Saturday was my first chance to actually get into Kobe and nose my away around with the Suzurandites. Surprise, surprise, the brits Dave and Lorna had been there just over a week and they’d already found the Hub that Nick spent so long describing. It’s a pretty cool place made all the more cooler by the face you can order beer in one litre test tube things that are enormously impressive if not particularly practical. Lorna actually ordered one of these for herself and the looks on the faces of the table of Japanese women next us was hilarious. It started with sort of stunned horror, then graduated to something the probably verged on disgust before slowly settling on bemused amusement. Way to reinforce those stereotypes Lorna, excellent work.

As far as I can see the only big problem with the Hub is it’s a kind of Gaijin Ghetto where any and all white people that are in Kobe at the time congregate. At times this can be cool, the people at the table next to us were arguing about whether EB or VB was a better beer, and when I leaned over and told them they should stay in Japan if they needed to argue the point and that it was an affront to their West Australianism if they even considered VB, they did a quite a amusing double take. Apparently they’re exchange students from Curtin that started their degrees while I would have been at the University. Small world, huh?

Then there’s the bad, we meet a bunch of JETs from Seattle that are all in Kobe for the duration, led by the most annoying motherfucker of a yank I have ever met, and I’ve met some pretty annoying yanks. I’m sure you’ll all meet him in Yashiro, as he informed me with a kind of sick delight you see of the face of a four year old burning ants with a magnifying glass. Apparently he’s going to “Get so damn drunk for every seminar man, it’s going to be so rad, i’m gonna be hella drunk. hyuk!” I kid you not. Thankfully the tension was broken when Neil put AQUA on the jukebox and started dancing around like a crazy person. I think when they’re put up against what I’ve seen of British and American people, your average Japanese is fairly boring. Cue Neil doing the actions to the cartoon superheros dance while our American friend does masturbating hand motions and giggles.

So once we had downed our test-tubes and extricated ourselves from the horrid clutches of our capitalist counterparts, we hit the town to see what Kobe had to offer. I’ll skip the next couple of hours because it had pretty much the same theme. Find random bar, enter and buy cheapest beer, I point to random item on the menu and giggle like a schoolgirl as weird Japanese finger food turns up a couple of minutes later. I think we tried four bars including a couple of English pubs, a traditional Japanese bar and what looked like some kind of Alchoholic’s Cafe. After that it became a mission to find something a little more upbeat. With Neil and Lorna conferring to find a suitable translation for Daves “Well Lively, that’s what we need” we ended up wandering the back streets of Kobe until totally by accident we stumbled into what could quite possibly be the coolest bar I have ever been into.

It’s called Terra and it’s basically what would happen if you were rich and decided to turn your lounge room into a bar. There’s a couple of couches scattered around, a pair of very fancy Technics turntables in the corner and some Tvs up above the bar. It was totally and utterly empty when we arrived, with just the barman looking bored behind the bar. So we told him to make us some random cocktails and sat down. He gets all excited and starts mixing drinks, while at the same time shuffling under the bar for something. Off goes the Hanshin tigers baseball game and the lights dim. He goes over and starts fiddling with the mixer, and then puffing on what sounds like a bellows under the bar.

The room slowly fills with smoke and the sound of New Kids on the Block fills the room. The dude had a video of an 80s marathon with all the favourites. Sitting in a bar in Kobe watching MC Hammer’s – You Can’t Touch This while the bartender offers running commentary in Japanese has to be one of the most surreal and cool things I’ve ever done. Mind you, I was pretty drunk at the time, but it’s one of those experiences I’m going to take to the grave. It’s such a shame Michael Jackson turned weird, he was so damned cool in the 80s.

We’ve told the barman we’ll be back next weekend, so I think we may have found a hang-out joint. Stop!

HAMMERTIME!

Posted in Japan on Monday August 11, 2003.

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