“It’s you! Hello! Hello!” a loud and boisterous voice called from a brightly lit sidewalk restaurant as we passed by. It was 11:30pm on Thursday in a small Osaka suburb and my girlfriend and I were headed home for the evening. At first we looked around to see if they were calling to us, after all we had never met them before, or had we? The man behind the counter continued to gesture wildly for us to come back and the few customers sitting at a table began to get into it as well.
We turned and headed back quite curious at what was going on. ‘Sit down, sit down, have a beer on us! Nice to meet you!’ they all sang out as we approached. A collection of seven middle aged red faced men and women sat at a table crowded with empty glasses and half full plates of various seafood. The man behind the counter, Yamake-san (as we found out later), rushed out and set some seats for us at the table with the others.
We sat down tentatively, unsure where this came from and where it was going. Immediately we were barraged by questions, ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? Is this your wife? What do you want to drink?’ and so on. We took a break from the questions to make our drink order and waded back into the conversation. Our beers quickly arrived in frosty mugs with a lot of head (Japanese style) followed unexpectedly a short while later by a dish of warm tofu in soy sauce, compliments of the house.
As our beer slowly disappeared we found out that Yamake-san remembered me from another night when I had popped my head in just to ask what kind of food they served. So, when he saw me passing by he thought it would be a great idea to have me in for a beer, something quickly seconded by the other customers. Grinning, Yamake-san told me of his dream to visit America and revel in the freedom by taking a ‘hog’ cross-country ‘Easy Rider’ style. All in all everyone was curious, friendly and conversation flowed on for a while until the last of our drinks had been finished.
As much as we would have loved to drink the night away with the others the clock was ticking and the mornings alarm wouldn’t turn itself off. We said our goodbyes with promises to stop in again and everyone wished us a good night. Still chuckling from the carefree and somewhat drunk antics of our new friends we made our way into the night, the cheerful light of the place fading behind us.
Only in Japan.
