t do it anymore. The woman bar staff member, was this dude’s wife.

After hanging here for two drinks, the price of them had such a lightening effect on my wallet that I think it actually started to generate lift. Consequently I motioned for us to leave. I motioned using my mouth, vocal chords, and lungs, but these motions produced sounds that the others interpreted and understood as me saying “this is too expensive, lets leave”.

We messed about for a while looking for a place that sold cheap beers and then just asked some Japanese who directed us to a decent place.

The beers here were much cheaper. 530 yen (3 quid) for 633ml bottles of Asahi. Alright, not dirt cheap, but much cheaper than the 900 yen a pop I was paying for half a pint back at the other place.

Asahi beer is alright, but Japanese beers pale in comparison to English beers. I think we can rightfully claim to have some of the best beers in the world.

The new girl is called Olga. She is Russian. She is in Tokyo for 1 month on some kind of holiday but she has paid for lessons during the week. I’m not quite sure if this is an entirely private affair or associated with some course she is doing in Russia. It would be a pretty wierd way to spend a holiday, going to lessons each day.

The dude above was sleeping. People seem to sleep everywhere in Japan. Obviously they sleep everywhere, I mean they are not bonkosculous (I don’t know what the word is for “does not require sleep” so I just made that up, ok). What I mean is, you will find Japanese people sleeping in many public places at odd times of day.

It is very popular it seems, to sleep in the subway and in bars in the evening. Sometimes this is because they have missed the last train and are killing the time until the morning.

We made friends with the people at the table next to us. I say table, but actually the table is only set a foot off the floor and the table is inset within a well in which you put your feet.

It is easy to make friends with drunken people. So lets not pretend we were best buddies or something. But it is always fun.

Olga decided to make a toast which I thought was quite cool so I made her say it again for the camera:

Olga’s Toast from Ashley Mills on Vimeo.

That reminds me. David and I both made bets with Olga. She bet that I couldn’t drink 1 shot of hot vodka without being smashpanned as a consequence. This sounded so easy that I bet her 2 shots. If I win she will be my slave for a week, which means that she will goto the shop for me or whatever if I need it. If she wins, then I have to buy her a sushi dinner. The same goes for David, but I can’t remember what he wins because he doesn’t live in the same house so her being the slave doesn’t make sense. The situation to try this bet hasn’t arose yet, but I look forward to winning it.

After this, we had to go, as we decided to head back to Kanda to continue drinking. I told David he could sleep on my floor (I am so generous, haha). Otherwise the night would either end, or we would have to stay up all night, since the trains stop at 12.

We had to run for the train:

Running for the train from Ashley Mills on Vimeo.

We got on the train:

Sitting on the train from Ashley Mills on Vimeo.

As you can see. The subway is quite mundane. What did you expect? I don’t know what possessed Olga, besides a skinfull that is, because she decided to start unwittingly entertaining us:

Dancing from Ashley Mills on Vimeo.

Damn that was so funny.

When we got to Kanda we went to Bar 82, which is this English pub, that isn’t an English pub.

We started some kind of crazed arm-wrestling competition for whatever reason. Since I was much bigger than everyone else in the bar, I beat everyone that dared challenge me. So the competition was really between everyone else:

David VS James 1 from Ashley Mills on Vimeo.

James getting beaten. He hates getting beaten. hehe

haha, that reminds me, they have fish-n-chips fake-newspaper wrapped chopsticks here, you can see them to the right of that thing that says 400 yen.