Knuckles and Beans

“I’m in a bad place,” was apparently my response to BC’s question to how or where I was. And I was. I have an emergency switch in my brain that makes me escape the scene when I get one shot over the line. This has taken me into some unusual places, usually backyards, once I woke up in the luggage compartment of an RV and still another time in the Pacific ocean. It’s an odd mechanism, but I’m generally glad it exists. This particular night, Saturday, I was in an dark ally.

Once I had some idea of where I was it and sobered up a bit, I rejoined the group. Or maybe the group rejoined me. Whatever happened, we were all foreigners, and drunk. We needed refuge in the form of increased drunkenness, soft lighting, and the robot politeness of the Japanese so we went to a late night Izakaiya.

An izakaiya is sort of like a restaurant and sort of like a bar. They serve beer, fried food, edamame (little green bean things) and are reasonably cheap. Sweeting the deal, they also usually have picture menus. Lastly it is acceptable to be drunk here. In a word it’s sanctuary.

At the first sight of Laura’s tits bursting out of her bride-of-Santa-red-corset, and sound of our loud foreign and boozy voices we were put upstairs. By ourselves. This was a good thing; for it was there that we acted in the foul and stereotypical ways of the dirty gaijin.

First, we made mistakes with the ordering counting system. For some reason counting things in Asia is pointlessly difficult. I can’t remember if we ordered too many or too few or what, but mistakes were made. Fingers were used.

Secondly our Japanese reading ability was so shitty that we accidentally ordered a plate of fried chicken knuckles to go with our beers and edamame. At about this point things start to get bad.

Nico, completely passed out, laid across the adjacent table totally asleep and snoring loudly. BC was pissed off about something and was very loud. I was totally drunk and slurring or lamenting something trying to keep my shit together in a vain attempt construe what exactly had happened. Communication was severely lacking a everyone was in their own groggy worlds, but it was fun.

I don’t know if it was just in my mind, but I seem to recall batter-sucked knuckles being thrown around the table.

It was as if all of Japan was thinking, "Dirty dirty gaijin, why can’t you just eat your knuckles and beans in peace?