Monday, 6 September 2010

For Relaxing Times, Make It Suntory Times

Hello again everybody!

So, Saturday evening, when Annette had gone to see her friend, Caspar and I had decided to go find a karaoke bar. Having seen Lost In Translation the night before (a movie with Bill Murray and Scarlet Johanson in Tokyo), the choice of which drink to indulge in that night was pretty straight forward; "For relaxing times, make it Suntory times". In the movie, Bill Murray has to advertise for a Japanese whiskey called Suntory, which is an actual brand of whiskey over here. In the scene where the advertisement is being shot, the director gives a long speech about the qualities of the whiskey and what needs to be conveyed in the ad - which is all in Japanese, making it impossible for Bill Murray to understand - and the translator translates all this to "Turn and look into camera". Eh, looking at how I explained it, it doesn't sound that funny but trust me, it is. I guess you would have to see the movie, which is not such a bad idea at all. All this was basically just an introduction to the following three photos:

(For relaxing times)
(Make it)
(Suntory times)

Basically, it was a night in the spirit of Lost in Translation. After having had an adequate amount of Suntory time (we shared the bottle), we embarked for our search of a karaoke bar to satisfy our musical need. We decided to go the an area called Shibuya - a place for the young and hip in Tokyo. Just not on Saturday nights, apparently. When we came there, having taken the metro, there were not too many people out and about. We then asked around for fun places to go and after getting a lot of recommendations about an area called Roppongi, we decided to take the metro and try our luck there. Just one problem - the metro was closed. So, there we were; quite far from Roppongi without any real idea of how to get to there without paying for a taxi. Not much to do. We did see something quite weird/nice. A man was passed out on the street, completely unable to be engaged in any sort of interaction. A couple of Japanese people, dressed in the street cleaning outfit, went over to him, took his t-shirt off, washed him, gave him a new t-shirt on and then just leaving him passed out on the sidewalk again. You don't see that everyday in Denmark. After being thoroughly impressed by this, we decided to ask somebody for directions and just then a couple of German guys walked past us which just so happened to know the way there on foot. They also knew that a certain can held a quite tasty alcoholic beverage, which we then had a few off on the way to Roppongi. We never reached Roppongi, but we did walk a lot. We ended up in a restaurant, being hungry from all the walking and fell into conversation with an annoying smart-ass Japanese guy who could swear a lot in English. I guess he was proud of that ability because he certainly used it a lot. Sometime not long after we took a taxi home, I am told. I must admit there are some durations of the night which I cannot recall but I am certain that I had a lot of fun, even without karaoke.

Esben.

No comments:

Post a Comment